I was there July 2016. Not much of a gay scene, as such. Plenty of gays though. I was there 5 days, saw lots of effeminate young blokes. A few of them flashed me lascivious smiles, but unfortunately none of the few were to my taste.

I did find some action on Hornet though. Decent selection in the dating apps - not spectacular, but decent.

Seems to be a lot of Uni students at Hoan Kiem Lake. Some of the boys are MBs, but NOT all. Some of them are genuinely just there to practice their English.

At one point I was talking with two boys on a park bench at Hoan Kiem. One, I could tell was definitely an MB, and the other definitely wasn't. I ended up taking the non MB for a coffee, because he just seemed like a cool guy. Saw him two more times before I left Hanoi. There wasn't a gay bone in his body. He never let me buy him anything, or lend him money. He just needed to practice his English, because he wanted to dabble as a tour guide to subsidise himself through uni. So he showed me round town for free, and treated me just like I was a sort of favourite uncle. We're still friends on Facebook.