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Five flavours: Day 10 Hoi An to Bangkok
Soundtrack: “England 2 Colombia 0”, Kirsty MacColl Our last breakfast in Hoi An was mi quang, wonderful rice noodles, pork, quail eggs, and shrimp, in a salty broth full of flavour. I did a better job of making the ca phe sua da, being more patient in my water pouring. The hotel dining room television has generally been off during out stay, but today the Mexico vs England men’s world cup football game was on, so as I ate I watched the second half. The Vietnamese commentator was getting very excited when goals were scored or came close to being scored. I haven’t been paying the hugest amount of attention…
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Vietnam the third: day 9, Sapa-Hanoi-Hoi An
Today was, simply, a travel day. We hit the hotel breakfast at 7am, just to get something into us before the day kicked off. Our goal was to get out of town before the various streetsellers, who we’d been telling that we were leaving Sunday so we’d be shopping Saturday, caught on and swamped us/set the car on fire/whatever they do in this town. Our car picked us up at about 7.45am, by which stage a few streetsellers were around, but not ones we’d encountered before. We were close to getting away clean, but our driver had another pickup right in the centre, and while the new passengers were being…
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Vietnam the third: Day 4, Hanoi, Ninh Binh
Summer in Vietnam. It’s hot. Very hot. If yesterday just about knocked me over and all I did was queue, today proved that I am quite possibly congenitally unable to learn from the past. We’d booked a day trip out to the south, Ninh Binh, the first capital of Vietnam. I at least got a bit wiser, taking every opportunity to stash a few drinks in my bag, and making sure I imbibed frequently, as the weather forecast was for slightly warm. 36 degrees and humid kinda warm. Not at all comfortable for any known living creature I’d care to associate with kinda warm (even the roadside cows were unhappily…
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Vietnam the third: Day 3, Hanoi
Summer in Hanoi. We’ve had a few conversations with locals, like hotel staff, tour guides, and they’ve all had one thing to say, “It’s a shame you’re hear in Summer when it’s so hot, the best time really is October”. And in fairness that is probably true, but our day jobs don’t always provide the luxury of travelling at the best times, so here we are in the heat and humidity. Today was a walking tour of Hanoi, with the aim of ticking off a few of those boxes for things we haven’t seen in previous visits, as well as something we love to do. So it was Ho Chi…
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Vietnam the third: Day 2, Hanoi
Coffee. Vietnam grows and exports a lot of this, though it’s over 90% robusta, the unfashionable cousin to arabica. It’s also starting to drink more of it and develop a bit of a coffee culture, with all manner of chains and little cafes springing up around Hanoi. I don’t recall seeing so many on previous trips, my impression from the first trip in 2014 was that tea was still the king. Coffee, where available, involved a tall glass of ice and a mix of evaporated and condensed milk. Now coffee comes in many varieties. Want a glass full of coconut icecream and coffee? They have that. Want your coffee topped…
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Vietnam the third: Day 1, Transit Day
Who doesn’t like a 3am start? Me for one, but when the mobile starts beeping and calling out that wonderful catch phrase, “Smile, you’re travelling!” then it’s just a case of sucking up the entitlement and hauling my white arse out of bed. An added bonus was pissing the cat off by having the audacity to get up before she’d had a chance to get in my face about her breakfast. So it was last minute run around, make sure animals were sorted, recheck the notes for the house sitter, and drive to the airport. Being generally prepared and seasoned travellers, we aimed for 2 hours pre-flight and weren’t too…
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Day 17: Hanoi and Hoi An, a tale of two anagram cities
We kicked off our last day in Hanoi with the standard hotel breakfast, before plunging forth into mid-morning traffic in search of S****ucks, so L could add the special Vietnam mug to our collection (I was also tempted to get the Hanoi mug, as it’s bright orange on the inside, and we don’t have any that colour, but I’m not sure I’d want a coffee in a mug that colour, either). Mug purchased, we meandered back through a few stores to see what we could find (obligatory Vietnam pun: in Hanoi it’s okay to Hang Bac, hyuk hyuk hyuk). We’d kind of discussed the whole Hanoi egg coffee thing, and…
