After a bumpy 12 hour ride on the Sinh Tourist sleeper bus from Hue (300,000 VDG each or approx. $15), we reach Hanoi around 8:00am. We jump into a cab for the 1 km ride to The Landmark Hotel. I’d checked the route on my i-phone and thought the driver was taking us on a bit of a roundabout way… but then it is Monday morning and there’s quite a bit of traffic, so I give him the benefit of the doubt until we notice that the meter is sky high… We don’t say anything until we get to the hotel where he tries to charge us 250,000 VDG for what should have been a 20,000 VDG journey at the most L I give him a piece of my mind, and tell him to please join us at the hotel while I call the police… and he keeps haggling! I give him 50,000 VDG for the mileage and expletives stream out of his mouth as he departs…
The hotel staff are lovely - they serve us coffee, and then breakfast, as our room is being prepared. We get ourselves settled in and head out to lunch at 69 Restaurant which is set in a historic house in the Old Quarter – I try the fish mousse grilled on lemon grass sticks (to be eaten in rice paper rolls with various toppings, cucumbers, carrots, peanuts, rice noodles, an dipped in a sweet vinegary sauce) – it sounds a little odd but turns out to be quite delicious! Mike plays it safe with a Club Sandwich – he’s not quite as adventurous after he got sick…
The city is crazy busy and since neither of us has slept all that well, we decide we’ll delay sightseeing until tomorrow and to go for an aromatherapy massage at SF Spa instead (prices have gone up since Lonely Planet were there – 499,000 VDG, so approx. $25, rather than the $12 we expected). Mmmm… lovely.
We then head over to Indochina Junk to pay the balance of our Halong Bay booking on the Dragon’s Pearl 3 day/2 night trip (and ensure that it isn’t a dodgy copy cat operation…). It's quite a splurge ($255 pp) so we have to save on hotels for a while to make up for it!
On our way home we make a little unexpected detour by walking the wrong way and see a whole bunch of roasted... pigs? No, they turn out to be dogs… it makes us feel so queasy, we make sure to take a different route home...
We decide to go to Quan An Ngon, a restaurant which has a large number of food stalls, that each specialize in a certain dish (a posh version of street food). The concept seems to attract many Vietnamese diners alongside tourists, and the food is super fresh, delicious and cheap! We ate at a similar place in Saigon… ah, just checked… same restaurant, different city. I have amazing Vietnamese pancake rolls, and Mike tries duck and bamboo noodle soup and spare ribs with lemongrass and chili - he’s finally feeling better J We chat to our waitress, who’s a real darling. She’s from the countryside a few hours away, and is studying English in Hanoi. Unfortunately, like many Vietnamese, she hasn’t yet travelled very far in her own country. We also chat to a Dutch man on our neighboring table. He’s off for a five day motorbike trip in the highlands tomorrow, which sounds very exciting!
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