Our shuttle back from Halong Bay deposited us in Hanoi on a Sunday afternoon, also known as Christmas Eve. The place was a zoo, in the best possible way! Hanoi is notoriously known for its chaotic traffic (even other folks in Vietnam comment on how ridiculous it is), but each weekend they eliminate vehicular access to large parts of the Old Quarter in the city around Hoam Kiem Lake. On a normal weekend residents stream into the city to enjoy its offerings, but it was particularly crazy on Christmas Eve as it felt like half of the country had joined us in the city to celebrate the holiday. This meant that not only was traffic abnormally egregious (because it was confined to fewer streets), but every walkable portion of the city was saturated with people partaking of the festivities (it’s a city of 9 million people with 5.5 million motorbikes, so let that information factor into the picture I’m painting for you here). It was quite a setting for us to step into as we tried to make our way to our hostel, where our room was unfortunately located on the 6th floor of a building with no elevator. Ugh. It was like being back in NYC all over again!
We quickly freshened up in our room and then set off to take in the Christmas vibes of the city. While most people wouldn’t think of Vietnam as a place to celebrate the holidays, it was actually quite wonderful! There was Christmas music everywhere (in English, which some Vietnamese folks (adorably) sang along to even though they didn’t speak the language), vendors walking around with massive clusters of Santa and snowman balloons, Christmas trees decorated in lots of lobbies and just a general energy that really filled the air. While we typically stick to local food while travelling around, we decided to embrace the holiday spirit by tracking down some delicious cheeseburgers for our Christmas Eve meal, which was a strong decision. We then navigated the maze of people in the streets to find Hang Ma Street, which was multiple blocks long and was filled with vendor stalls crammed full of Christmas decorations. We then made our way back to our hostel, passing a massive, beautifully decorated cathedral with a choir singing Christmas carols in front, and stopping to grab a bottle of wine, a piece of pumpkin pie and gingerbread cookies from a Western bakery. We then settled into our room to have our own Christmas Eve evening of watching a holiday movie, enjoying our snacks and falling asleep with sugar plums dancing in our heads as rave music blared through our windows from the massive concert happening on the lake mere steps from our hostel. Perfection.
Throngs of people outside the cathedral where a choir sang Christmas carols.
Vendor shop on Hang Ma street selling Christmas decorations as Santa(?) crosses on a motorbike
A guy walking around selling Santa balloons, which tons of little kids were carrying through the streets.
Ice cream parlor workers doing a synchronized dance (dabbing, anyone?) to Christmas music. Perfection. Note the ice cream mascot at right.
CHRISTMAS! We started the morning having a traditional American breakfast of biscuits with gravy and pancakes at a super awesome diner, then decided to hang out at a coffee shop while we waited for my friends from college – Shannon and Ivan – to arrive in Hanoi. We were fortunate in that they decided to use their couple weeks of holiday vacation to schlep to Vietnam and hang out with us a bit, which provided a delightful burst of fresh air and familiarity to our trip. [Editor’s note: Much like our cheeseburger Christmas Eve dinner, we had previously decided that Christmas would be as familiar and western as we could make it, at least food-wise. I think that was a great call as we allowed ourselves to enjoy American-style food guilt-free. Because we were in a big city, it also proved surprisingly easy to find good options! Combined with friends from America joining us, we had an excellent break-from-Vietnam kind of holiday, which was just what we needed.] That evening, after catching up for a bit and giving them a chance to shake off their jetlag, we all headed to the final component of our Christmas celebrations – a traditional American dinner (turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, mulled wine, etc.) I found at a western restaurant in town. We were joined by a couple Americans – Alex and Rachel – we befriended a week or two earlier at the Phong Nha Caves, which allowed the 6 of us to enjoy a delicious holiday meal today despite being several thousands of miles away from home. It was truly delightful!
Our traditional Christmas dinner in Hanoi!
Just a bunch of Americans (and a Peruvian!) enjoying a familiar Christmas meal.
