We had 31 days in Hanoi - a big focus of this month for us was not just to explore Hanoi, but to enjoy whatever we felt like doing.. eating, gymming and relaxing in any way we felt like - meditating, reading, napping, playing piano, playing chess, watching the entire series of Lucifer.... great for us, not especially great for reading about! If there's any days missing from the next few posts, they were days where nothing of note happened - whether for relaxing, hangover or food-related-illness purposes :)...

9th July - Our first day in Hanoi, we wanted to get a feel for our little area. There are quite a few bits around; restaurants, cafes and other shops (also a amusement park only open on the weekends... maybe... in the whole month we didn't see most of it operating). We've been trying to be healthy, hit the gym in the morning and eggs for breakfast, so we went out to try and score us some lunch. We had a quick google, which brought up a nice looking cafe about 15 minutes from us. The first thing we learned is that traffic in Hanoi is mental, worse than Bangkok. There are scooters literally going every direction and no-one stops, or even slows down, for people crossing the road. According to various websites you've just got to walk out with a steady pace and not stop. Sounds more like how to escape a bear or something. Also the beeping is constant. And seems to be for any reason or no reason at all.

So we eventually got to this cafe, which it turns out is shut. We're not sure if they were on lunch (google said they were open), closed for the day or completely closed. So luckily our trip has taught us to have a plan B, which was a cafe called HopeBox, which is also a social enterprise helping local women who have suffered domestic abuse. Lunch and doing some good, can get behind that. It was a tiny little place, space for about 8 people or so, with someone already in there. Turns out she is an Aussie called Ellie who works for the charity (we would later find out we were their first organic customers, which is why the Vietnamese cooks thought we were friends and came up to meet us). She gave us a few recommendations in Hanoi and we had a typical Vietnamese lunch of meat, soup, rice, veg and delicious coffee.

We then went for a walk down the eastern side of West Lake, important because it was the expat area and there were ATMs which allowed us to get out real values of money (not the chump change of 1.2 million we've been used to). It was located outside a little mall with a gourmet food market dedicated to expats, so they had loads of English, French, American and Australian bits in there (including beans and tea). We didn't buy anything though, considering how expensive it was. £9 for 40 teabags?!

There was a market up the road from where were staying, so we thought we could stock up with some bits for the apartment. Unfortunately by the time we got there it had been picked clean and was empty, par some stragglers with fly covered fruits.

10th July - Today was exploring Hanoi's central district, the old quarter. More-so back in the day, each street had it's own speciality, and it was named as such. So you had Silver street, Silk Street and Fan street etc. Although now it seems there is also a few more modern additions. Car exhaust street and tourist tat street (who am I kidding, that's everywhere). Hanoi really is such a hectic place. I'm assuming towards the end we will get used to it, flowing through the city like gazelles. For now though we'll settle with lumbering through. Lunch was in a place we found online, Noodle and Roll, looked like a good selection of the traditional Vietnamese dishes, pretty decent grub, Bun bo nam bo (beef noodle dish) for me and crab rolls for Hannah. We also had a look at the temple of the jade mountain, which is in the lake. It wasn't the most interesting of temples, or the best looking. But what it did have were specimens of a species of turtle which was only found in the lake. At first we thought they were fake, part of the legend of the lake, but turns out they were real, the last one died in 2016.  

11th July - Today we had booked ourselves onto a food tour. We met our tour guide, a local guy called David (pft, yeah right, when we became facebook friends later on there was no mention of David on there), and discovered it was just us on the tour! One thing with a lot of the local places is that you really can't judge a book by it's cover. As was made clear by the first stop, for Vietnamese famous egg coffee at Cafe Dinh. We stopped by the lake and went through this little alleyway between the shops, which led through a plain corridor filled with parked scooters. We then got to a set of stairs, which were a little bit grimy and just plain concrete. After ascending them we actually got into the the cafe proper, which to be honest wasn't much better. It clearly had never been redecorated, ever, including when it used to be two rooms, so you can still see the brick marking around the walls. When we got the coffees, we were pleasantly surprised, they looked awesome. However, when we tasted them, we were again surprised. They might be the most tasty thing we've ever drunk. It's like custard on top of coffee!

Next stop was to try one of the most popular Vietnamese dishes, Bun Cha (grilled bits of meat in a sweet and sour type sauce, served with mint, leaves and noodles) along with crispy spring rolls. Hannah thought the Bun Cha was quite nice, which just proves her taste in men doesn't extend to food (just in case it wasn't clear, I didn't like it). The noodles always seem to come out cold, which does really take something to choke it down. FYI those greens on the plate are almost the entirety of the Vietnamese vegetable intake.

Next was an even grimier alley, our stop was just a corner of the alley which had been partially tiled and had 2 tables outside of it... the deep fried fish rolls we were served were delicious, even despite our guide having temporary loss of hearing when we asked what fish was in them.. apparently it was better not to know.

Hannah forgot to take a photo of the food at the next place (can't get the staff) but did get one of the menu - we tried the dried beef salad and the dumplings, the former being excellent if you like peanuts (I do), and the later being... odd but not offensive? We were just thankful we weren't trying the miscellaneous bird salad...



Next was onto what seemed to be a little back room in someone's house, for rice pancakes filled with... stuff... again really tasty.

