🇻🇳 Hanoi - Food, Coffee, And Motorbiking
Trying the local specialities...
I was initially planning to travel from the south to the north in Vietnam, finishing in Hanoi with the Equation festival. The festival got cancelled, however, so I reversed my itinerary in the hopes of better weather in the north before the monsoon season starts. I ended up getting up to quite a lot in Hanoi.
Backpacking starts now?
Vietnam is the first country in Southeast Asia I’ve been to, and things are very different here compared to central or southern Asia. In general, it’s a lot more touristy than anywhere I’ve been to in Asia, with a whole gamut of tourists - families, hikers, beach girlies, British lads looking for a pissup. Quite a change from the people I met so far.
As a side effect of all this, it’s harder to connect with people in the cities. I’ve chosen the best-rated non-party hostel in Hanoi, and most people in it are either travelling in groups, very young, or are on holiday and have their entire itineraries planned out.
I’ve not particularly helped myself by coming at the height of the season. That’s manifested in various ways, including hostels, theatre shows, and various tours getting booked up. Saying this, it’s also been entertaining seeing people queue around the block for the viral TikTok banh mi when you can get a comparable one from places opposite, where all the locals are watching the queue and giggling.
The hostel staff are much less friendly too. They were reluctant to book me to do the Ha Giang loop with a lesser-known company (I’m guessing as they’d get less commission), and I’ve had mysterious charges added when booking some tours, which I had to dispute. The hostel also has more rules than other places I’ve been to.
The locals here are different from those in South Asia, too. They seem a lot more used to tourism - I’ve only been asked for one photo over my 5 days in Hanoi. They’re also unlikely to chat to you as many people can’t speak English, so I’ve had to get good at miming and using Google Translate. Many people seem happier, too, spending their days on low plastic stools that line every street, taking turns at singing karaoke. In the evenings, the aunties congregate near the lake to dance in the evenings while the uncles shout at each other over card games. All of this is soundtracked by the high-pitched sounds of vinahouse.
Taking it easy
I spent the first few days hanging out with Rain, a friend from secondary school and university. She’s working remotely part-time and travelling with her brother, who’s on a gap year before uni. I’ve not seen her since before COVID, so we had plenty to talk about. It was great to see a familiar face and have conversations that went deeper than the usual “how long are you travelling for? Where are you going next? Where have you travelled?”.
We checked out the famous train street, which is a long street lined with cafes that trains go past every once in a while. I’ve seen videos of this online, and I think they must’ve tamed it down a little, as the train went by very slowly.
We also checked out a few galleries together - the Fine Art Museum and the Thang Long art gallery. These were the best galleries I’ve been to in Asia, with Thang Long in particular showcasing inspiring Vietnamese pieces in a well-designed space.
We also went to the restaurant that Anthony Bourdain and Obama ate at in the Parts Unknown episode featuring Hanoi - Bún chả Hương Liên. The restaurant didn’t let this get to their head, offering dishes at local prices and efficient service, resulting in a lack of queue. The table that Obama and Bourdain ate at is also now enclosed in glass. We both went for the Combo Obama, featuring the restaurant’s signature dish - Bun Cha. It’s barbecued pork served with noodles and a dipping sauce
It was the best Bun Cha I had in Hanoi.
Food
The food in general has been incredible in Hanoi, and I was glad to book onto Ella’s foor tour as recommended by an ex-colleague (thanks Agrita!) to see where the locals eat. This was a highlight of Hanoi - the guide was funny and showed us a huge variety of dishes. My favourites were Miến Trộn (glass noodle salad with fish and tofu), fresh spring rolls, and fresh jackfruit.
We finished the evening drinking local beer - bia hoi. It’s always served in glasses that look kinda dirty, is weak at around 3%, and very cheap at 15k dong (43p). I ended up drinking a fair bit of it in Hanoi, and it being low strength meant you easily drink a lot. The low strength keeps you surprisingly hydrated, though, which is great for the hangover.
Coffee
While being into coffee is the only thing missing from me to fully fit the East London stereotype, I’ve been sure to try all of the types that are unique to Vietnam. I’m sorry to all the coffee snobs reading this - I’m afraid I won’t talk much about the beans or roasting temperatures, but whether it was tasty or not.
While coffee is popular in Vietnam, locals rarely drink it as it’s very expensive. Given this, many of the coffees here taste like desserts and are twice or thrice the strength you expect in the West, as they’re mostly drunk for special occasions. They’re also traditionally dairy-free, as Vietnamese cuisine traditionally doesn’t use any dairy.
The most popular types are:
Egg coffee: egg yolks whipped into condensed milk on top of coffee
Coconut coffee: coffee with condensed milk and coconut cream
Salted coffee: coffee with salted cream. It tastes a little like caramel.
My favourite was probably the coconut coffee.
Motorbiking around Hanoi
It’s likely I’ll want to hire a scooter in Asia, so I went for an automatic bike lesson with Chicks n Bikes. Riding a scooter around Hanoi might seem insane, but after a few pointers from the locals on e.g., navigating roundabouts, it wasn’t too difficult.
