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The turtle of Hoan Kiem Lake sounds terribly lonely. Such experts as there are on this elusive animal, Vietnam’s only slightly less fabulous version of the Loch Ness Monster, contend over its age and its species - even its sex is unknown - but they do seem to agree on its size. Its shell is thought to measure a metre and a half long by just over a metre wide, which makes its vanishingly rare sightings in a body of water that stretches no more than 600 metres from shore to shore, in the middle of Hanoi, all the more mysterious.

For a creature of such flimsy facticity, it has, at least, centuries of legend to back it up. In the 1400s, the story goes, the gods lent King Le Loi a magic sword with which to repel a rampaging Chinese army. When the victorious king and his courtiers went boating on the lake, a giant turtle arose from the waters, snatched the sword and plunged back into the depths to return the weapon to its divine owners.

Professor Ha Dinh Duc, recently retired from Hanoi National University and probably the foremost authority on the turtle, thinks it may be as old as its legend: that the present-day animal could indeed be one that King Le Loi himself released into Hoan Kiem in the 15th century. He also believes that this awesomely long-lived beast is the last of its kind - that, when it does finally die, it will die truly alone.

Hanoians revere the legendary denizen of Hoan Kiem, in part because of its putative survival through so many centuries of their country’s history and in part because of its role in a tale of Vietnamese victory over a great, invading power. What many of them do not believe - given that its snout is only apparently glimpsed above the water every decade or so and that it has never been caught - is that the turtle exists.

“Oh, that is a myth” said Nguyen, who had joined me with her friend Vu on the lakeside bench while I was daydreaming about the turtle popping up before me. Nguyen wanted to practise her English; she had been knocked back on her first application for a student visa to the US, where she had hoped to study management to help to run the family textile factory in Nam Dinh, 100km from Hanoi. She had never done this before, she said – approached a foreigner on a bench – before asking if I would like to have lunch with her and Vu in a “very special restaurant”.

Well, I said, I had only just eaten, so I bid goodbye to the charming Nguyen and made instead for the Old City, through the noose of fearful traffic encircling the lake and stopping on the way at Hang Be Market. Many of Hanoi’s restaurants (including ones like Nguyen’s, i.e. run by a friend and with an amazing expanding bill) obtain their supplies here; the bowls of warm blood, aerated vats in which enormous live fish lazily await their fate, trays of twitching prawns and piles of twine-bound crabs, frogs and – relatively diminutive – turtles are an excellent introduction to the menus of the capital city.

Many eateries in Hanoi cater to culinarily petrified westerners; avoid these second-rate establishments and, for a casual meal, at least, pull up a stool at a street stall among the Vietnamese. The unexcited expressions of your fellow diners as they consume some of the most stimulating food in the world, with its sharp refrain of coriander, chilli and fish sauce, can only make you jealous that they get to eat it every day. Even the presence of the odd, well-fed rat scuttling between the tables could be taken, in your transport of culinary delight, as a sign of exoticism.

Just to the north of the market, the 36 streets of the Old City each denote a particular guild whose members for centuries plied their wares or services there. Tourist shops have made inroads but cobblers still line Cobbler Sreet, as do tinkers Tin Street, and the close, cluttered quarter remains a frenetically compelling reminder of pre-colonial, pre-industrial Hanoi. The old dwellings in the area are called nha ong, tube houses, very long and very narrow structures built to give each vendor a slice of precious street frontage. There is an exquisitely restored example, the work of the local people’s committee, at 87 Ma May Street; it is a must-visit, not least as a source of high quality handicrafts – little carved stone caskets make tempting gifts – and as a cool refuge from the cacophonous streets.

Such refuges are essential for, among the things the Vietnamese do very well, such as food, you would also have to include noise. TVs are everywhere, at a volume to disturb the deaf; construction noise is an unrequested 7am reveille in numerous hotels (in one I awoke to find the rest of the rooms on my floor being demolished with sledgehammers); and the only decibel challenge to the snarl of the moped throngs is their drivers’ utterly unrestrained horn-honking. Thankfully, the Vietnamese also do temples and museums very well, and visits to these are an ideal way to pace your navigation of the city.

The Temple of Literature, built for the education of mandarins by King Ly Nhan Tong in the 11th century – too long ago for even the turtle to have noticed – is among the most ancient monuments in the country. The traffic noise somehow fades to a murmur the moment you enter the first of the series of long, interlinked courtyards, interspersed with carp ponds, that make up the serene space; you can easily imagine the aspiring bureaucrats engaged here in the writing of literary compositions and poetry that formed part of their training (as perhaps it should for their modern equivalents).

I found the Quan Su temple even more of a palliative. You are lulled here, not only by the chanting of the devotees kneeling before the Buddha to the regular ping of a triangle and the occasional sounding of a gong, but also by their apparently total indifference to you, along with that of the androgynous-looking, purple robed monks going unhurriedly about their business.

Of the museums, almost all are devoted to war - unsurprisingly given that, in the past century alone, Vietnamese forces expelled armies from France, Japan, America and China. The Ho Chi Minh Museum is an impressive example of the curatorial craft, regardless of what you think of its star. However, Ho’s mausoleum, next door, presents in its macabre way perhaps more of a draw. It is hard to say who, the Vietnamese or the Russians, would have been more proud of the preservation of Ho’s corpse. For it was the Soviets who dispatched their chief embalmer, with two planeloads of equipment, to Vietnam as the president lay dying, and Russian scientists still service his body to this day. The mausoleum was closed when I visited; perhaps they were working on his ear.

You could easily miss the B-52 Museum: most people do, which is all the more reason not to. You will not only likely be the sole visitor at this site 15 minutes by xe om – motorscooter taxi – from the centre of Hanoi but also undisturbed by staff, as there do not seem to be any. This is, in fact, more a sort of war yard than a museum but that is part of its peculiarly entrancing appeal. The Vietnamese - or, rather, Russian - materiél from the “American war” still stands proudly; the dust cannot have been last sluiced off too long ago. The downed B52s, on the other hand, have been left to rust where they lie – although their missile wounds look agonisingly fresh. And occupying every inch of space not taken up by the antiques of the enemy armies is something entirely incongruous: a low, peaceful forest of bonsais.

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