Yesterday Joe and I flew from Phuket over Bangkok to Hanoi. We (well, I) had a massive panic situation at Phuket airport. I saw that the plane that was using the same gate as our flight (which was supposed to depart an hour before ours) was running late and already anticipated ours to be late. This proved to be true, so all the time at the airport, in the plane and in Bangkok I went a bit nuts (ok, a lot).
We arrived in Bangkok and ran around like crazy, the airport staff pointing us in the wrong direction several times. Keep in mind that we had 25 minutes once we were off the plane to collect our luggage, check the luggage back in and make our way through immigration. Once all the running was over it got announced that our flight was one hour delayed. McDonalds and Subway, here we come! But what would travelling be like without a bit of drama, right?
We arrived at our hotel, got upgraded and were all happy again and today we had a pretty cool day. I checked out free tours in Bangkok and found a highly recommended non-profit student club that offers free half or full day tour. We got picked up by Canh, a 23 year-old uni graduate who teaches English and shows tourists around Hanoi in his spare time. He showed us around all the great sights and explained a lot about Vietnam’s history.
Because Hanoi used to be a French colony the old city looks a bit like Paris, which was very nice. We also learned that the reason Vietnamese uses the same letters as we do in Europe because of the time as a colony.
We had a chance to see the Military Museum and have a great coffee there as well.
A super popular coffee brand in Vietnam is called Highlands Coffee which is everywhere over the city (comparable to illy and Lavazza back home) – I couldn’t resist, of course 😉
Once Canh dropped us off Joe and I went to a travel agency which his sister and her boyfriend had booked their trips through previously. The travel agents were very professional and helpful, so all of our next week is set up.
After booking we made our way to dinner. Before coming to South East Asia I asked my friend Duci, whose family is from Hanoi, if he has any family member we could hang out with so he gave me the contact details for his cousin Ly. We had to laugh so much though when the driver dropped us off at the restaurant – we ended up at the exact same place Canh had taken us for lunch!
The place itself – Quán Ăn Ngon – was super cool! There were lots of stalls where the chefs were cooking in front of you.
You get a sheet of paper and point at the food – the chef will write down the name of the food for you and you just hand it back to a waiter once you are finished picking. The atmosphere was great and it was absolutely packed with locals and foreigners.
Ly brought one of her German friends from Hamburg with her, so the four of us ordered a bunch of food and just shared it all. I was especially impressed with a Vietnamese kind of pancake, filled with shrimps and meat at vegetables.
Once we finished eating Joe and I wanted to get a cab back to the hotel. Bear in mind we paid 40,000 Dong on the way there. The taxi driver was a cheat and wanted to charge us 289,000 Dong. We went totally ballistic in the car – I gave him 100,000, the lowest we had (without underpaying him, of course) and left. Still raging! We knew that scams are very common here, but thought that because Ly called him up he would be genuine. We were so wrong. Next time, we will negotiate a price before or let the hotel handle it, for sure. Well, let’s call it an experience 😉
Back in the hotel I wanted to share our day here on my blog only to discover that Vietnam blocks WordPress. After a bit of research I was luckily able to go a bit of a different route (adding a proxy add on to Chrome is working perfectly fine) – so if you are ever wanting to blog from here, this is the way to do it.
This is the student club we booked the tour with:
And this is the restaurant we had lunch AND dinner at:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g293924-d1124698-Reviews-Quan_An_Ngon-Hanoi.html
MAKE IT BAKE IT TAKE IT 