Vietnam capital and currency

For more than a thousand years, Hanoi has been bending with the wind to resist foreign domination while absorbing foreign influences, first from China, then imperial France, then the Soviet Union, and now the go-go culture of globalization and rapid urban development.

Like Venice, the city has been called a perfect marriage of land and water, but it teems with competing heritages--it is at once a museum of socialist monuments, a masterpiece of French colonial urbanism, and the home of ancient Buddhist temples with strong Taoist and Confucian influences.William Logan explores the many layers of Hanoi's built environment, describing the history of ancient Thang Long as the political and religious center of the Red River basin, and its evolution into modern Hanoi.

After 1873, the French brought gaslights, leafy wide avenues, modern sanitation systems, and vivacious new secular temples of Art Deco and International Style. The French also built notor