Hanoi: Arrival & Walking Tour

Arrival

The getting out of Cambodia problems continue. We waited to buy our flight until we had our Vietnam visa in hand. So once we got our visa we ended up paying more than we would have liked for a flight. However, when we got to the airport the attendant wouldn’t honor our tickets because the payment was still pending on our card. After much negotiation, we ended up having to pay even more for tickets 2 hours before the departure. We were left with a bad taste in our mouths and vowed to never fly Cambodia airways again.

When we landed in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, we found out that our connection flight we reserved also had not been booked correctly. Thankfully Vietnam Airlines’ customer support was amazing. The check-in attendant stayed by our side through the entire process. Even walking us over to another counter and then ensuring that we got the plane for the same price we booked it at. And even though economy was booked they upgraded us to business class for no extra cost. In business class, we got talking to a couple from the US who worked for the world bank and had just gotten assigned to work in Hanoi. We ended up exchanging numbers with them and later got Bun Cha at Bun Cha Huong Lien where Obama and Anthony Bourdain ate.

We arrived at Hanoi in the dark and completely exhausted from the day of travel we both dropped our bags and immediately collapsed in the bed for a night’s sleep. The next morning we awoke to a beautiful view of the city. We had booked a private room with a balcony at a hostel. From the balcony, we could observe all the action on the street from a calm and peaceful vantage point.

The Walking Tour

We headed off to meet our guide for a walking tour of Hanoi. We first went to an ATM to get some Vietnamese Dong so that we could pay our guide. This was our first experience walking in a Vietnamese city. Something we heard a lot of warnings about from travelers we met in Siem Reap. Our impression is that it was actually a fairly walkable city. The fact that there are no real sidewalks and the traffic feels chaotic. But the traffic is relatively slow and the motorbike drivers seem very aware of everything going on. By the end of the day, I was joking that you could walk anywhere in Hanoi with your eyes closed and be safe.

Everyone else who had booked the morning tour spoke Spanish as their main language the guides broke the groups up by language and we ended up getting a private tour. The guide hit on many of the sites that we had planned to go to and many that we didn’t.

Ngọc Sơn Temple

Our first stop was at the Ngọc Sơn Temple where we admired the gardens and beautiful architecture of the temple. We got to smell a fruit known as Buddha’s fist. An edible citrus that is not often eaten but rather given as an offering. Our guide also spent some time explaining the norms around going to the temple. Describing the act of going to Temple as a short informal visit akin to popping into the store.

Off to the side of the temple, we walked into an air-conditioned room. We were grateful for the break from the heat and humidity. We quickly found out this room was cooled as it housed two taxidermied Yangtze giant softshell turtles. One of which is believed to be around 500 years old and resided in the lake the temple is on until 2016 when it passed away. After its passing, there are now only 3 known individuals alive.

Old Market

We then walked through Hoani’s Old Market (the Neighborhood we were staying in) where the streets are named after the goods that use to be sold there. While boats are no longer sold on boat street many other streets still have vendors selling goods the street is named after.

Each type of vendor was exciting in its own way.

The food vendors had amazing smells, fruits I had never seen before, mountains of dried seafood, and buckets of live seafood. We passed a bucket of eels where one eel, in particular, was trying its hardest to escape and managed to escape the bucket and get a few feet away until the shop keep scoped it back into the bucket!

Chợ Đồng Xuân

After the Houdini eel, we turned up a flight of stairs and entered a clothing wholesale market. Each stall in the market was chucked full of fabric by the bolt. We walked around for a bit and found out that each floor had a different theme. The first floor was full of accessories (belts, hats, zippers buttons), The second (where we entered) was bolts of fabric, the third was Adult clothes and the fourth was children’s and baby clothes. Each floor had hundreds of options.

Hàng Mã

But perhaps my favorite and the most visually stunning was the lantern street. With dozens of shops selling all sorts of lanterns and children’s toys.

cầu Long Biên

We took a quick detour to the Long Bien Bridge and stopped for a sugar cane boba. In Siem reap we had seen a number of street vendors with little carts pressing sugar cane into a drink. And now we got to finally try it. It was a refreshing drink to beat the heat. And was not as sweet as you would think given its 100% sugar cane juice :D

Train street

We ended our tour on Train street which is a number of cafes on an active train line. here we tried dragon eye’s (a fruit similar to Lychee) and split an egg coffee. Apparently, egg coffee was invented due to a milk shortage caused by the Vietnam war. It consists of a shot of espresso topped with egg yolks that are whipped to soft peaks and often include condensed milk. It was delicious and seriously filling.