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Published: November 17th 2008
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Daily breakfast in Hanoi: The open air balcony of the executive floor dining room at the Melia Hotel. Fresh fruit, nice smoked salmon, good eggs, steaming pho bo, decent tea. The view is lovely and misty this early, the ant-sized traffic below still barely humming -
Good Morning Vietnam😊 I'd visited Saigon a few years ago. Fleetingly. Stopping off with Sprog on the way to the beaches farther north. Hanoi is prettier. Full of sleepy FrenchColonial character. You can
almost see Catherine Deneuve et Vincent Perez se sont promenent sur les wide and leafy boulevards. There are wooden-shuttered windows and wrought-ironed balconies, wide classical colonial facades, mystical lakes with weeping willows and multi-tiered pagodas. Yet a block or two away - it's all buzzing commerce and tooting traffic - bicycles, more bicycles, bazaars with endless rows of market stalls, narrow townhouses that mysteriously stretch back forever, pavements filled with local men drinking the ubiquitous bia hoi (draught beer), and local women seated on child-sized stools eating and chatting away😊 I really like Hanoi. It's all exotically familiar. Like meeting distant family. Or watching too many movies 😊
It's a working week for AlmostSpouse in Hanoi - and I'm always
happy to explore new stomping and grazing ground. I've always believed that the best finger on the culture-pulse anywhere is food prepared, presented and consumed 😊
Vietnamese food is all sooooo goooood! - OK - ALMOST all good 😊 Our first night here we strolled along to the unimaginatively named
Indochine - no it's NOT part of that chain - a few streets away from the Melia. Housed in a lovely old colonial home, its windows overlooking the tiny courtyard - the superb food served is probably still the best Vietnamese I've ever had! Simple rice spring rolls, sugar cane shrimp, orange catfish - gorgeously presented with the most charming service. Then there was the vegetarian
Com Chay Nang Tam. Tucked away at the end of a tangled warren of alleys - vegetables were bizarrely deconstructed (reconstructed?) to imitate meat ??? I liked the noodle dishes and the good old-fashioned vegetables posing as vegetables best 😊
Le Beaulieu is French fine dining at the luminous Sofitel Metropole Hotel - THE place to stay next time! Both restaurant and hotel are really quite quite lovely. Food and wine very good. Service is hushed and very obliging. The talented string quintet in
the corner just another reminder of Hanoi's impressive history of culture and learning... Over at
Vine we discover Hanoi's burgeoning fashionable scene in a townhouse that could've been in San Francisco! Sumptuous crushed velvets and beautiful Vietnamese silk organzas drape and hang. The Italian-ish cooking perfectly decent. Bold canvases on the walls were available for purchase - with much more to be viewed at the restaurant's gallery a few doors away. It's obvious why Vietnamese artists have been taking the western art world by storm in the past decade 😊
We lunched at a sweet neighbourhood cafe (its name totally escapes me now!) with a Belgian expat associate of AlmostSpouse's. Salads, more spring rolls, more pho bo - all superbly fresh. There's a barbeque station in the courtyard where you can chose your meats.
'You want desert animal with hump?' - I was asked. IN VIETNAM??? Never one to say no to food very often - but eewwww!! - the sampling of camel meat was horribly fatty and chewy!! And
yesss - we'll pass on the bow-wow too thanks!!! Probably
my favourite meal sojourning here was at the amazing
Koto opposite the
Temple Of Literature on Van Mieu
Street (there's some fab shopping to be found on Van Mieu incidentally - trendy household accessories, funky beachwear). The food is fresh and simple - western fusions and local favourites. Koto covers 4 floors with a roof terrace for great views and a bar with wifi. What makes this restaurant so so special is that it is TOTALLY (and cheerfully) staffed - from administrators to chefs to cashiers - by former homeless kids. These kids are housed and trained; moving up the ladder as they in turn train new recruits, rescued off the streets. They also sell Koto menus and tshirts at this totally sustainable non-profit venture. KOTO -
Know One Teach One - it's pretty awe-inspiring.
