Feb 23-25: Go like Water Buffalo

Tam Coc -> Hanoi

Distance cycled: 6 km
Ave: 12.5 km/h
Max speed: 27.8 km/h

We said we already did the last day of riding, didn’t we? Well, not all things go as planned.

The bus we’d hired through our accommodation to take us and our bikes to Hanoi’s old quarter

dropped us unceremoniously at the edge of Hanoi, leaving us to ride exactly the portion we’d been trying to avoid.

Fortunately, our bikes were still assembled and rideable, so we cycled the rest of the way. It was not without stress – there is a LOT of traffic here, but all things considered, it went quite well.

The trick with traffic here (regardless of whether your vehicle has 4, 2, or 0 wheels) is to engage your inner buffalo:

go at a modest pace, keeping it predictable. You adjust a bit to avoid trajectories of other vehicles, but without any stopping or running. Traffic moves around you, and everybody keeps going.

We had a few days in Hanoi, and we spent most of it walking around the city.

Our first quest was looking for bike boxes. The bike store, who told F they had three boxes for us, turned out to only have very small (like kid sized) boxes.

Measuring another supposedly adult size bike box that seemed quite short.

It took us a while to find Hieu at Bikes Plus who agreed to pack (and in Jeannie’s case, wash – NZ is very strict on biohazard screening) our bikes for a modest price.

We also found a water puppet theatre show and attended a classic production of several folk tales, including people trying to keep a fox away from their ducks, and two phoenixes courting (above).

I didn’t expect the puppeteers to come out in waist deep water at the end of the show!

I went looking for silk, which is produced and woven here. We found Hàng Gai (Silk street) – there were bolts of cloth, and many more shops selling ready-made as well as bespoke clothing. It was cool to see small items made from off cuts and cocoon husks being sold as makeup removers.

On our various quests, we walked by “uncle Ho’s” mausoleum (but were not permitted very close as F had her multitool in her bag, which did not pass the metal detector screening),

various bored-looking guards (obviously dancing would have helped!),

and a complete maze of semi-connected alleys.

Although in one of the temples, we found that our travels may be less safe than they feel!

I discovered that there was swing dancing on our last night, and Dave, a friend from Victoria dance community, just happened to be in Hanoi at the same time, so we all went and were warmly welcomed/jammed.

It was really fun to see so many folks dancing in beautiful áo dàis.

The everlasting quest was, of course, partaking of as many amazing foods and drinks as our guts could manage.

There is a saying here, “the lower the stool, the better the food”, so we tried some street corners and some restaurants.

We also went on a guided food tour with Sam, who introduced us to some tourist classics like train street (above: bizarre that this is a phenomenon at all), and the original bun cha spot (below) as well as some novelties to supplement our own sampling.

We enjoyed:

Bun cha (Perilla leaves in it are colourful and yummy!)

Banana flower salad (okay, papaya salad is better, but it was fun to try!)

Left: Dried eel with fried noodles (surprisingly good)
Right: Hû tiéu trôn – dried mixed rice noodles (top pick)

An epic quantity of delicious Dim sum (a case of we had no idea what we were ordering and it turned out well!)

Roll your own spring rolls (ok, we can make more delicious peanut sauce, but airy fat bubble tubes were fun, and kohlrabi in the slaw was great!)

We did not feel the need to try a second time:

Jelly fruit dessert with beans and ice chips

Coffee here is served strong and small. There are an astounding variety of styles here, and although we did not try them all, we tried quite a few! Pistachio (top right: coffee with pistachio ice cream, so yummy!), coconut, white and milk (both quite sweet and better enjoyed iced as the milk here is usually sweetened condensed milk), egg (top left: super foamy and sweet), and salt (bottom left and right: good both iced and hot!).

I tried scores of mango smoothies, and sometimes, they were great. Other times, they came with balls of jelly in them, or chunks of jelly and ice, which I haven’t yet acquired a taste for.

My favourite was a mango passionfruit smoothie at a local beer stop (no jelly involved).

Perhaps the most memorable food experience was F & J’s Accidental Hotpot Incident. After swing dancing, we went for juice with the local dancers. Dave and I promised to order some drinks for Flis & Jeannie, who as they hadn’t had dinner, went off in search of a quick bite to eat. After chatting for quite some time, and being made fun of for the 6 drinks I had obviously ordered for my imaginary friends, we received a desperate plea from F and J. Could we please help them eat an enormous volume of hot pot? By some baffling sequence of communication, they had been given hot pot ingredients (raw meat, noodles, veggies, mystery chunks, and BROTH) all in plastic bags to go. They declined the generous offer of borrowing the gas stove to cook the bags of dinner and decided to have the unwittingly ordered hot pot right there on the street sitting on very low stools.