Vietnam: Last piece of Hanoi

It was the morning when we had to fly back to Malaysia. We went for a walk before leaving for airport.


We were not able to locate the Banh Bao stall in my note. So, we simply picked one stall.


It was very similar to Chinese bao. Besides the juicy meat, I found a hard boiled quail egg in it. A good choice for breakfast.


We stopped by a bakery shop.


Customer shopping for pastries and cakes.


We took away some french snacks which we finished it before we even reached the airport. :p

And here are two typical views in Vietnam,


the street sellers and


the complicated cables.

With this, my Vietnam trip had come to an end. We returned home with super heavy luggage.


Famous Kinh-Do mooncake gift box for our family. We bought two boxes, one box with conservative flavors(normal nuts and beans), another box with creative flavors(scallops, bbq meat etc). The aforementioned box came with a pack of Vietnam green tea.


Clockwise from left: Vi Lan coffee and condensed milk; toys for little princess; Vietnamese soldier caps for little prince; key chain

Banh Ngot
Bui Cong Trung
20 Hang Bo
Hoan Kiem
Hanoi

Vietnam: Eat till you drop!

Yes, we did that. 4 meals, 2 drinks and 2 desserts in a day. No wonder my pants are getting tighter these days. Back to the topic, I am going to fit all of them into one single post. The first two was covered in earlier two posts - Banh Cuon Gia Truyen and Ong Duong Che.
And, here are the rest.

It was definitely not a strange place to Hanoi foodie. I read that Hanoian had Bun Cha for lunch, not too sure if it would open for dinner. So we were there at lunch time and the restaurant was almost full. We were guided all the way to the 3rd floor. Luckily they had 3rd floor!


a relatively clean restaurant in Hanoi


The famous dish was Bun Cha, the bowl of meat in the above picture. It was grilled minced pork in fish sauce. We also ordered Nem Cua Be(fried spring roll with crab meat and pork meat), the blue plate.


I took single shots for each of the dishes, including Saigon special beer.


My bowl


After Bun Cha, we went to Vi Lan coffee again. Same order, a glass of iced milk mocha coffee and a glass of iced milk weasel coffee.


Then, we decided to buy some Vietnam coffee. Above was the quotation from the owner. We bought Mocha and Weasel 1kg each. With that purchase, we were given two Vietnam coffee drips. ;)


Li Van Cafe


So the owner placed the fresh bean into the grinder and packed the ground coffee. We requested to have smaller pack of 200g. She even made us a glass of dripped coffee.


When we were at Hang Gai street, it started to pour with rain. I browsed my note and found that there was a famous cafe nearby.


It was Cafe Pho Co, aka hidden cafe. It was so true. The shop was hidden behind one of the touristy shop.


And we had to passed through a dark and narrow corridor.


The corridor led us to a tall courtyard. We were asked to place our order before climbing the staircase.


We started to make the climb to higher level. I read that half the fun was the climbing.


There were Chinese influences in the cafe.


It was a bit scary when I looked down. :)


We reached the highest level, which was the highlight of Cafe Pho Co.


It offered panoramic view of Hoan Kiem lake. But too bad that it was raining, thus the view was unclear. This area was wet and cold. We managed to find an inner table which was not wet.


The cafe was famous for Ca Phe Trung, literally "egg coffee". It meant hot coffee with whipped egg. It reminded me of Zabaglione, an Italian dessert. Sad to say, we did not like the raw egg taste. Another drink was iced avocado.


We were the only customers at the top level. When we left, we saw other customers sitting comfortably at second level. Why did we insist to sit at the highest level when it was raining? I knocked my head.


We wanted some hot soup after the rain. Therefore we walked to Bat Dan street for the much-hyped Pho Bo(beef noodle soup). There were only 3 selections, Pho Chin Nam(beef noodle soup with rare sliced beef and flank, 30kVND), Pho Tai(beef noodle with rare sliced beef, 25kVND) and Pho Chin(beef noodle with well done sliced beef, 20kVND).


My bowl of Pho Chin Lam


For the last dinner in Hanoi, we went to the legendary Cha Ca La Vong, recommended by travel writer, Patricia Schultz in her book '1000 places to see before you die'. The restaurant was located at Cha Ca street, or the street was named after the famous Cha Ca dish. Be aware, there were many similar restaurants selling Cha Ca in this street, but none of it served better than Cha Ca La Vong.


the only dish in the restaurant - Cha Ca.


The grilled fish was served in a pan, over a small pottery burner. The waiter helped us to add the bowl of spring onion and herbs into the sizzling pan. We placed the turmeric grilled fish, vermicelli and peanut into our bowl, mixed it and finished it. Since we had been eating for the whole day, we only ordered for one person serving.

It was here where we met HugoLim's family, coming from Penang too. We chatted happily and we decided to go to the night market together.


some shots in the night market


The night market was quite big and we decided to stop for my favorite Che again. I ordered Che and Hugo ordered Sua Chua(yogurt dessert). He did not like his Sua Chua. I am so sorry Hugo, I should have recommended Che to you.


We walked too much until our legs almost break. When we saw this massage shop, we knew that we had to stop for a break before walking back to our hotel.


We paid 80kVND for 60min foot massage. The massage instantly loosened our tense muscles and melted away our stress.


The price list

Nha Hang Dac Kim
1 Hang Manh
Old Quarter
Hanoi

Vi Lan Cafe 好味咖啡
24, Hang Giay
Old Quarter
Hanoi

Cafe Pho Co
11 Hang Gai
Old Quarter
Hanoi

Pho Gia Truyen
49 Bat Dan
Old Quarter
Hanoi

Cha Ca La Vong
14 Pho Cha Ca
Old Quarter
Hanoi

Weekend market
Starts at Hang Dao St, ends at Dong Xuan market
Friday, Saturday & Sunday 6pm onwards

Che Xoan
23, Hang Duong
Old Quarter
Hanoi