Next stop was for Banh Goi and rice spring rolls. The spring rolls were good but the Banh Goi were amazing, like a Vietnamese Cornish pasty. We were having a good chat with David by this point and told him about Cornish pasties - we showed him a photo on google and he got really excited that we have our own version and took a photo of the google search.

Last stop was for traditional dessert. We tried a different type each, Hannah was not a fan of either. The primary ingredients were beans and tapioca...

After all this food and walking around we thought we'd need a sit down and a coffee so said goodbye to David and found a little cafe with some much needed air conditioning.

12th July - Today pretty easy, just exercising and being healthy. So we decided to indulge ourselves with 1) a trip to a french bakery nearby and 2) a highly rated buffet not too far from us. The bakery was called La cherrie and it looked very inviting, sat right next to the lake, it really did look like a local bakery you'd find in France. We got it and had a look though the cakes; it was later in the afternoon so the selection wasn't huge, but they had some nice looking stuff. We both decided to double caffeine with an iced coffee and tiramisu. Well at least we thought we did. Turns out their thought of a tiramisu was just cream on top of dry sponge, not a lick of coffee or flavour anywhere. At least the view was nice.

Later on we ventured onto the buffet. It was next to the almost-fully-open theme park / amusement complex and it looks like it's a whole little area, with tat shops and everything. Clearly an impressive one, or just has some deals, as there were tons of tour buses coming into the area, apparently just for the buffet. As we had booked a table we got to skip past the queue (thankfully, it was fairly sizeable) and get a seat straight away. It was fairly impressive, 6 banquet tables filled with food down the middle, with at least the same number of fresh food stations alongside them. Outside, we discovered there was even more. Lots of BBQ and seafood cooking. Prawns, snails, clams, fish on sticks etc. Really quite an impressive selection. However, as is usual, what tarnished it a little were the other people. I can only assume by the literal mounds of food on their plates that they hadn't eaten since they started their tour, which i'm must have been at least three weeks ago. It reminded me less of a buffet and more what would happen if you threw a steak into a pack of hungry dogs. When people got to the front of the queue for a table, they were running in. Running... Funnily enough, it wasn't even the children, they seemed rather restrained in comparison, the adults though would have plates piled high, stacks of prawns, bowls and bowls of snails... when a server would bring one of the popular dish, you would see people just scooping it all on their plate until it was gone three seconds later. An absolute nightmare. The food wasn't that bad, especially the fresh stations, just the atmosphere was so chaotic we couldn't wait to get out of there. The outside was really pretty, belying the mania inside.

13th July - A chilled day today, we did a bit of a highlights tour of the food we like so far, starting with egg coffee (as many a morning does), then a walk round the lake before going to Noodle and Roll.

14th July - Today was going to be an easy day (yes another one), reading and what not. So we walked down West Lake to find a coffee shop or two to relax in. The cafe was called the Ella Roastery, which roasted all their own beans and had 5 different varieties of coffee (although no Vietnamese unfortunately). Coffee was very good, as were the cakes we ordered. After a couple of hours (you always need that long for your nerves to recover walking anywhere in Hanoi) we went to get lunch at Essie tearoom, in the heart of expat area (you can tell when you are in the expat area, things definitely look a lot nice and cleaner, and the prices jump up). Food was good, we both went for something a bit more familiar I had a burger and Hannah had pumpkin and goats cheese ravioli. Tasty. We had a leisurely walk back in time for a few chats with people back home.

15th July - we fancied something a little less risky today (less potential for food illness), and you know spiderman had just come out. So it was to the mall to watch the new film. Easy to get to and the mall actually had a decent amount of local brands, not just a mall you could find anywhere. One thing that we did notice, every shop has at least half to a whole aisle dedicated to baby formula, not really sure why. For lunch, we eventually opted for a Korean style BBQ, where you order the meat and cook it on your table. Was really quite good, especially considering we pretty much just ordered plates of meat. Went to watch the film in a asian cinema chain which has this panorama technology, so the film is projected onto the sides of the cinema, so you can see with your periphery. It was cool, apart from only the action sequences were filmed like that, so most of the film was turned off. But for £4 per ticket, cant complain. No salted popcorn (which Hannah obviously did complain about), but they did have chocolate popcorn so we tried that instead, not too bad.

16th July - A more home day today (temperatures around 40+ degrees do tend to prompt this), experimenting with making our own

iced Ca Phe Sua Da (vietnamese coffee with condensed milk). Worked pretty well and looked fancy too. Gym and a bit of NZ planning followed. We headed out in the evening to try to find somewhere to eat within walking distance of our apartment (the good places so far had been a bus ride away) and found a street food place with a big banner saying it had opened that day. Turned out it was a Bia Hoi rather than just a street food place, so is much more focused on the beer, reminded Hannah of the Brauhauses in Germany. The beer was cold and the atmosphere good. The menu was all in Vietnamese and no-one there spoke any English. Google translate wasn't proving overly helpful so we took a punt on 2 dishes. One turned out good - essentially a plate of fried pork cubes. Not bad at all. The next one was unidentifiable bits of fried chicken (google said it should be chicken anyway). Our best guess is it was fried bit of chicken tendons, some places call it chicken floss (vomit). Not so good. We made some noodles when we got back to the apartment!