Our introduction to Hanoi was fitting for the city. It was sketchy, a bit scary, a little crazy, and, in the end, totally groovy. Let me explain. We exited the terminal looking for a cab. Our data was not working on our phones, so we couldn’t use Grab (the Asian Uber). We were waved over by a smiling Hanoian. “Taxi?” he asked us. We negotiated a price, and he led us to the parking lot… which was not where the cabs were. Red flag #1. Then, the driver dropped a wad of cash out of his pocket as we walked to the car. We picked it up and tried to give it back, but he looked at us like we were crazy. He didn’t speak English. We were very insistent, but he just wouldn’t take it. “What kind of weird grift is this where we get free money?” I thought. The Hanoian man we negotiated with caught up to us, and we finally got the driver to take his dropped money when the Hanoian translated. Red flag #2. Once in the car, our navigator, the Hanoian, was very friendly. His English was spotty, but he kept giving us suggestions for things to try and repeating “happy new year!” in a warm, excited tone.
“Need money for highway. 15. Pay us now,” our navigator said, as we passed a toll booth. “Huh? 15 what? Is that part of the price we negotiated?” Aaron asked. “No. 15. 15!” He was getting very insistent. Aaron handed him some money. “So it’s more than we negotiated?” Aaron asked. “No. Big money!” our navigator said. “Too much or too little?” I asked. “Yes,” he answered, “big money! No.” In the end, we just handed him all our cash and hoped for the best. He took 20 thousand dong and gave us back 5 thousand. Which was odd, because the bill we originally handed him was 20 thousand. Red flag #3. By this point, Aaron and I were both a bit uneasy. We were texting each other in the backseat about what we would do if he tried to pull anything when we got to the hotel. In retrospect, I think I was paranoid, primed by all the warnings I’d read in my guidebooks. It didn’t help that the driving scene here is pure chaos. Scooters darted between our car and a bus next to us, bicycles cut us off, pedestrians seemed like they were trying to get run over, and vendors walked down the middle of the road selling donuts out of a basket. Of course, in the end, it was all fine. We made it to our hotel and paid him the pre-negotiated price. Turns out he was just a very friendly man whose only crime was not warning us about the small toll.
Our hostel, Cocoon Inn, was a fine hostel, as hostels go. It was probably the least cutesy of the places we’ve stayed, but it was clean, centrally-located, and had free beer for an hour every day.
Now, it was getting late, we hadn’t had dinner yet, and the Cocoon Inn’s kitchen was closed, so we walked over to NOLA Cafe. No one there spoke enough English for me to confirm this, but I assume the name is a reference to New Orleans, Louisiana. They certainly did a good job of capturing the feel of a historic New Orleans cafe. Walls of deep orange and bright red surrounded cozy nooks. Tiled floors and half-crumbling plaster added to the European-meets-Caribbean appeal.
The decor may have been creole, but the food was 100% Vietnamese– and 100% yum. We both got spring roll dishes. Mine came with some sort of broth dipping sauce. Vietnam’s broth and sauce game is on point, I have since discovered. It was a great introduction to Vietnamese food, which neither Aaron nor I were sure about. We’ve only ever really been exposed to pho, which has way too much soap flavor for my taste (some people also call this flavor cilantro, but those people are in denial).
The next morning, we slept in, since that was impossible in Luang Prabang, with its 1000 roosters per square kilometer. We’d missed the free breakfast at Cocoon Inn, so we had coffee and banana bread on a balcony overlooking an extremely busy intersection. We tried not to yell “look out!” every five seconds. A large truck went the wrong way down a very busy one-way road. When I told Aaron about this, a nearby Scottish man said “I don’t think there actually are one-way streets here.” He was right; no matter what the signs and logic say, every street here is at least 5-way.
For our first afternoon here, we decided to do a little tour on foot, checking out some of the nearby points of interest. We started with Ngoc Son temple. It’s a shrine set in the middle of Hoan Kiem Lake, but I’m still uncertain on what it’s a shrine to. Something to do with a folk hero, but also Confucius?
Lunch was at Garden House Restaurant. Our waitress gave us some recommendations, and I ordered without really knowing what I’d ordered. She taught me how to use rice paper to wrap my dish with some veggies, and dip it in the accompanying sauce. It was sort of like a DIY summer roll. Once again, the dipping sauce was addictive. And the stuffing, whatever it was, was great too. I really appreciate the Vietnamese commitment to putting veggies in everything. It’s a welcome change from the past week of meat-heavy dishes. Now we had the fuel we needed to continue our tour.
Hanoimoon 