Smart part of town in the rain

When I took this I'd just finished an expensive and not very good lunch at the Met Pub, which caters to foreigners in Ngo Quyen behind the Metropole hotel. Across the road is the Au Lac cafe which is better, but was too wet that day as it is an outdoor place, and the Press Club - also expensive, but with very good wine. This is the old French quarter of tree-lined boulevards where the streets, since Independence, virtually all bear the names of Vietnamese heros who defeated the Chinese. Ngo Quyen was the one who ended the 1000-year Chinese occupation in the 10th century. Looking at this photo, I'm reminded that the very first privately registered Mercedes I saw in Hanoi was less than a decade ago.