Hanoi - Days 184-186
- Ben
- Jan 10, 2018
- 5 min read
We've seen a lot of Thailand and done pretty much everything we've wanted to do from going to Chiang Mai, driving to Pai, spending some island time in Koh Lanta, kayaking with monkeys, and NOT going to Phuket - it was a grand success. Now onto a new country - Vietnam! We were excited for a country a little more off the backpackers' trail. We celebrated our arrival in Vietnam by taking for damn ever to get our visas. It wasn't tooooo terrible, but Hayley already had her visa so she had to wait a good 90 minutes for us to navigate the terrible process at the airport. We had a taxi van waiting for us at the airport so the ride into town was smooth (figuratively; in a more literal sense we learned that the Vietnamese don't drive good. That's a blanket statement I am cool with.)
Once at our hotel - which was actually really nice - we went to find some food we'd been craving... the banh mi. We went to a famous banh mi shop called Banh Mi 25. It was outstanding. It cost a dollar. I got another one once I finished my first one. So that amazing meal cost a whole three bucks for Meg and I. Banh Mi 25 would go down as one of the best banh mi in all Vietnam, we really started with a good one.
We wandered the backpacker ghetto for a while in the afternoon taking in the chaos and trying very hard to not get killed by a motorbike. There just aren't traffic laws in Vietnam. The ratio of scooters to cars is easily 10:1 which means it's just a clusterfuck of scooters driving wherever there is room. Once we figured out that you can just walk across the road and the scooters will avoid you rather than trying to wait for an opening it became a whole lot easier.
In the evening we found a cafe with a view of the central lake that also server another item on our list: egg coffee. I guess they just use a whipped egg to make it? Not sure. It was pretty good. Tasted fine, just 90% foam. As it was a weekend there was a night market going on so after a bit we headed that way. The night market was pretty standard with a bit of extra business that I'd attribute to Vietnam. Normal counterfeit goods on sale with people yapping to come look at the crap they were selling.
A highlight of Hanoi is that in the busy areas, every restaurant puts a bunch of tiny (like Meg was big on these stools) stools everywhere and serves beer (bia) on the streets, so we grabbed a table and four beers and watched the craziness for a while. The place we were at didn't have food, but the workers had their own big tupperware dish full of treats. Chicken feet. Lots of chicken feet and only chicken feet. We weren't mad that they didn't offer to share. After a few rounds we walked some more and found a little restaurant serving some beef noodle soup (which is what we found out after we sat down and ordered). It was good! Since our Vietnamese is non-existent, we didn't know how to ask for meatless soup for Hayley, and Taylor being such a lovely lil' boy waited to eat with her; they eventually ate at Vietnamese Subway. Oh well. Still better than American Subway I imagine.
We stopped at a number of other little plastic stool joints and had more rounds of beer as we wandered the district. On our way back to our hotel we saw a pirate-themed bar that was pretty rowdy. I like pirates. We went in. It was a bunch of Aussies partying it up since they flew back tomorrow, so we joined them in their dance party and tried our best to keep up with those crazy kids! Tay and Hay even changed into their matching banana outfits that I forgot to mention they bought at the night market!
Well we didn't feel spectacular this morning... We're old. It's okay though, we were just trying to explore today and figure out our motorbike rental situation. I had a haircut scheduled and Meg was trying to get her phone fixed due to water damage from motorbiking in the rain from Koh Lanta. So I gave Meg my phone so should could find her way and get a grab bike (motorbike taxi) to the repair shop and I walked to my haircut place, which was out of the tourist district. I didn't get "lost", but I did not "find" the haircut place. The streets in Hanoi are all kinds of crazy and there isn't a normal intersections, and I just had a paper map with a vague area marked, so I wandered a bit trying to find it unsuccessfully, but I did explore some cool side streets...!
Once I got back to the place Meg had also returned, leaving her phone at the shop to have them dry it. So we walked to Tigit, one of the most trusted motorbike rental companies that had been recommended to us a few times, and they told us they didn't have any bikes in. Great. We checked out a couple other places that did have bikes (not the trustworthy Honda Blades though), so we decided we could wait a few days to see if Tigit got any bikes back before we had to start biking.
I got a roadside shave from some random dude on the sidewalk with a straight-edge razor, then we went to a little tucked away coffee shop that was really good! We ate lunch at a plastic stool place serving Bun Cha - a famous dish recommended to us by Andy, and it was fantastic! It's a bunch of noodles and fresh herbs you wrap in lettuce and dip into a broth full of grilled pork meat. One of our best finds so far...
That evening we met Tay and Hay at the Hanoi Social Club after Hayley was out doing some evening-time yoga. The restaurant was a western-catered restaurant that served some craft beer - not bad. I got banh xeo on our walk home and we enjoyed it back at the hotel before we spend the night chilling in the room and watching Lara Croft:Tomb Raider (since we'd seen the tomb in Cambodia). The movie was so bad.
Taylor and Hayley were off on a day trip to Halong Bay today! We'd opted not to do that as we wanted to relax a bit and take in Hanoi as we had the next month in Vietnam. We had a slow morning and got some coconut coffee near our hotel - which turned out to be coconut ice cream with some coffee poured over it I think. It was odd, but really good!
We went back to Tranquil cafe for another cappubrulee - a cappuccino with burnt sugar on top, and grabbed a Banh Mi 25 for lunch. In the evening we walked around the lake and tried to locate a rooftop bar I'd glimpsed the other day, but when we found it, it really wasn't that cool so we abandoned that in favor of another rooftop bar that was really cool! It was pretty swanky and we had a few glasses of wine with a gorgeous view before we set off to find dinner at a noteworthy bun cha joint.
Our second bun cha experience was just as great as the first one! On our walk back we perused the markets and I bought some slide sandals since they actually fit my feet! They ended up not being the most comfortable sandals though... Back at the hotel we (Meg) packed our bags up so we were ready to head to Tam Coc in the morning. I got ready in the morning.