Hanoi

In case you don’t follow me on Instagram or my Facebook author page (and if not, why not?), we’ve spent the last two weeks in Vietnam – splitting our time between Hanoi and Hoi An.

We were last here back in April 2017 but it was a whirlwind – partly because we had a lot to cover on our itinerary (including a side trip to Halong Bay) but mostly because I was exhausted. You see, we’d (literally) just moved states (and by literally, I mean we moved into our new house five days before flying out – and yes, I had every single box unpacked before we left). Prior to that, I’d spent 6 weeks back in Sydney working and packing up our house of 18 years while Sarah and Grant had come up to the Sunny Coast so she could start uni. I was, to coin a phrase, jatz crackered (knackered), and as a result, there was a lot about the trip I didn’t feel I’d absorbed. This time, we decided, we’d take our time.

While I’ll tell you more over the next few weeks, here’s the overview …

Where we stayed …

Hotel De L’Opera – in the French Quarter opposite the Opera House and a short walk to the lake and the Old Quarter.

The rooms were super comfy and beautifully quiet; the beds tall enough that when you’re vertically challenged as I am you have to climb into them and plush enough to make you come over all princess and the pea-ish; and the bathrooms done in fabulously over-the-top mosaic tiles.

The bar – La Fee Verte (the Green Fairy) – is a nod to the decadence of another age and the (potentially) hallucinogenic effects of absinthe. And yes, there are plenty of cocktails on the list containing absinthe including the bottom middle pic in the gallery below.

In the evenings silent films are played on the big screen in the courtyard – something that adds to the vintage feel.

Our hotel was a magnet for fashion shoots. They’d start each morning and still be going into the night – brides (so many brides), influencers, tik-tokers, models. Some came with full camera crews, directors, and little tents for costume changes, others propped their mobile phones up against a wall and broke into their Tik Tok dance routines. We found it hilarious.

Where we ate …

More on this next week, but mainly on the street in the Old Town. Food is generally quite cheap – Michelin-rated pho (at Pho 10) costs the equivalent of $4.50, we mostly paid the Aussie dollar equivalent of less than $2 for beer (you could get the local craft stuff for less than $1), and two people could have spring rolls, two dishes and beers for around $20.

Here’s a taste … and no, we didn’t get sick …

Our fave bar was Tom’s, in Ta Hien Beer Street in the old town.

The Water Puppets

A must-do in Hanoi. Grant thought it sounded a tad lame, but it’s actually clever and colourful and cultural – and the daily shows tend to book out.

You can find out more about it here.

Dong Xuan Market

This place sells anything and everything with each level jammed with stalls that are roughly organised into product groups. Kids clothes are on the 2nd level, adults’ on the first, and everything else at ground. I picked up a pair of genuine fake Chanel sunglasses for around the pool for $8 and Grant bought a couple of Under Armour T-shirts for not much more.

Coffee

Coffee is a serious business in Hanoi.

Aside from Vietnamese coffee – a sweet, rich coffee drink involving sweetened condensed milk and strong drip coffee – there’s also coffee made from the previously digested beans of a weasel; egg coffee (which we tried last time), and salt coffee.

What else?

The traffic is mad and unrelenting – as is the noise of horns from motor scooters. Traffic lights tend to be pretty much indication only – in fact, there’s a t-shirt for sale everywhere with a picture of a traffic light and the words:

Green: I can go

Orange: I can go

Red: I can still go

As for crossing the road under these conditions? Essentially you step purposefully into it and walk – don’t run.

Finally…

Hanoi is a city full of contradictions. It’s a city with thousands of years worth of culture and history, where city streets are still organised in the same way as the villages, where old ways coexist with new ones.

Street corners in Hanoi are a tangle of power lines. On corners in the old town, speakers are attached to the telegraph poles and peek out through all the wires. These speakers broadcast the news of the day in the morning and the evening. It’s a hangover from the (American) war days when people didn’t all have tvs or radios, so this was the best way of keeping the community up to date with what was going on. These days, even though most people have TVs, they tend not to watch the news. Fancy that.

Politically it’s a communist country, but socially it’s a mix where high street brands and conspicuous consumption may be around the corner from “money-facing” shops that have sold the same types of products forever and a day.

It’s vibrant, chaotic, exhausting, and fascinating – and it feels as though it’s still growing up and growing into itself. We love it.