Due to our eVisa mistake, our time in Vietnam was reduced by quite a bit. There were a number of things that we wanted to do in Vietnam, but three stood out for our family: food tour in Hanoi, Ninh Binh, and Ha Long Bay. When we in the midst of trying to figure out the consequences of the eVisa delay due to Tet, we determined that if we could do those three things, we would be willing to drop other things we had scheduled in Vietnam. The alternative would have been to push Vietnam into our next destination, but that would have been disruptive to even more plans, some of which would have been hard to change. In the end we were able to reschedule almost everything with minimum penalties. However, rather then three days in Ninh Binh, we did a day trip from Hanoi and rather then a few days in Hanoi, we really got 2 evenings. We also had to cancel our overnight train ride to Da Nang and the few days we were going to spend Hoi An. In the end, we are thankful we even got to come to Vietnam and that our mistake wasn’t too costly or overly disruptive.
On our first night in Hanoi, we went to a restaurant around the corner from our hotel. The restaurant overlooked this cathedral which really emphasized the French influence of Hanoi. In the morning outside our hotel breakfast area was this citrus tree. We saw them all over the place and a little research revealed it to be a kumquat tree which is part of the Tet holiday tradition. Supposedly the more fruitful the tree, the better the next year will be. The tree in the hotel was doing quite well.
We were looking forward to a street food tour and got to experience that on our last night in Hanoi. It wasn’t as amazing as we were hoping, but was still enjoyable and we got to see a lot more of the city walking around on the tour.
Hanoi is a bit old, worn, and dirty, but it has lots of vibrant colours and lots of character. It also has crazy traffic with few or no sidewalks for pedestrians!
There were stalls and little restaurants tucked into every little nook and cranny and a lot of them pulled small, low chairs out into the streets and sidewalks to server their customers. Most places specialized in just a few dishes.
The vendors often cook to order right at the entrance. On the left is one making us this really thin rice wrap with fried onions, vegetables and pork with a dipping sauce and the one on the right is making this pancake/crepe type of omelet.
We also stopped for soup and dessert.
Our last stop though was our favourite, even though you had to go down this dingy hallway and up a creaky flight of steps.
It took us to a second floor café where they serve egg coffee (and egg hot chocolate for the girls).
I know it sounds weird, but for a sweetened coffee drink it was one of my favourites. It was invented in Hanoi after World War II when there was a shortage of fresh milk. A creative bartender, trying to serve foreigners their lattes, decided to use condensed milk and an egg yolk that he whipped until it was almost a meringue to be used instead of the milk. Add an extremely intense shot of strong espresso to it and it is a delightful combination. It was a hit and soon took off with the locals as well and now is one of the go to drinks in Hanoi. The girls thought the egg kakoa (chocolate) was equally delicious.
The tour ended right by Hoàn Kiếm Lake where Den Ngoc Son temple is on an island in the lake at the center of old Hanoi. Since we were right there, we decided to check it out.
In a wing of the temple was this display of two massive soft shelled turtles, the most recent one having died in 2016. The information there says those turtles used to live in this lake and that it relates to naming of the lake Hồ Hoàn Kiếm which means “Lake of the Returned Sword”. The legend that when Emperor Lê Lợi defeated China to create Vietnam that he was approached by a turtle god on this lake and asked to return the conquering sword.
There is a smaller second island in the lake that has a tower on it call “Turtle Tower”. There was a picture of the turtle on that island when it was alive posted in that museum wing and we could look out and see the tower lit up from the island we were on.