“There goes takeout”
- Ruth Mcbride
- Oct 4
- 6 min read
After another wonderful breakfast on the 63rd floor buffet at the LOTTE hotel in Hanoi where I tried ‘congee’ for the first time, we decided to head out on our own today in the Old Quarter of Hanoi.
Congee with dried scallions and a pickled fruit, rice, and some fermented veggies and ground beef. I’m enjoying the Asian style breakfasts I am having in Hanoi!
Richard had downloaded the GRAB app so we went to the lobby of the LOTTE hotel and checked with the concierge that we were calling the GRAB correctly and within about 8 minutes a Hyundai Accent showed up to take us to the Old Quarter. Richard had cash to pay the driver and the 25 minute ride in traffic was going to cost $2.50CAD!
I wanted to head to P. Phung Hung street to see the painted murals of Hanoi which were finished in 2018 as a joint international art exchange project between Vietnam and South Korea. The Phung Hung Street art project is meant to celebrate 25 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Just as we arrived to view the murals on P. Phung Hung Street which is also called “Train Street”, it was time for the local Hanoi train to pass by overhead of us and the murals. Wasn’t that good timing!
The start of the wall murals on a blocked off pedestrian street set up for the upcoming Lantern Festival where we could enjoy the murals without busy traffic or noisy motor scooters.
The murals are full scale taking up one section of the each arched wall, or there were some painted in smaller sections as you can see from the bottom left and and right photos . The detail on the murals was pretty amazing!
Street of Flowers is the name of this painting
I really liked this mural the best but I forgot to get the mural’s name. What an amazing tromp L’oeil effect which makes you think you are actually looking down and through an old alley way in Hanoi.
This next part of the blog might be disturbing for people so just skip it and return to reading where I have a picture of Richard posted if you do not want to read and see something disturbing.
As we were walking through the pedestrian area where the murals were painted I saw something cooked with a tail that did not look like Peking duck. The animal was too large for it to be a duck.
Many years ago when I was visiting South Korea with a colleague of mine, we were sitting on the curb, drinking a beer from 7-11 and waiting for Namdaemun Night Market in Seoul to open. Just before the market opened a man walked out with two dogs under his arms. My friend Mark, from Hyundai says with a straight face “There goes takeout!” Well I spit out my beer I laughed so hard. I couldn’t believe what he had just said.
Well all these years later….I believed him.
Takeout anyone? The sign which I had to translate when I got back to the hotel literally means Dealer of Dog Meat (Cho is dog in English)
Apparently the younger generation in Vietnam frowns on eating dog meat, but older men in particular still enjoy it. Eating dogs was banned in Vietnam when the French colonized Vietnam, but once the French left Vietnam, the practise arose again.
Ok, I am glad I wasn’t sure what I had seen so early in the morning to ruin my day until I was able to get back to the hotel to translate the signage.
We walked around the Old Quarter shopping and looking for souvenirs today as we knew it would be one of the last times we had a lot of free time on our own on this trip.
It was super hot today too! The feels like temperature was 39C and I was dying without a hat on. The sweat was running down my face and back and I felt super uncomfortable and wasn’t sure how I would survive outside in the heat until 4pm when Richard had to go for his shirt fitting.
Luckily just as I was losing my cool we stumbled upon a bright, cool and really modern store called “Gingko”. Ginkgo was born 17 years ago with a single idea: inspire our customers with Vietnamese culture graphics to ensure that when you share your memories at home, the design, creativity and high quality reflect the true culture of Vietnam. The fabrics are all either certified organic cotton fabric or linen. I picked up a really nice linen top and a couple of really cool t-shirts for me and Richard which we will wear on this trip. Ginkgo also has some neat home decor and games that they designed.
Icons for the home in various colours. The store clerk explained to me that the green icons are for renewal and new life; red to reflect their Vietnamese culture, and yellow for happiness and warmth.
The famous See, Hear, Speak no evil figures but instead of being monkeys they are Buddhas.
With imitation being the highest form of flattery….
“Hanoiopoly” instead of Monopoly!
After cooling down in Gingko it was time to find me a hat!
We were looking for the ‘Dong Xuan’ market to try and find a straw hat since all of the hat places along the streets in the Old Quarter seemed to be baseball caps or knock off Lululemon or Patagonia dry fit hats. I wanted a brimmed hat and something cool that would breathe, so we headed to the market to see what we could find.
Dong Xuan market, Hanoi
The market was packed with vendors down very small aisles selling everything you could imagine. We were lucky to stumble down the aisle selling straw hats almost immediately so I was able to find a few hats to try on. Obviously at 6 feet tall my head is bigger than many Vietnamese women’s heads, so it was a bit challenging trying on hats that were far too small for my head. We eventually found a hat and without negotiating the hat was 100,000 Dong or about $5.29. It wasn’t worth negotiating at that price for the hat!
After purchasing a hat in the market we literally stumbled across a wonderful old restaurant for lunch called Lan Ong. Today was not a day for trying street food without a local guide to ensure we were being taken somewhere that would not make us both sick.
Amuse Bouche and some interesting juice which our server brought out for us to try Delicious!
Richard had vegetable fried rice and pickled veggies for his lunch
I had vegetable pho with some fresh buns Our server made a production of pouring the hot broth over my vegetables before I ate.
Christina our server mugging for the camera. Lunch was only $23.47 CAD.
After our late lunch it was time to find our way back to the custom tailor for Richard’s shirt fitting. He was given one of his shirts to try on in the dressing room.
Richard trying on his shirt.
The shirt was a bit too snug and the tailor behind the counter on his phone came out and said they would fix it. The shirts are to be delivered tomorrow to the LOTTE hotel to our room. Richard is worried now that the shirts will not fit. The tailor didn’t take more measurements which does worry us both. Let’s hope that Richard has not wasted his money on two shirts that are too small!
We wandered around the Old Quarter a bit longer and then decided it was time to find a Grab and get back to the hotel. The time was now dusk and rushhour so the Grab ‘surge’ pricing was in effect We could not find a Grab near us so we decided to walk to a quieter section of Hanoi; near the Lake, where we thought a Grab might be able to stop and pick us up.
On our trek to find a Grab we noticed that we were passing by the end of Train Street! Things were starting to hop on Train Street so there must have been train coming!
Train Street, Hanoi, Vietnam before a train arrival.
Tomorrow starts our guided land and River Cruise tour with Avalon. We have to be at a briefing at 8am tomorrow morning and be ready to leave the hotel at 8:30am so it will be a quick sleep and a very quick breakfast tomorrow morning. I’ve had about my fill of Hanoi on our own and am looking forward to some guided tours now, as Hanoi is a tricky place to walk since the sidewalks are all taken up with either parked motor scooters, or vendors selling their wares, and eating establishments with very small picnic tables and chairs, What this means is we are forced out onto the narrow streets to walk with the traffic or cars and motor scooters whizzing very close by. The step from the sidewalk to the road is often a cement block which may or may not be loose, so that also is another challenge. I spent a lot of time telling Richard to slow down ahead of me so that I could be careful with my footing as I certainly don’t need another life changing fall in Hanoi of all places!
The experience of doing Hanoi with a guide yesterday was much better than trying it on our own today, but we survived to tell the tale despite some of the rather disgusting things we saw today in the Old Quarter!
Comments