Activity level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Modes of transportation: 👟
Here’s the thing about being next to the lobby: we couldn’t even be mad when we were awoken at 6:30 in the morning by kids playing. Because they were in the lobby of a hotel—a notoriously busy place. Either way, we decided we wanted to check out and find somewhere else. So we packed up again and found a new hotel.
The hotel we picked ended up being very boutique and cute. The concierge, Brian, was so happy to see us and check us in. He had been living in Hanoi his whole life, so he had good recommendations for food and things to do. Unfortunately, we went 0/3 on recs. One was closed for cleaning, one we couldn’t find, and one we went to the wrong place (but ended up eating there later, and it was amazing).
He also helped us book a tour for Ha Long Bay for the next day (he was so nice and upfront about his commission—and the tour ended up being incredible!)
We originally planned to do the food tour for lunch, but that tour was booked—so they put us onto the 2:30 instead. We had some time to kill, so we went to get a quick bite (that’s when we couldn’t find the right place). Well, first, we had to get money out of an ATM to pay for the tour and hotel (and Vietnamese banks have extremely low maximums per transaction, so we had to go back a couple times).
But anyway, with cash on hand, we stumbled into this old french-colonial style building (it reminded us of New Orleans) and decided to get a small lunch. Eric got broken rice with a pork chop (com tam, a very traditional farmer’s dish), Sarah got a croissant with condensed milk, and we split a pumpkin soup. The food was amazing! We later looked the place up when we got internet, and found that it had amazing reviews.
From there, we went to our coffee class that was apparently part of our ticket (we didn’t read the fine print enough I suppose). Or what we thought what our coffee class, but the booking company gave us the address for the booking company office instead of the restaurant. Oops.
They offered to call us a cab when we got there, but we told them we’d walk since it was only 10 minutes away. We sped to the coffee shop and showed up about a minute late. The teacher was very surprised we were there. We don’t think the booking company told them we were going to be attending since we changed times—but we got that sorted out and sat down.
The course was such an unexpected surprise. The lady running it showed us how to make coffee the traditional way, and then we used the coffee in four different classic Vietnamese coffee drinks: black, brown, white, and egg coffee. The color coffees are basically coffee with varying amounts of water and sweetness, but the egg coffee was the star of the show.
Egg coffee sounds weird, but it’s delicious. During the war (WWII, not… uh… the other prominent one), milk was hard to come by. So a shop owner, who wanted a creamy latte-type foam, beat eggs into a meringue-like texture to put on coffee. It still exists to this day, and we both loved it (and it’s easy to make at home)!
Instead of sugar, they generally use condensed milk (luckily Eric had a lot of lactaid)—and the coffee is strong! They commonly use robusta instead of arabica (which isn’t as common in the rest of the world). Robusta happens to have twice the caffeine content of arabica, so we were absolutely wired after the class.
Our tour guide, Phong, picked us up from the coffee shop and started to walk us to different food stops. It turned out that everyone must have booked the earlier tour, because it was just us and the guide. He was a university student who just happened to like food, and he knew all the good spots and culture behind many of the popular foods.
We tried a great Banh Mi spot (usually a quick breakfast food; also, second note: this is the place the hotel owner tried to recommend us to that we couldn’t find) and then went for Nem Nuong, which is sort of a fresh spring roll you make yourself with pork sausage. The students eat it as a snack to socialize before heading out for beer or dessert. So good!
Next up was Phong’s favorite breakfast: Ban Cuon: fresh rice paper filled with pork and mushroom, eaten with fish sauce and chilis. We even went to a place that showed us how to make the rice paper! It was pretty good, but definitely not something we’d think of for breakfast.
We walked a little around the old quarter, where Phong gave us some history and a little tour of landmarks. There’s even an old cathedral that’s beautiful, surrounded by hanging trees—but we couldn’t stay too long.
The main course seemed to be a place that the guide company puts on all the tours, since we saw some other foreigners with guides in there. It was mixed dry noodles and spring rolls, which were both pretty ok (noodles aren’t Eric’s favorite). We were also pretty full from the other food, so we didn’t quite eat it all.
From there, we got a local beer (“fresh beer”) and chilled on the sidewalk, which is very common everywhere in Hanoi. A tiny cat even came and sat on Eric’s lap to get pet (aggressively).
Eric tried Nem Chua, a raw fermented pork in banana leaf. Phong warned us that it sometimes upset tourists’ stomachs, but Eric was unfazed. It was delicious and salty (perfect to go with beer!).
On the way, Phong also said that not many tourists try “balut” (a half developed duck egg) even though it’s amazing, so of course Eric had to try that too. They flagged down a lady on the street carrying them in a basket on a stick over her shoulder. There were three parts: the yolk, the body, and a sort of “sac” thing that didn’t have much taste. It was actually pretty good (though the sac wasn’t Eric’s favorite part). Somehow, Eric felt fine after everything.
Last stop on the tour was dessert, where we got some mango sticky rice and fresh fruit in almond milk, which was light and a great end to the tour. We exchanged contacts with Phong to maybe have a beer later, and made our way to the theater to see a traditional puppet show.
The show wasn’t for a little, so we went to the little museum on the island in “Returned Sword Lake”, where we saw giant stuffed turtles (one of the sacred animals in Thailand). They were huge!
Water puppetry is a traditional Vietnamese art form that started by rice farmers in their wet fields to teach parables to kids. Since it’s for children, it’s very simple and emotive, so it’s perfect for tourists who don’t understand the language. We ended up getting an audio guide anyway, and it was nice to have a little extra context.
The music was so amazing. The musicians played traditional Vietnamese instruments, including an intense solo by an instrument with only a single string. Sarah loved watching all of the masters at work.
We were pretty tired, but we found out that it was a big night in the old quarter. They ban cars and make it a walking neighborhood, with lots of street food and street shops. We walked around a bit, and we came across a band playing in the middle of the street with a hundred people around. The singer was amazing!
Sarah noticed a girl being pushed into the circle by her friends, and they gave her the mix to start singing (she was also amazing). We asked someone next to us and found out it was all karaoke. It was crazy.
We eventually made our way back to the hotel and crashed. We had an early bus to Ha Long Bay, which ended up being gorgeous! More for tomorrow.
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