I learned on a 100cc bike and found their teaching style to be fantastic. After covering everything, we had about an hour left, so we rode around Hanoi covering different road types. I was pretty proud of myself, having not ridden a car for nearly 10 years, and generally being exceptionally bad at new things.
The most difficult parts of the lesson for me were riding on the right-hand side and not treating the motorbike like a bicycle (for example, not leaning when turning and using my mirrors instead of turning my body). It never really got dicey - amongst the Hanoi chaos, you can usually blend in with the other bikers, or just slow down until things feel safe again. I kind of want mirrors on my bike at home now.
Having travelled in Vietnam a little more, I’m glad I took the lesson, as it seems like every other traveller has a story of riding a scooter with no experience, having a minor accident, and seriously knocking their confidence.
Water puppet show
Water puppet shows are a traditional Vietnamese art form where puppet shows are performed in water. They’re cheap and pretty short, so I popped in for one. I’m glad I did, as it ended up pretty quirky.
Eating dog meat
Dom, a friend from home, travelled to Vietnam two years ago and ate dog. I didn’t think that this would be easily accessible to a foreigner, so I’ve been curious since and wanted to try it myself. While I don’t eat much meat at home and primarily cook myself vegan dishes, I do like indulging in different cultures.
I’m aware that eating dog meat is a controversial topic, so I won’t get too much into the ethics of it. The way I see it, if you eat animals already, it seems a bit silly to take a moral high horse and draw the line at not eating the furry ones. While you can make a point about supply chains for more exotic meats being problematic, the supply chains for meat that’s widely societally acceptable can also be dubious.
I started by researching dog meat restaurants online, and went to two that both ended up being closed. One had a missing dog poster outside it…
Searching for “dog restaurant” in Vietnamese on Google Maps was more fruitful, so I went to the one that was the closest to me. Coincidentally, that was also the one that Dom went to two years prior - has business been booming?
The restaurant was easy to locate, with spit-roasted dogs being presented outside. I won’t embed the photo here as some people might find it to be too much, so you can take a look at it here if you’re brave.
I asked the owners for a tiny plate of dog meat through Google Translate, paid 200k dong (£5.74), and proceeded through the corridor lined with plastic bottles full of black and red liquid to arrive in the dining space. A few Vietnamese people were digging into their respective servings of dog.
There are a few things to note here. Firstly, 200k dong is a lot, around quadruple what you’d expect from a local restaurant. I wish they had given me a smaller portion, but oh well. Dog meat in general is considered a premium meat, so as a foreigner, you won’t accidentally be served it. Secondly, the restaurant was in someone’s home and was run by a family. Nothing felt off here compared to a normal restaurant.
After a few minutes, my dog meat and dog sausage arrived with some sides.
I’m not going to lie, it took some courage for me to decide to try it. Conditioning as to what meat is and isn’t acceptable apparently runs very deep. As to how it tasted - chewy, somewhere between pork and lamb. The sausage fell apart as I bit into it; it was greasy and metallic-tasting. Overall, pretty vile. I ate a tiny bit and ended up giving the rest to the Vietnamese guys at another table, aided by Google Translate. They seemed pretty happy to receive such a coveted gift.
Initially, I was a little bit afraid that I would love dog meat and would spend the rest of my life chasing that dragon, but that won’t be the case. After leaving the restaurant, I was very in my head, seriously questioning my meat-eating habits. I opted for a vegetarian buffet for dinner. In the coming days, I also found myself eating significantly less meat, and the image of the spit-roasted dogs now comes into my mind every time I see a dog. I didn’t envision this innocent escapade to trigger so much soul-searching.
If dog’s not your thing, there are also restaurants serving rat, cat, turtle, and snake in Hanoi. I currently have no desire to indulge in these, but the option’s there.
Other bits and bobs
I did a bunch of other things in Hanoi. The others that stick out are:
Cooking class with Apron Up - we made a bunch of dishes, including egg coffee. I’ve really been liking doing cooking classes as I travel, and will probably continue in each new country I go to.
Vietnamese Women’s Museum - a super interesting museum, focusing on Vietnamese women and various traditional customs throughout history. The most interesting factoid I found is that calling babies is a big deal in Vietnam, and in some traditions, babies are given a temporary ‘ugly’ name in the hope that evil spirits will then not want the baby.
Hanging out on beer street - beer street is Hanoi’s main party street, rammed with bars and karaoke spots. You can go out every night, and many backpackers do. Going out in popular spots like this isn’t really my thing, but I thought I’d indulge on one of the nights. It was good fun, and I won the trust of some Dutch people by attempting No Hook 3 by ADF Samski on karaoke with them (it’s a Dutch track that blew up on Twitter like 6 years ago). The night quickly ran out of steam, though - I’ll be sticking to my sweaty underground clubs, I think.
