Lan Ong street - Hanoi's Oriental medicine market

Hanoi's Old Quarter includes streets like Hang Bac, which means "Street for Selling Silver," but most of the streets no longer sell the products their streets are named after. Yet there is a street where shopkeepers still sell products according to the name. More than 90% of the shops on Lan Ong Street still sell Oriental medicine.

Although its name doesn’t start with the word ‘Hang’ or ‘Merchandise’, you can immediately guess what the street offers as soon as you arrive in the beginning of this road. Just by standing on the street, you can inhale the typical smell of herbs spreading through the air which can be either pleasant or smelly depends on different people.

Unlike some other streets in the Old Quarter, most shops here still keep the traditional craft to sell medicinal herbs despite the time’s gone by and changes of the country’s economy. Shops in the street close together offer various kinds of medicinal herbs which are either displayed in shop windows or packed in big nylon bags.