Monthly Archives: August 2012

Streetside Groceries

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After finishing our bún cá and paying for the delicious dish, we continued our walking tour in the Old Quarter Hanoi. We decided to play it by ear and just turned on the next block to see what’s on the next street. The Old Quarter Hanoi consists of around 36 small streets, each street was named after a particular item that was sold at the stores on that street (e.g. Hàng Gà means Chicken Street, that’s where you could find people selling chickens, Hàng Giầy means Shoes Street, where you can find stores selling shoes, etc.). Today you can still find some of the specializations on the streets, though they may not necessarily match the original street name.

It was a weekend night, so all the stores were open. In front of the stores, there were many street vendors setting up their stands. This made the narrow streets felt even narrower. We pretty much walked close to the middle of the street as there was no sidewalk to walk on. Pedestrians shared the street with motorcycles. During the day, there were cars also going through these streets. At night, it’s pretty much impossible for the cars to go through there.

On one of the streets we noticed something that we didn’t expect to see. We were getting used to see streetside vendors selling snacks or some hot dishes. However, on one street, we saw vendors selling (fresh?) produce: vegetables, meat, etc. It’s kind of odd and out of place to see these on the side of a busy commercial street. I wonder who would be going out on a weekend night and while at it also buy fresh produce to take home… I also thought of contrasting this to how we buy produce in the grocery store in the US. In the US, we would watch for ‘sell by’ date to make sure we’re getting fresh items. In Hanoi, well, you have to know how to select your produce from the market and being able to determine if something is fresh; there is no such thing as ‘sell by’ or expiration date.

I took the photo below as we walked through one of the streets. Here you can see a lady selling (fresh) meat, right in front of a store that sells household goods, and next to the motorcycle parking. Does that look like a place you would get the meat for your dinner from? It was around 50 F temperature that night, so it’s almost like having natural refrigeration for the meat. Though I wasn’t sure how clean it was to have it out there with exhaus from traffic passing by in the air…

Fresh Meat

The Old Man and the Fish Noodle Soup

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Since our planned excursion with the Hanoi Kids was cancelled, Kristi and I had to figure out what to do instead. We decided to still go ahead and explore the Old Quarter Hanoi at night, even though we had to ‘play it by ear’ without a tour guide. We stopped by at the front desk of our hotel, and once again the helpful front desk lady provided us with a map of the Old Quarter streets, and told us that since it was Friday night, there was a street market that we should check out.

During the planning for the trip, I did some Internet research to find out what people had to say about the best street foods you can find in Hanoi. Of course each individual has his/her preference on the best place to go for a certain dish, so I decided to just gather a list of the places many people mentioned about ‘the best place to get …’ Most of the places are addresses in the Old Quarter Hanoi where you can find the street vendors. Many of these places didn’t necessary have name; so you pretty much treat it as ‘going to the place at the particular address where they serve a specific dish.’

Since we didn’t really have any particular plan for the night, we decided to look at the list of the street vendors and tried to locate the street name on our map. Once we found the street, we started to plot our walking route from the hotel to the streets, and we came up with a route that should pass several of these food vendors. We decided to make this our own ‘Vietnamese street food walking tour.’

The first place we located on the map was very close from our hotel; it was around the block, only about two minute walk. It’s a little food stand selling bún cá, a rice noodle soup dish with fried fish fillet and vegetables. When we got to the place, there were three tables and enough seating for less than eight people. There were a couple of people eating, and an old gentleman at the front preparing the dish. I don’t know if he understood English, I just use hand gesture to ask for one bowl of the bun ca (the only item on the menu). While the food itself was pretty cheap (about 15000 VND, around USD $0.75), we only ordered one to share so we could save some room for more things to try out later on that night. It was pretty tasty; a good way to start the night. At the end, again with hand gestures I asked the old man how much it was, and he used his hand gestures to indicate that it was 15,000 VND.

The photo below was taken from across the street of the small noodle store. You can see the kitchen set up in the front of the store with the old man working on the food behind the counter. The little table for two where we sat was the one on the front right near the bicycle.

Bun Ca Store

Hanoi Kids

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After a couple of days ‘off the grid’ on the cruise in Ha Long Bay, we were ready to be back to Hanoi. We only had one night left to explore the city, but we were looking forward to this part of the trip since we had a ‘date’ to meet someone from a group called Hanoi Kids who will be our local guide to explore the Old Quarter area of the city in a weekend night.

I came across the Hanoi Kids when I looked for information on things to do in Hanoi during the trip planning. It’s quite a unique organization, as it’s basically a club comprised of local university students who are interested in the hospitality industry, or simply would like to share their culture and learn about other cultures through interaction with foreigners.

