Must-Buy Souvenirs

Hang Gai — literally "Hemp Street" — has been Hanoi's silk-shopping strip for generations, its shopfronts strung with scarves, ao dai fabric, and tailored suits made from Vietnamese silk. A mid-weight printed or solid-color scarf is the easiest size to pack and the most popular single item tourists leave with.

Vietnam's best-known coffee brand, a reliable and widely available gift-box souvenir. G7's individually-wrapped instant sachets (black, 3-in-1 milk, or cappuccino-style) travel easily and need no equipment to brew — the practical, everyman version of a Vietnamese-coffee souvenir, distinct from pricier whole-bean or weasel-coffee options.

Vietnam's iconic palm-leaf conical hat, woven from dried la non leaves stretched over a bamboo frame. Sold widely in Old Quarter souvenir shops and at Dong Xuan Market; the genuine craft-village prices at Chuong Village (about 30km south of Hanoi, one of the country's most famous hat-making villages) run far cheaper than what tourist shops in the center charge.

Vietnamese lacquerware (son mai) is a 2,000-year-old craft tradition, refined into a celebrated fine-art form in the 1930s at Hanoi's École des Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine. Hanoia, a well-regarded contemporary lacquer brand, sells everything from simple bowls to elaborate art pieces; a small lacquered jewelry box sits comfortably mid-range between the cheapest lacquer trinkets and museum-piece paintings that run into the thousands of dollars.

A family embroidery house on Hang Gai running four generations since 1969, all work still done by hand by artisans trained in-house. Started out selling embroidered pillow cases and handkerchiefs before expanding into clothing and homewares — a finely stitched pillow cover in Vietnamese floral or bird motifs remains one of its classic, giftable pieces.