Hanoi: Highlights Reel

Best Experiences: Anna

1. That unforgettable canal ride in the Ninh Xuan area. From now on, when someone tells me to go to my happy place, I’ll think of that quiet, concealed cove. 
2. Coffee on our first day in Hanoi, out on the balcony of Coffee A. I enjoyed my first ever egg coffee, looking out on the busy traffic below and thinking “what have we gotten ourselves into now?”
3. Exploring all the traditional homes and community houses at the Museum of Ethnology and learning more about Vietnam’s 54 diverse ethnic groups.

Best Experiences: Aaron

1. Looking for monkeys and playing charades with our rower in the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. We passed her the binoculars and she used them backwards, humoring us in pretending they helped. Should this be a blooper?
2. Staying up “late” and talking with Anna at Blue Butterfly and Social Club, discussing punishment/reinforcement, performative gender expression, and just enjoying each other’s minds.
3. Walking around the Museum of Vietnamese History. Ancient Chinese/Vietnamese sculpture seems so much more imaginative and whimsical than its western contemporary. 

Best Meals: Anna

1. Look, I’m usually a pescatarian. But that steak at La Badiane. With the truffle potatoes and the blue cheese and the prosciutto and the wine sauce? Are you kidding me?!
2. Sometimes you just need pizza. But even when you don’t need pizza, you would still love the pizza at Pizza 4 P’s, because I’m pretty sure one of those P’s stands for perfection.
3. Poke Hanoi’s savory salmon poke bowl: so nice, we ate it twice.

Best Meals: Aaron

1. Poke Hanoi. Believe it or not, raw fish is the single food most agreeable to my sensitive tummy. After subjecting it to weeks of low-level trauma, poke was exactly what we both needed.
2. Pizza 4 P’s. Hey, don’t judge; it was some bomb pizza.
3. Bun Cha @ Bun Cha 34. It may not have been Obama Bun Cha, but it was O-mazing.

Blooper Reel

1. One time our room smelled like a cheese made a fart, and that fart died in the walls. It was so bad that we thought it might be noxious. Turns out, the boys’ dorm was the room below us and someone had shoes so smelly, it was killing us.
2. After our Red River Delta tour, we realized we no longer had our credit card. When we contacted Ethnic Travel to ask if it was in the van, they told us they found a camera–and then asked if it was our credit card. Turns out, we left our binoculars, which are neither a camera nor a credit card.
3. Everytime I (Aaron) left the hostel alone, I was waylaid by tens of shady characters trying to sell me weed and prostitutes. Guess I’ve just got one of those faces?