Hanoi - More of the Old Quarters

Hanoi is an old rustic looking town, we went there at the end of 2010 which coincided with the town's 1ooo (one thousand) year anniversary. Walking around this city , I felt as though I was transported back into time... seeing and walking though temples, buildings and streets that has been there for centuries was surreal.

Hanoi also many lakes as well, most famous is probably the "Hoan Kiem Lake" . The wonderful sceneries around Hanoi, could "ALMOST" make one forget the constant honking of the motorbikes and cars.

After the wonderful sightseeing, the wonderful feast came in true Vietnamese colours.

Tomato based fried Fish

Herbal pork stew, cooked in coconut

Crabmeat fried with sugarcane shoots

Prawn Rolls

Caramelized Banana and Pineapple

We ate like Kings again, thanks to our guide. Although the meal was gorgeous... the funny thing was the plain white rice was the last dish to arrive ... after we ate all the dishes(including desert) except for two leafs of vegetables. I guess they must have forgot about the rice or the rice was actually the desert ,but no complains... it the whole meal pretty good.

Anything funny happened to you lately?

Hanoi - Old Quarters

Hanoi not only plays host to 7 million - zilian motorbikes , it also has many beautiful & colorful building which are full of Culture and History. Each street back in the old days had merchants and households that specialised in a particular trade, such as silk traders, silver etc. The street names nowadays still reflect these specialisations.

Once you managed to figure out how cross the road safely and avoid the motorbikes, you would be able to take in this pictureous town. Most buildings in the Old Quarters of Hanoi has a french style and mainly painted in Yellow and has green shutters. This is because a large number of French settlers moved to Vietnam from the south of France, especially Marseilles, and made it a point to recreate the architecture of the old country while abroad.

After exploring parts of the town, our guide brought us to this small restaurant called " Minh Anh". As soon as we sat down BAM! One by one food kept coming, from springrolls, to soups to deep fried stuff to fishes. The thing was we haven't actually ordered anything. I started getting worried, something fishy is going on here, is this one of those "lets cheat the foreigner in Vietnam" moment?

So I called our guide, and asked him "Who order this food?" he said "ME", and I was thinking "mmm.. he must be in it too; *@*&#! ". Then I said, "how much is this gonna cost me?" and he said "Nothing, You pay already! you want beer you buy , food you pay already .All included in your package". A smile stretched on my face, and I said "You are a champion" I ordered a beer and gave it to our guide and started digging in.

What a meal, everything was so fresh, cooked and served warm. I thank our guide for the great choice.

Hanoi - full of surprises. Whats have you been surprised with recently?

Have a cuppa - The Hanoi Way

The current cold winter * (cold for me anyways) reminded me of my trip to Hanoi, Vietnam. Yoshi and I went there last December. Driving out of the airport we could see how skilful the Vietnamese people are in balancing.This guys could drive through traffic with huge items being place on their bikes and motorcycles with ease. In mist of all the chaos, these people kept their balance as steady as can be.

We arrived at out hotel room freshened up and headed out to discover the streets of this old city. He stayed in the Old Quarters, so was heaps to see around this area. But, being a coffee junkie, I needed my caffeine hit.

So the first stop that we made was this small old coffee shop, the lady mending the shop couldn’t speak a word of English nor did they have any menus. So we tried saying coffee in as many languages as we knew...COFFEE ? KOPI? COHEE ? CAFE? ...and she smiled and said ohhh...

Then it came ,"Cafe" made with finely ground Vietnamese-grown dark roast coffee individually brewed with a small metal French drip filter (cà phê phin) into a cup containing about a

quarter to a half as much Condence Milk. You could see how black and thick the dark matter they call coffee was. Then I looked around and everyone had ice as well, I wanted them too... damn, how was I to describe ice to this lady?

I raised my hand and said ice, that didn’t work...and pretended like I was holding an empty glass and said "cling-cling"... she still didn't get it! A few more unsuccessful with my attempts at charade with the shop lady, some else from another table got me! and order Ice for us in Vietnamese . I said thanks and gave them a thumbs up . Had a sip of my coffee... and then SLAP... boy was it strong! I sure woke up that morning...

Anyways if you go to Hanoi wanting to order Ice coffee in Vietnam, It's called "Cafe Da" ;)

Ever got lost in translation?