Hang Non, Hanoi

Pho Hang Non (Non Street) is in the old quarter, the so-called '36 streets' which go back to an age when artisans serving the court clustered in the area near the citadel. Each street is named after one of the crafts - in this case the Non is the conical hat worn these days only by women. Other streets are named Chicken, Jute, Silver, Tin, Paper votary, Cloth, Bamboo, Leather and so forth. Often the streets remain highly specialized, but usually not in their original trades. Cloth Street (Hang Vai), for example, is noted for its bamboo ladders and Tin Street (Hang Thiec) still produces metalwork, but mostly in galvanised iron. Hang Gai (jute) was, in the 1990s, known by foreigners as Silk Street since it was a veritable supermarket shelf of silk cloth and clothing - now it has a lot of other souvenir and art shops as well. Hang Bong (cotton) was the place to go for pirate CDs and it's still fairly musically oriented. Hang Dao (peach) was called Silk Street by the French colonials and in the '90s became a huge clothing store. Another street is full of spectacles and another has clocks and watches. Others, like Hang Non are mixed. The specialization has become a lot less noticeable since the 1990s.