Hanoi: Quan Ba flower night market

Back to my posts about Hanoi…While our main plan was to only relax in Hanoi and drink Vietnamese coffee, we agreed that we would spend one day photo shooting. We decided to get up at 4am in the morning, so we could visit the Quan Ba flower market.

This is a wholesale flower market which operates from 12am to 6am every day. There are hundreds of growers around Hanoi coming to this market to trade flowers, selling to florists in the city and street sellers, who will then sell them to locals and visitors on the streets of Hanoi.

I had heard that the best time to visit the market is from 1 am because that’s the time the growers bring their flowers by motorbikes and trucks. However, we figured that this would be too dark and our cameras would not be able to take great shots – so we decided to come early at 4am and wait for the sunrise.

So when we arrived, it was still very dark. There were no tourists at the market, just growers displaying their flowers on the ground and on the back of their motorbikes with the aim to sell to the florists and street sellers. There was even a very young girl helping out her mum or aunties to sell their flowers…

… we could tell that around 4.30-5.00am the activities slowed down and some growers already packed up and left. Others, just took a break, ate a pho at the stall in the centre of the market, or others took a nap…

Others were busy trading, haggling and packing away their purchases – many of the buyers had to carry arms full of flowers to their bikes and scooters to transport them back into the city.

Once the day became brighter, more and more couples and young people arrived to purchase flowers…

The market is on Au Co Street, to the north of West Lake. We went with locals who took us on their scooters – so I’m not sure what’s the best way to get their. Maybe ask in a hotel, if you don’t know any locals, to help you guide you and organise a transport to the flower market? It is definitely a unique, and beautiful experience in Hanoi.