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Day 16: Hanoi today, Hoi An tomorrow
Our last full day in Hanoi. I read an article recently that of all tourists to Vietnam, only 10-20% return for another visit. And we’ve seen the signs of this in the reactions of locals — many are surprised to hear that we’ve been here before. I know the world is a big place, with so many wonderful sights still to be seen, but I wouldn’t be surprised if L and I come back again: the food is great, the people are friendly, the prices are generally reasonable, there’s still things to see here in Vietnam, and the weather is usually pretty good. This afternoon it rained. Not a huge…
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Day 15: Hanoi is quiet on new year’s day
Well, a little bit quieter anyway. Last night we looked over our balcony and the street was shoulder to shoulder, even the mopeds (which probably weren’t supposed to be on the “walking” street) were forced to a crawl. Today, we could see the street below. There were the usual street vendors, pho and bun cha for those starting the new year early. Our initial plans were to hit the fabric market, but inquiries with the hotel indicated not all stores would be open, so we’re putting this off until tomorrow. Instead, we took a stroll along part of the mosaic wall. Approximately 4km, covered in mosaics, and forming a barrier…
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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…
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Day 13: Kanchanburi-Bangkok-Hanoi
Today was a long day. As Mick Thomas wrote, “There’s no point writing postcards on your bad days”, so I’ll try to keep it short. L and I got almost no sleep last night. The combination of hard bed and threat of sleeping through alarms and missing the 7.20am train kept us restless. We made it to the train with plenty of time, thanks to a moped taxi with bolted on side seating, but when we boarded we ended up in the car with all the locals. Not a problem in the company, but this car just has two long bench seats with absolutely no padding, as in even less…
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Day 5, Halong Bay to Hue (the longest day)
It’s good to be writing this from a mostly comfy hotel bed (I probably haven’t mentioned they like hard beds over here) in airconditioned comfort, as this day was a killer. Woke up in time for breakfast on the boat in Halong Bay, followed by a short demonstration on vegetable carving. The chef does an impressive trick making a fish net out of a carrot. We then toodled back to the shore, hopped off the boat into the waiting bus for the long drive back to Hanoi. There’s only dual carrigeway for part of the route, the rest is just a lane each way and all the trucks, cars, buses…
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Day 3 Hanoi
Writing this from day 4, on top of a boat cruising Halong Bay. Yesterday was food food food. Morning was an early start, down the lobby at 745am for a quick stroll around the corner for breakfast pho. A perfectly civilised breakfast it is too, with extra doughnut crouton type thing. Yummy soupy goodness. Next stop was some local coffee, VN is one of the world’s biggest exporters of coffee, and we had a taste of the local brew. Not too bad, nothing too special but I think a bunch of that is down to the drip brew. We followed this with a stroll through the markets, quite busy, some…
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Hanoi – Day 2
First full day in Hanoi. Started with breakfast in the hotel, where I made a fusion breakfast of pho, crispy bacon and smoked dried fish. Quite yummy. Then a leisurely stroll down to the Temple of Literature, Vietnam’s oldest university, where the guidebooks say it’s possible to escape the bustle of Hanoi for a while. It really just swaps the bustle of the city with a bustle of tourists, less noisy but still a lot of people around. A handful of possibly Japanese young women wanted their photo taken with L and myself, not sure why. Strolled back, via an icecream parlour where I had durian frozen yogurt/icecream. Quite tasty.…
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Hanoi Day 1ish
Made it to Hanoi, through customs and I’m again in the old communist block. Not that it really shows, anyone wanting a totalitarian/nationalistic look and feel these days might as well check out Australia on January 26 — there are a bunch of flags around here right now but none on cars. Interestingly, judging by the building developments going on at the airport, they are less strict on branding than Western Australia. While I’m talking branding, Vietnam is a land of few fonts, it really is. There’s one used all over the place, somewhere between franklin condensed and impact. See it all the time. Sans serif rules the roost for…
