Võng Thị: a 900-year-old pagoda, a wartime bunker and the quietest corner of West Lake

The village named after a fishing-net market

Võng Thị is the answer for renters who have decided that Xuân Diệu is not for them. It is a short street, under six hundred metres, on the western shore, and it is markedly quieter than anywhere in Quảng An.

The name is literal. Võng means net and thị means market. The village grew around a market selling fishing nets to the men who worked West Lake, and its people lived by fishing and by making paper, one of the crafts of the Kẻ Bưởi villages along this shore.

Chùa Võng Thị, the Lý dynasty and the bunker underneath

Two pagodas anchor it. Chùa Võng Thị, also called Vĩnh Khánh Tự, is more than nine hundred years old and dates to the reign of Lý Nhân Tông, 1072 to 1128. It holds dozens of fine carvings and a set of old statues, and it housed an air raid shelter used by the Hanoi Party Committee, which is not a sentence you get to write about many rental streets. Chùa Tĩnh Lâu, also known as Chùa Sải, sits on the lakeshore forty metres from the road and was recognised as a historic and cultural relic in 1996.

Three schools within fifty metres

Practically, it is a family street. Đông Đô High School, Đông Thái Primary and Đông Thái Lower Secondary are all within fifty metres, along with Bình Minh kindergarten. A WinMart is eighteen metres off it and a FujiMart thirty-four.

Quiet, and what you trade for it

The trade-off is straightforward. There is no international restaurant strip here and there is no walk to Xuân Diệu. You will use a motorbike or a Grab for most evenings out, and you will pay less than you would two kilometres east.

Rent here if you want the lake, a genuinely Vietnamese street, schools on the doorstep and quiet, and you are willing to ride for a burrito.