My most unforgettable meal however was at yet another local restaurant with, again, another undecipherable name - that specialised in seafood. We had superb prawns in coconut, clams, fish, crab... And then the waiter excitedly asks us -
'You want BaBa? Very good today! Fresh! I show you next table.' We look over at the next table. Another waiter is casually holding a medium-sized
live turtle on its back - legs struggling frantically. OMIGODDD NOOOOoooooo!!! He
drops the BaBa in some simmering broth at the center of the table and covers the pot with a lid... I feel ill... I weakly think of Toto our pet African Leopard Tortoise (yes there's no place like home Toto even if it's now KL) and Shelby our pet terrapin...
No thank you... really really... no BaBa thanks... Hanoi and its fascination with
BaBa thankfully extends way beyond kitchens and turtle soup. The more palatable turtle story in the city involves an emperor, his sword, and the surreally gorgeous
Hoan Kiem Lake, which harboured a giant golden turtle in the mid-15th century.
Thap Rua at the southern end of the lake is dedicated to this revered creature. Till today sightings of a rare giant turtle (descended from this mythical golden creature no less) are still reported and studies of these sightings have taken on the cultural and scientific significance that the Loch Ness Monster once commanded. Tried for 3 days - camera cocked - the gently rippling water yielded nothing 😞
Turtles aside, Hoan Kiem Lake is a wonderful place for your daily stroll. I saw graceful clusters of tai chi practitioners, old men dozing on benches, schoolchildren chatting animatedly, chess players pondering in
silence. Nearby is the fantastically atmospheric cacophony that is the
Old Quarter. I spent many many hours and quite a few afternoons exploring this maze of congested streets, the fascinating shops that lined them, the exotic smells wafting from the numerous cafes 😊, the open streetmarket of the hidden backstreets. You can find just about anything from herbs and spices to fake designer goods, slinky silk ao dai (the Vietnamese national dress) and conical woven hats, red tshirts with that single yellow star, old watches and battered lighters (
yes this genuine American from wartime!), beautiful cotton tablecloths pillowcases lingerie bags with delicate embroidery, silk jewellery pouches in dizzying jewel-colours, the MOST amazing lacquerware at such reasonable prices (vigorous bargaining is de rigueur naturally!), AND the MOST MOST gorgeous beaded and embroidered totes and clutches. These I ordered as samples for that bag business we're always on the brink of almost embarking upon Sian!! :0:0
OR - we could always just split the 22 bags between us 😊😊 Yep - it's all an adventure in the mad and magical here in Old Hanoi!
Wayyyyy on the opposite side of the lake is the old municipal theatre where the famous
water puppet productions are staged nightly. This ancient art form is totally unique to Northern Vietnam and the performance we attended was pretty impressive. Puppeteers stand behind a screen in the large water-filled tank-stage, using long poles to animate and manipulate their wooden villagers, fish, boats, buffalo, dragon 😊 This is all dramatically punctuated by fireworks - to the accompaniment of crashing drums, lilting flutes, tinkling xylophones, plaintive zithers and even more plaintive singing from the live orchestra stage left. Naturally there's lots of splashing and soaking of the front rows - it's all good fun.
So another gracious SEAsian city to be explored and rediscovered over and over again. Definitely one of my favourites in the region. Steeped in history, soaked in culture, developing quite dizzily. There is little left of Hanoi Jane and Hanoi Hilton these days. Instead what has evolved is more Hanoi Jazz and The Hilton Hanoi Opera Hotel 😊
Cam On Hanoi! Be back soon.
HangLiPoh
xoxox
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Hanoi
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Best writting ever!
Hi HangLiPoh, Glad you enjoyed Hanoi. Your travel blog is so lovely. To me, it is one of the best travel blog. Are you a professional writer?