Little pop-up eateries and bars are everywhere. With no fixed dwelling, someone with a pot of the local favourite ‘Pho’ (a beef noodle broth) or a barrel of the local draught beer ‘bia hoi’ fresh from the brewery sets up their restaurant/bar with sprawling mini plastic chairs in the middle of the pavement, off the curb and into the road. They are on every pavement and street corner throughout the city and, they are unbelievably busy all day long. We had particularly enjoyable experiences at ‘bai hoi’ corner where our mini chairs were crowded together spilling into a chaotic traffic junction, mopeds just skimming your knees. No-one seemed to mind much with the beer at 12p a glass.
Hanoi, and Vietnam in general, is a gastronomic delight. My fears of getting sick were soon washed away by rice noodle galore, clay pots of pork, self rolled amazing spring rolls, and chicken served in a hundred differing ways. In Hanoi, we ventured to obvious firm favourites: Little Hanoi 1, 69 Restaurant and Newday, all equally as lovely as the next. It’s almost a paradise for the gluten free eater: soy sauce is seemingly rarely used and nearly everything is rice based bar egg noodles which I’ve mistakenly ordered twice. Most of the dips are fish sauce based which I have found a new liking for.
Before embarking on this trip away, I thought I knew my fruits and vegetables. Cue dragon fruit tasting like a kiwi, a pink spikey fruit much like a lychee inside, a huge grapefruit that tastes like an orange and small round yellow balls containing a sour opaque fruit– all amazing, refreshing and peel-able (according to many a travel guide and my mum, unpeeled fruit like apples are a no-no as you can’t guarantee what it’s been washed in). Coffee is served with condensed milk and, like in Malaysia, it is thick and black but slightly more bitter. I’ve avoided trying the speciality which is a coffee bean digested by a weasel and then used to brew the coffee. My adventurous nature stops at weasel poop.
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