Hanoi

I was prepared to love Vietnam.  I knew nothing about it, which is a theme of a trip like this, where there’s never time to research a place until you show up.  But the snippets I’d seen were written with a percolating enthusiasm that can’t be simulated for the sake of a magazine article.

Hoan Kiem Lake in the Old Quarter

For me, Hanoi invites comparisons with Kathmandu, which is surprising; it’s not obvious why.  It could be the traffic, the fact you have to walk in the streets, the significant presence of post-middle age white people, the prevalence of North Face shops squeezed between low slung guesthouses strung together with a rat’s nest of telephone wires.  Perhaps that feeling of similarity is why I enjoyed Hanoi so much: every contrast was in Vietnam’s favor.

The kids riding hoverboards by the lake, in a boulevard turned (motorbike free!) promenade in the evening. The homemade seats make them seem safer, but they go fast enough to catch fire (especially with an ambitious 11 year old at the helm).

Vietnam overall is surprisingly developed.  (I have to be careful here not to sound like the American that is surprised to find that they have flat screen TV’s in Spain…  but by now we’ve seen nearly the full range of human living conditions around the world.)  The trains are on the older side, and a bit beaten up.  But the plumbing works reliably; even the $15 a night hotels we’ve been favoring provide toothbrushes as well as other necessities; everything is clean – basically, the country just works, with none of the compromises and inconveniences you normally have to put up with in a low cost-of-living country.  The tourist industry itself is the only drawback – the most popular, easiest, and cheapest ways to get anywhere or do anything are the group day or overnight tours, which are built around kickbacks from souvenir shops and rarely if ever include the promised activities or destinations.  But unlike many countries, in Vietnam it’s easy to avoid these and go independently.

They really go in for the dramatic lighting. This one is real.

During our time in Hanoi, we did next to nothing.  That is, we didn’t check many tourist sites off the list.  (One exception was the Hanoi Hilton.  Aaron’s comment: “I think I’ve learned too much about too many things that I don’t want to know anything about.”)  And we spent a fair percentage of our time in the rain.  We also had a richness of experience (and taste) that had us looking back in fond reminiscence just a few days later.

First, the food.  Phenomenal.  (And we had come directly from Thailand).  Rich and intense, and simultaneously bright and fresh.  Pho, probably the best known at home, doesn’t nearly cover the depth of Vietnamese food but serves as a useful example: a deeply concentrated bone broth, supported by both long braised brisket and raw, thinly sliced round that cooks when added to the hot broth, brightened by a host of fresh herbs (especially basil and two types of cilantro), sharpened with a squeeze of fresh lime, and hit with a shot of umami from local fish sauce.

All of this is assembled at what are essentially street carts, but unfurled with kindergartner-sized plastic chairs and tables filling in every inch of surrounding sidewalk not taken up with parked motorbikes .  It’s the best tasting backache you’ll ever have.

Then there’s Bia Hoi.  I wish I knew then that this was a Hanoi thing; we would have stayed longer before moving south.  Literally, it means “fresh beer,” but it implies an entire experience.  The fresh beer is necessarily on tap, almost always home brewed, relatively light, and almost always cold.  And costs about 15 cents.

It can be served from a building alcove, plastic chairs spilling out into the street, as on the locally famous “beer corner” intersection where the price contributes to the conviviality of buying rounds for anyone nearby in a round robin of merriment.

The boys at a Bia Hoi place, discussing the enigma of unwrapping a sausage wrapped in sticky rice wrapped in a banana leaf.

More properly it is found in open-sided beer halls.  Here there are tiny tables as well as low chairs, both inside and out, and food is as much of the experience as the beer.  Bar snacks of all kinds of grilled meats are popular, or, for a proper night out, get a hot pot (aka Chinese fondue) with plates of raw meat and fish, noodles and vegetables; cook, eat, finish your beer, and repeat until it’s really, really late.  On our first night, to one side was a table of local 20 somethings, to the other was a group in Vietnamese army uniforms, behind them was a group of older men, and beyond, dozens more tables with groups of all kinds.   It’s the same scene every night of the week.

