3 Best Sights in Hanoi, Vietnam

This small memorial between West Lake and Truc Bach Lake marks the capture of one of the Vietnam War's most famous American POWs. On October 26, 1967, Navy lieutenant commander John McCain's jet fighter was shot down, sending him parachuting into Truc Bach Lake. Suffering from badly broken bones and severe beatings, he was imprisoned in the "Hanoi Hilton" and other North Vietnamese prisons for more than five years. He went on to become an Arizona senator and a vocal advocate of reconciliation between the United States and his former captors, and was a presidential candidate in 2008. The underwhelming red-sandstone memorial features a bound and suspended prisoner with his head hanging low and the letters U.S.A.F. (the memorial is incorrectly labeled, as McCain belonged to the navy and not the air force).

The French destroyed this pagoda on their way out in 1954. It was reconstructed by the incoming government and still commemorates the legend of Emperor Ly Thai Tong. It is said that the childless emperor dreamed that Quan Am, the Buddhist goddess of mercy and compassion, seated on a lotus flower, handed him a baby boy. Sure enough, he soon met and married a peasant woman who bore him a male heir, and in 1049 he constructed this monument in appreciation. The distinctive single pillar is meant to represent the stalk of the lotus flower, a sacred Vietnamese symbol of purity. The pillar was originally a single large tree trunk; today it's made of more durable cement. An ornate curved roof covers the tiny 10-square-foot pagoda, which rises out of a square pond. Steps leading to the pagoda from the south side of the pond are usually blocked off.

Just a few yards from the One-Pillar Pagoda is Dien Huu Pagoda, a delightful but often-overlooked temple enclosing a bonsai-filled courtyard. A tall and colorful gate opens out onto the path leading to the Ho Chi Minh Museum, but the entrance is opposite the steps to the One-Pillar Pagoda.

The imposing square towers of this cathedral rise up from a small square near Hoan Kiem Lake on the edge of the Old Quarter. French missionaries built the cathedral in the late 19th century and celebrated the first Mass here on Christmas Day 1886. It feels as though nothing has changed since then—the liturgy has not been modernized since the cathedral was built. The small but beautiful panes of stained glass were created in Paris in 1906. Also of note is the ornate altar, with its high gilded side walls. The government closed down the cathedral in 1975, but when it reopened 10 years later the number of returning devotees was substantial. Enter the cathedral through a small door on a street to the left.