The next few days we settled into a rhythm where we’d meet up with Shannon and Ivan to do some kind of activity together during the day, take a break in the afternoon to nap or run errands, then meet up again in the evening to grab dinner and drinks/dessert together. The flow of it all ended up working out very nicely! On the first day, we visited the famous Hoa Lo Prison, also known as the “Hanoi Hilton,” where U.S. POWs (including John McCain) were held during the war. It was really interesting to learn about the evolution of the prison from a place constructed by the French to hold Vietnamese prisoners, as well as to get yet another perspective on the Vietnam War. Combined with what we saw and learned in Saigon, we have really been able to better understand and appreciate some of the significance and ramifications of the war in a way that neither of us really had prior to this trip. [Editor’s note: While I truly appreciated the alternative perspectives, it was also a somewhat amusing lesson in non-objectivity, as the signage around the American pilot POWs was blatantly biased, and featured lines telling us how the prison “served as a relaxing break from flying and war, and allowed the pilots time to reflect and think about things.”] Later in the evening we had dinner at an awesome tabletop BBQ place that we stumbled upon in an alley, followed by drinks at a cocktail bar we discovered on the infamous “beer street” where most backpackers go to drink and party at night. The bar was particularly cool because it served awesome $3 cocktails which were made with rice wine (including some infused with green chili, mango, cinnamon-honey and pineapple) as the primary ingredient, which we had never seen before. Super interesting and tasty!
The next day was a struggle, since we had to try to navigate Hanoi in the pouring rain for the full day. We tried to adapt to this by doing a cooking class during the day, presupposing that it’d keep us indoors. This was only semi-true, unfortunately, since the class involved all of us wearing Vietnamese conical hats to brave the rain in order to buy ingredients for our meals at the local market. It was fairly interesting, but mostly just wet and slightly miserable. Saturated with water, the class quickly took a turn for the better once we actually started our cooking class. With our awesome instructor, we all worked together to make some delicious Vietnamese dishes – papaya salad, fried spring rolls, bun cha (fried pork and noodles), pho (Vietnamese soup) and the egg coffee, which is famously unique to Hanoi. It was cool to learn some idiosyncrasies of Vietnamese cooking (e.g., they use fish sauce in almost every dish, which is essentially a form of liquid sodium, since the humid weather otherwise causes their salt to clump up) and how to make the dishes, especially the egg coffee (developed during the Vietnam War by whisking egg yolks, condensed milk, sugar, vodka and salt together into a cream to counterbalance the strength of coffee) that we came to know and love in the city. I want (need?) egg coffee to become a staple of my diet. It’s so damn delicious! [Editor’s note: On behalf of myself and Rorie’s heart, I’m going to go ahead and not let this happen regularly. Although I have to admit it is sinfully delicious.] Our evening involved another random/delicious dinner spot and more of the rice wine cocktails, because why deviate from a good thing?
Embarking in the rain (in our nifty conical hats) to shop at the local market for our cooking class.
The aforementioned local market for shopping.
Being instructed on the finer nuances of how to make pho (Vietnamese soup).
Dapper chefs, eh? Pouring fish sauce into our bun cha dish.
Me and Ivan working together (against each other?) to prepare our individual pho dishes.
Pouring the infamous… EGG COFFEEEEEEEE!!!!
Our entire cooking class enjoying the fruits of their labors.
