Hanoi

After landing in Hanoi late afternoon we dropped our bags and headed straight out in search of the famous train street. We got lucky with our timings as we only had to wait 15 minutes for a train per the schedule but a second one came along 10 minutes after the first! It truly is a rush to move all the tables and stools out of the way of the trains path, however there is no yellow line to stay behind. After the train watching we grabbed some dinner in a restaurant where we fell in love with the Vietnamese version of a chicken crepe.

 

After a good nights sleep we went out to explore Hanoi in the daylight as this would be our first, and last, full day in Hanoi. We started off grabbing several bits we needed for our Hi Giang Loop tour like waterproof trousers and jackets, so we got a taxi back with a new carry-on suitcase full of “Made in Vietnam’s” Finest. We then set off walking again to Hoan Kiem lake and admiring the views of the flowers surrounding the lake and turtle tower in the middle. There was also lots of Vietnamese women getting their pictures taken, some by professionals and some just groups of friends but they were all dressed in traditional Vietnamese dress. We came to find out this is a common thing in Asia as people like having updated pictures of themselves for new year. So we grabbed some lunch in a restaurant overlooking the lake and watched the photoshoots for a while.

 

We then moved on to the note cafe, this is a well known cafe where you can stick post it notes anywhere and every where whilst enjoying some Vietnamese coffee and treats. Sophie had the Traditional Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk and Harry had the Vietnamese egg coffee, after trying though we quickly switched. The condensed milk coffee was sweet but very strong whereas the egg coffee was very creamy and frothy. We learned that the reason behind the egg coffee creation was due to milk and condensed milk being in short supply during the many wars that Vietnam had, but everyone had a few chickens in their garden (and still do) so they would whip up an egg with a little bit of sugar and used that as a milk replacement. It makes a delicious and creamy coffee. So we wrote our notes and stuck them in various places, see if you can spot them in the pictures below. Next Harry had seen a place called Roti king on Tik Tok that he wanted to try, it is essentially a bun with a sweet sauce filling, we got the chocolate one and it was amazing and gone in about 20 seconds, with the help of Sophie of course. After some more walking (30 minutes to a restaurant we couldn’t get in to) we stopped in a Michelin guide restaurant that had 2 things on the menu and one of them was the vegetarian option. It was a sweet broth with noodles, meatballs and chunks of meat in. On the table was a huge mound of lettuce and mint, chopped fresh chillis and garlic and a bowl of limes quartered. We didn’t get a run through of how would be best to enjoy our soups so we just kept adding until the sweetness of the broth had gone away. We walked off our soup and headed to beer street for a drink and built up a bit more of an appetite so grabbed a crepe and headed to bed as we had a long travel day ahead of us tomorrow.

​