We managed to stay up until about 10pm last night and woke up this morning at 8am so had a good nights sleep. Our plan for the morning was to do a self guided walking tour around the Old Quarter that I found on the internet. It was a massive sensory overload - the noise, the traffic, the people, the smells - everything happening at once! But it was really interesting to see people going about their everyday business and, in some streets, we were the only westerners around.
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| Typical street scene in Hanoi |
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| Fruit & veg stall |
As you walked along the streets you would see people preparing food out on the pavement, they would have little fires and fryers going and people would be sitting on stools eating their lunch - some of the food looked lovely, and others were like 'what are they eating!'.
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| People eating crab at one of the street restaurants |
We saw a number of temples and pagodas on our walk - one of the most scenic was the Ngoc Son Pagoda which was in the middle of the lake.
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| View of red bridge over to the Pagoda |
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| Outside the temple at the pagoda |
All the walking around was making us hungry, and after seeing and smelling all the lovely food around us we went to one of the local restaurants that sell Bun Bo Nam Bo - which is a dish of noodles topped off with stir fried beef which has been marinated and then fried in garlic and lemongrass with a ladle of tasty broth poured over it - it was delicious! We wanted an 'eating with the locals' experience without sitting on the street and this place was just right.
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| Lunch - and it only cost £1.50 per bowl! |
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| Peter tucking in! |
After lunch we went to Hoa Lo prison - also known as the 'Hanoi Hilton' - which was used by the French colonists in Vietnam for political prisoners, and later by North Vietnam for prisoners of war during the Vietnam War.
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| Peter has just realised I have the key to the cell! |
By this time we had been walking around for 5 hours and we were beginning to flag so we made our way back to the hotel for a rest. Although the weather is hot and humid it is bearable at the moment - I think it helps that there has been thick grey cloud (or it may be smog!) over us so we don't have the sun beating down and making us hotter.
This evening I had booked us on a street food tour - there was 6 of us in the group, we were with an Australian couple and a Colombian couple, along with two guides. The first stop we tried Banh Xeo, which is a crispy pancake with pork, shrimp and garnished with herbs - very tasty. The 2nd stop looked very familiar......it was the same place we went for lunch! Lucky we liked it the first time - this time we shared a bowl! We went to several other places and tried a number of different things including sugarcane juice (delish!), Cha cha la vong (grilled fish), bun cha (noodles and pork - very nice) and a tropical fruit salad with condensed milk whilst sitting on a street corner!
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| Banh Xeo pancake - yum! |
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| Eating fruit salad on a street corner! |
To finish off the evening we all had egg coffee which is a lot nicer than it sounds! It was a really enjoyable evening and it was nice to sit and chat to the others in our group (especially as the Australian man looks like a young George Clooney - see above picture!). The choice of drinks throughout the evening was either beer or beer so guess what, I had beer - Peter couldn't believe it but actually it tasted quite nice!
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| Egg coffee - tasty! |
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