Vintage paradise

      A pleasant getaway from hectic city life and a refined place to experience traditional culture.
Bao Son Paradise is a US$50 million theme park a dozen kilometers from the center of Hanoi along the LangHoa Lac Highway. Soaked in history and culture, Thien Duong Bao Son, to give the verdant park its Vietnamese name, incorporates sideshows, a water stage, a 3D cinema, an underwater world, an aquarium with 2,000 kinds of fish and a butterfly museum.
There are also bonsai and orchid gardens for contemplative individuals and a games parlor for the younger set.
But the best of the twenty-hectare park would have to be the Old Quarter (khu pho co), the occupational villages (lang nghe truyen thong) and the Food Corner (goc am thuc).
The Old Quarter is a good way to learn about the Hanoi of old. A score of traditional houses built in the time-honored style are filled with pottery, lacquer ware, silver, silk and much besides, while the sidewalks in front of them throb with peddlers and street life. There’s lots of food too.
Tracing the spiritual heritage of old Hanoi’s nooks and crannies, the Old Quarter of Bao Son Paradise is always crowded.
Close by is the one hectare of occupational villages, where 15 age-old crafts and their places of origin are represented and recreated, among them Van Phuc silk, Bat Trang pottery and Ha Dong silk.
Here, visitors can see skilled craftsmen and women turn out silk, pottery and more in typical northern communal houses with banana trees and water wells in the yard.
As its name suggests, the Food Corner sells food and lots of it. Resembling a rural market, it has 31 stalls serving more than 300 dishes from all corners of Vietnam.