So if you’re coming to Hanoi and you’re interested in getting one of the Hanoi Kids to show you around the town, you just have to arrange for a guide via email. They will assign a Hanoi Kid or two who are available on the desired date and time to meet you at your hotel and take you around to places that you want to see. It’s completely a voluntary and non-profit group, so there is no cost for the tour guide, but you are expected to pay their transportation and meal cost during the tour. Since the purpose is a cultural exchange, some guests suggested that you would bring a souvenir from your home country to give to your tour guide.

I contacted the group a couple of months before our trip once we solidified the travel dates. We only had an evening when we could do the trip, but I was quite excited when I heard back from them that it would work out. We would have a Hanoi Kid come and meet us at our hotel after we get back from Ha Long Bay to help show us around the Old Quarter area. Our interest was particularly to check out the street-side food vendors, so we would like to have the Hanoi Kid to take us to places that he/she personally likes to go.

After checking in to our room at the Hanoi Serenity Hotel again, I checked my email to find out about the meeting time with the Hanoi Kid. I did get an email from the group, but unfortunately it was a cancellation of the tour, because apparently thry had been trying to contact me in the last couple of days to confirm the tour, but since we were ‘off the grid’ in Ha Long Bay, we didn’t get their message until it’s too late.

So no Hanoi Kids experience for this trip. We decided to still explore the Old Quarter Hanoi on our own anyway that night. Below is the front store display of a restaurant in Old Quarter Hanoi that we passed. It had many dishes that looked appetizing, but we were not sure if we could communicate with the store owner, so we decided to pass. I’ll try again coordinating a Hanoi Kids experience on my next visit to Hanoi.

Local Restaurant

New Development

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After ending our cruise back at the Ha Long City port, we continued our trip back to Hanoi on a minivan ride similar to the one that took us from Hanoi before the cruise. The guests from our boat were split to separate minivans given our destinations in Hanoi. So we said goodbye to the other guests whom we came to know during the trip.

The drive back to Hanoi took about almost four hours. That included a stop in the middle at a souvenir shop / rest area. Since all of the minivans carrying the guests back to Hanoi left around the same time, we ended up seeing each other again at the rest stop.

During this trip back, I made an interesting observation on the economic development in the area between Hanoi and Ha Long City. When we left Ha Long City, we passed a toll gate that seemed to be part of a way to fund the development of the highway between the two cities. The road between the two cities was still a non-divided highway for most of it, but I could see the need to either to widen the road or make it a divided road.

It looked like there were increase in traffic to accomodate the growth in both tourism and manufacturing industry in the area. As we got closer to Hanoi, we could see a visible sign of economic growth in Vietnam as there were manufacturing facilities of multi-national companies like Canon that lined up on the side of the highway. There were also new residential and commercial construction coming up. I wonder if it would look very different if I come back again to the same place in a few years.

The photo below was taken somewhere in the middle of the trip. You can see new buildings being built in an empty lot. I thought it’s interesting that the buildings were built in the style of buildings in big city like Hanoi (on a narrow lot but deep and tall). It’s as if they’re anticipating it to be a high density development.

New Development

Service Excellence

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The last part of our Ha Long Bay cruise was a brunch that was served as we were on our way back to Ha Long City. The food served seemed to be the leftovers of the ingredients that the boat carried for the three-day cruise; unlike the previous meals, it was not set up as family style, but as individual portion. It was still really good; the food was as delicious as the previous meals we had during the cruise.

At the end of the meal, our tour guide Smiley called for our attention as he wanted to acknowledge the crew members of the junk boat that had been serving us during the cruise. There were six of them serving us. Some were more visible as they were on the forefront in preparing for our activities and serving us during the meals. There were also a couple of them who were behind the scenes, including our boat captain and chef.

Once everyone was introduced, we gave them a nice round of applause thanking them for their excellent service. I had never been on a cruise before, but in comparison to services received in other hospitality industry before, this was definitely among the best. What’s impressive was when we found out that the chef who cooked all of the wonderful meals during the trip was a young man in his early 20s.

I’m not sure how long typically these guys stay in the same business; I’m sure for many of them this is only a stepping stone towards other careers. Hopefully the training and experience they get from this job would translate to brighter future.

The photo below was taken at the end of the cruise. You can see here the crew of the boat who helped make the cruise a memorable experience for the guests. The guy in red jacket was the chef who prepared the delicious meals during the cruise.

Dragon's Pearl Crew Members