Day 14: Hanoi, a noisy day
By the time I finish this post it’ll have gone midnight at home, banishing 2017 and starting 2018. Hanoi, an hour behind, will still be partying, the streets below will still be packed with revellers, and fireworks yet to start.
The bit I’m still not sure about is that Vietnam has it’s own lunar new year, this year it’s 16 February, yet they are certainly turning it all on tonight. There are huge stages set up, lots of events, streets around the main lake are closed to traffic (other than little electric cars driven by kids, and I thought dodging scooters was bad enough). I just hope that when Tet comes around, they all go harder.
We kicked off the day with the hotel breakfast, a fairly competent buffet, and good pho. I’m beginning to think that Hanoians like their pho with fewer condiments than Hue and Hoi An, where there’s lots of herbs, beansprouts, sauces, and doughnuts to be added. Hanoi, not so much, maybe a lime and some sliced red chilli. After breakfast the hotel caught us and offered us the room type we’d booked, so we now have a balcony (and as a way of compensation, offered us a free transfer to the airport when we leave) and I’m beginning to like this hotel (they also get the laundry back the same day).
We hit the streets, so L could look for fabrics and I could look for, well, whatever. L led us to the Dong Xuan market, a communist-era building with the narrowest space between stalls, crazy piles of all sorts of things, the sort of place where getting lost is no challenge at all. Then we took a wander around more of the old quarter, getting almost lost, but finding some weird and groovy looking old buildings, like the Hang Dau water tower, a round building in the middle of the road, and the neo-gothic St Joseph’s Cathedral.
We found lunch at a little bun cha stall. Bun cha is one of the other Vietnamese noodle soups, served with rice noodles (bun) and barbecued pork (cha) and lots of greens, which you keep adding to the broth. The bun cha was delicious, as evident from all the locals who ate there (we were the only westerners). Cost was 30,000VND each, so just under $4AUD for us both. Then we stopped for coffee, and I went with the iced milk option, getting the obligatory sugar high with the caffeine hit.
Some more wandering before heading for a foot massage to soothe our well worked feet. There are a bunch close to our hotel, so we just went with the first. They did a good job, found lots of sore spots on my calves — my legs are really sore today, probably from the moped ride in Kanchanaburi when I had nothing to rest my feet on.
Dinner was at a streetside hot pot stall, where we had a mix of beef, chicken, pork and seafood to plonk in the boiling broth, along with tofu, greens and more rice noodles (we had to ask as the default is wheat noodles). This was also very good, a place where locals and tourists come. I’d tell you where these places are, but we may have been a little disorientated by the busy, noisy maze that is Hanoi’s old quarter.
On the way back to the hotel, I spied a shop with a couple of bottles of whisky in the wondow, enough to spark my interest. Inside I found a minor treasure trove of The Macallan, Glenmorangie, Glenlivet, and a few other distilleries. I felt the need to lighten them of a bottle of The Macallan 12 year old sherry cask, as this is rarely to be found in Australia, and then only via special import at special import prices. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s a damn fine drop, but at $70-$90, not for $125+. I also picked up a couple of miniature bottles, one to toast the new year that I’m sipping as I write, and the other for when we celebrate L’s birthday in Hoi An.
So it’s a quiet evening for us, sipping and chilling while the party rages 5 floors below (and also at the bar/cafe directly opposite our balcony. Chúc Mừng Năm Mới everyone, see you in 2018!