Our last full day together brought better weather, thank goodness, and involved yet another food-based activity: a food tour through Hanoi. Our group was led by a tiny, bubbly Vietnamese gal named “Potato” (best nickname ever!) where we were joined by a nervous group of 4 Korean teenagers and a mother/daughter from the UK. With Potato yelling “sticky rice!” to have us stay close to her while crossing the streets in the city (a technique Jess and I have adopted as our own for all of our subsequent travels), we crisscrossed the city to enjoy 7 traditional dishes from hole-in-the-wall stalls/vendors. While some of the food was stuff we had already eaten before, for others (such as borderline-translucent rice pancakes with pork inside) it was cool to watch how it was made and learn more about it. We were also fortunate to have a particularly awesome guide, since Potato really explained the traditions, quirks and 10,000 foot perspective for where these meals fit into normal Vietnamese life. [Editor’s note: One of the more amusing aspects of the tour was sitting in these street-side stalls, which generally involved sitting on tiny plastic stools at low tables. These stools were literally the size of children’s furniture in the U.S., and Potato freely admitted that they were “Vietnamese sized, not foreigner sized!” I was ok with it, but watching Rorie try to contort himself into these stools was thoroughly entertaining for me. Direct quote: “I feel like my knees are higher than my head!”] While the tour ended with a dessert of sticky rice covered in coconut ice cream (delicious!), the real highlight was being introduced to a permutation of egg coffee that quickly stole our hearts and filled our stomachs: egg chocolate! This involves making the same egg cream mixture, but eliminate the coffee and just sprinkle chocolate powder on top to have a wonderful, heavenly taste. NEED MORE OF THIS! Our evening ended with a “meh” sticky rice dinner at a super authentic restaurant, which we compensated for by finding alcoholic milkshakes (Jameson, Baileys and salted caramel ice cream? Yes, please!) at a nearby restaurant. A perfect ending to a sincerely wonderful few days with Shannon and Ivan! [Editor’s note: You may have noticed that our time in Hanoi was rather food-centric, and specifically, unhealthy food-centric. We pretty much took this as a given and both decided not to feel guilty about it, but also have vowed to eat more healthily in our next country, Laos. Stay tuned to see how we do with that one….]
A group photo from our street food tour in Hanoi.
Squeezing into a tiny seating area at one of our street food tour stops.
A photo with Potato (second from left) and another street food tour participant making the “K-pop” hand gesture that Potato insisted on.
The next day Shannon and Ivan set off to enjoy Halong Bay, while we spent the morning packing up, wandering the city briefly and then trying to pull together the perfect Vietnamese last meal: banh mi sandwiches and egg coffee from the two highest rated places in the city. While the banh mi was good (but not heart-stoppingly amazing), the egg coffee and egg chocolate from Café Giang nearly induced tears of joy with its out-of-this-world flavors that almost prompted me to skip our flight to Laos, move to Hanoi and drink it daily for the rest of my existence. Well worth it. [Editor’s note: Again, for my sake, your sake, dear readers, and on behalf of Rorie’s arteries, I did not let this happen.] After pulling myself away from this perfection in a coffee cup, we headed to the airport to catch our flight to Laos. In a further sign that this is a truly small world, we actually shared a shuttle bus with another guy from Salt Lake City, Utah (he recognized my raggedy Jazz hat and struck up a conversation) who was finishing a few months of travelling and heading home! Given that it’s a small (insular) state and massive world, encounters like this are all the more amazing and fortuitous.
Anyway, my final impression of Hanoi is that it’s a great city in which to just exist, particularly given our comfort in those cities after our time in NYC. There weren’t a lot of sights or attractions that interested us, per se, but it was just nice to explore the city, see how locals live and settle into an existence there for a while. [Editor’s note: The coffee culture in Hanoi was fantastic – we found unlimited adorable and wonderful coffee shops with good WiFi, comfortable couches, and Instagram-perfect décor, often accessed through narrow back alleyways and steep staircases. I was super happy to discover spot after spot like this, and would definitely recommend scheduling in plenty of coffee shop hangout time should you ever find yourself in Hanoi.] Perhaps it’s not the most glamorous/adventurous thing to do while travelling, but we enjoyed it. As for Vietnam as a whole, we really liked it! From the robust infrastructure, widespread English, low prices and interesting range of sights/activities, it’s kinda the perfect place for people to backpack for long periods. Vietnamese people were very warm and outgoing as well, which really helped the experience. No complaints overall, though we’re pumped to get to Laos for the next leg of our travels!
One last look at the delicious sibling of egg coffee… EGG CHOCOLATEEEEEEE!!!