During the day, Bia Hoi is replaced with coffee.  Coffee shops are everywhere in the country, usually small storefronts open to the street with all chairs facing out.  As anywhere, you order a cup of coffee and sit for hours using the free wifi.  But here the coffee is always served with a side of iced tea.  And the coffee itself is different: much much stronger than espresso, or Turkish (or Greek) coffee, and made with a high percentage of Robusta beans.

(This finally explains why Vietnamese restaurants in the US all use Café du Monde, which never struck me as a particularly Vietnamese brand.  In the west, Robusta beans are the organ meats of the coffee world (or perhaps more like USDA Select meat, with Arabica corresponding to Choice) and are nearly impossible to get, at least on purpose.   Café du Monde adds chicory to bulk up the coffee, a holdover from the days when the real beans were harder to get in New Orleans and needed to be stretched.  For the Vietnamese, the bitterness from the chicory substitutes for the darker, rougher flavor of Robusta.  The coffee in an American Vietnamese place isn’t quite the same, but that may have as much to do with the fact that the beans here are fresh rather than canned.)

At any rate, the stuff is ridiculously strong.  It is typically served iced (especially in the south), and the recipe calls for about one finger of sweetened condensed milk, one finger of brewed coffee, and a large glass of ice.  Yes, once ounce of the stuff not only stands up to condensed milk, but stays strong when diluted with 10 times as much ice.

Hanoi Egg Coffee

Hanoi has its own special variant: egg coffee.  This is the same thimble full of coffee, but served hot, and topped with heavy, thick, sweet, whipped egg; it’s like a cappuccino made with a meringue so dense it is practically custard.  If you don’t get a heart attack from the caffeine, you’ll go into diabetic shock from the blinding sweetness.

Hanoi’s other specialty is motorbikes.  Again, I’d sound naïve without our bona fides – most of the world is inundated with scooters and small motorcycles – but we’ve never seen anyplace where they come in such dense clouds; motorbikes are the very air you breathe.  Crossing streets is like jumping into a stream, fighting the current to reach the other side.  There is no waiting for an opening in the traffic, you simply step in with blind faith that the drivers are glancing up from their phones once in a while, and stride across with as consistent and predictable a pace as you can.  It feels like swimming through a school of fish as the buzzing mass envelops you, somehow forming a little bubble.  At intersections, both directions go simultaneously, weaving through each other seamlessly.

Other lessons from the streets throughout Vietnam:

They really do wear those cone hats.

You park your motorbike (or car) in your living room, to the side of the TV and in front of the enormous monolithic dining table.  Your living room opens to the street with a commercial style scroll door, which is open if you are home.

Bicycles are not ridden, but are used as merchandise carts.

Yes, there is actually a bicycle under there. Steering is by a rope tied to the handlebars.

Beer (aside from Bia Hoi) is served with a giant ice cube, for which you pay separately.

Sunscreen is only available as an extra ingredient in skin whitener.

Motorbikes are used to carry cattle

That’s a lot of beef to drag behind 120cc’s.

You buy “hygienic” ice on the street from a woman with a pile of ice blocks, a saw, and an old rusty grinder.  Her delivery comes every other day.

Giving you the cold shoulder.

The hand motion for “come here” is indistinguishable from the motion you would use to shoo someone away (fingers pointed down, brushing imaginary crumbs).  That takes some getting used to.

Since the motorbike (typically a 120 cc “underbone” Yamaha Nouvo in the north, Honda Wave in the south) is the family car, it needs a baby seat: a high chair is balanced in front of the driver.

Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s a Britax high chair.

You know those tiny dried shrimp you get in ramen noodle cups?  For us, they will forever be known as “sidewalk shrimp.”

Virtually all of the shrimp in the US comes from Vietnam.