By now we’ve traveled as a family to many countries and we can’t help but make comparisons between one country or city to another that we’ve already been to.  It’s a small world after all.  Something we see in one place will remind us of another place around the world. But Hanoi is a city like no other place that I have ever been to.  It is crazy, congested, chaotic.  Crossing the street means taking your life in your hands every time.  If you cross the street 10 times to get where you want to go, that means you are testing fate 10 times.  For anyone who loves a vibrant, lively city, and John and I do, Hanoi is the place to be.  We loved it.

Only a week before we left on this tour around SE Asia, both Halyard and Kaiyo went to Hanoi for the global round of World Scholars Cup (WSC).  It’s an international competition in which schools compete against each other in academic challenges such as debate, trivia, writing and research.  So the boys got to see a lot more of Hanoi than the rest of us, and they got to see it from an entirely different perspective, having hung out with their peers the entire time.Wednesday, July 12.  When we landed in Hanoi (flying here from Chiang Mai, Thailand) our plane was very late.  I had already booked a tour with a group called Hanoi Kids.  This wonderful group is operated by college student volunteers who offer to take people around Hanoi for free.  You have to book in advance and give Hanoi Kids your information, sightseeing interests and schedule.  They send confirmations and reminders so you don’t forget to meet their students at the right time and place.  We had arranged to meet in our hotel lobby so at least they had a comfortable, air conditioned place to wait for us.  When we arrived at our hotel we were met by two sweet college girls.  They spoke perfect English and one of them had even been a volunteer with the World Scholars Cup competition that the boys had attended!Halyard had met a new friend at WSC that he was eager to meet up with so he waited at the hotel for his friend to arrive.  The rest of us decided to get something to eat with the college girls.  They took us to a special restaurant that serves a uniquely Vietnamese dish called Cha Ca.  This dish is highlighted by three types of fish and a lot of greens and it was the best meal we had in Vietnam.   Even Kaiyo and Avalon agreed it was tasty.  After the fish and greens are stir fried at your table, you can add rice noodles, sauce, herbs, chili peppers, peanuts, shrimp paste or fish sauce to your bowl to adjust to your personal taste.  I wonder if I’ll ever find Cha Ca outside of Vietnam.  I’ll be looking for it in Westminster, California, home to the largest population of expat Vietnamese in the US.
Then the girls showed us how to cross a street in Hanoi.  First you have to know that in a city of, let’s say 7.5 million people, there are possibly 5 million motorbikes and scooters on the road.  It’s the most heavily used mode of transportation.  Cars are gaining in popularity with Vietnam’s recent economic growth, but public transportation is pretty much non-existent.  Traffic rules probably exist, but whatever they are it’s a mystery to me.  Motorbikes are practically shoulder to shoulder on the road and everyone just goes every which way whenever they are able.  Some intersections have traffic signals but many do not.

Our guides explained that in order to cross the street, you look for an opening and then you walk at a steady pace and do not break your stride.  It might help to have blinders on because it’s really hard not to halt your step when you see 5 motorbikes headed straight for you.  An Irish gal I met in Vietnam said it’s like doing everything your parents told you not to do in the street.  So to recap, you step out, you ignore the hundreds of motorbikes zooming all around you, you keep walking and you do not slow down and you do not speed up.  The people just swerve around you as they anticipate your walking pace.  It’s honestly a bit nerve wracking but at the same time utterly fascinating.After Cha Ca we were going to hurry over to see one of Hanoi’s famous sites.  I wanted to see the Temple of Literature, but we didn’t have a lot of time and then the sky opened up and it started pouring buckets of rain.  Here’s a great scene that I loved about Hanoi.  Just before the rain started pouring we passed these men getting haircuts on the street.  They are literally just sitting on the sidewalk.  They must have gotten soaked just a few minutes after we saw them.    Instead of the Temple of Lit (Kaiyo is the only one of us who got to go there) we decided to take shelter from the rain in a little local shop called Cafe Dinh that serves the city’s famous egg coffee.  I had read online about this drink, “cà phê trúng,” a Hanoi specialty in which a creamy soft, meringue-like egg white foam is perched on dense Vietnamese coffee, using whipped egg yolk and sweetened condensed milk and other secret ingredients.  Since John loves coffee, I knew we had to find it.

Here is the path to Cafe Dinh: Walk to the back of a seemingly random store, then down a very, narrow alley with motorbikes parked alongside, then up two flights of steep stairs, then into a small shop.  At no part along the way does it look like this is going to lead to a popular cafe.  They said it’s a very well known cafe that has been run by the same family for 50 years.  From the sidewalk below you cannot detect any sign of a cafe above, unless you know it’s there.  I have since read that this cafe is well known online, but I think it’s pretty hard to find and so it remains a locals hangout.  Here’s the view from the balcony of the cafe.  This is very light traffic for Hanoi.  I must have taken this photo during a momentary lull in traffic.  (By this time the rain had stopped.  It just rains really hard for about 10-20 minutes.)
We ordered egg coffee and another Hanoi specialty drink using Dracontomelon fruit that they recommended for Kaiyo and Avalon.  I really had to do a lot of research to come up with the name of the fruit in that drink.  Here’s a photo of our drinks!

We were able to get seats on the balcony of this cafe and look out upon the busy street below and Hoan Kiem Lake just across the street.  It was just the perfect setting.  And we sat on little plastic and wooden stools that look like they are made for pre-schoolers but are in fact used by everyone of any age in Hanoi.  There are literally hundreds of these little stools along sidewalks in the Old Quarter and just about every one of them are occupied with someone’s butt.  People love to sit and socialize on their little plastic stools in Hanoi!  Our drinks were uniquely Hanoi and making them even better they were only $1 USD each.  Unbelievable.  Look at these kawaii (cute) girls!After we were all full from our cha ca and ca phe trung, we wandered around the streets of Hanoi looking at shops and buying souvenirs.  Our guides led us to Saint Joseph’s Cathedral, a Catholic church reminiscent of Paris’ Notre Dame.  The main gate to the temple is only open on days when mass is going on so we couldn’t have a look inside.  It is very nice on the outside.

We all went back to our hotel after that and chatted some more about Hanoi and our respective family stories.  They were the perfect guides and we all really enjoyed getting to know them.  One of the girls had a slight British accent which she said she was working on.  I find that so amusing and frankly, it’s something I’d never thought about before.  You can actually pick which English accent you like best and go with it when you are studying English pronunciation!  Fascinating.  The other girl told the most interesting story about her family’s roots in the army and how they came to have a nice property in the middle of the Old Quarter.  Her family’s house sounds extremely special, in the same way that my brother-in-law’s family owns a valuable piece of oceanfront property in Carmel, such rare ownership only comes with a certain amount of luck and privilege.

Thank you so much for a wonderful tour of Hanoi.  We loved Hanoi even more because we had a personal tour of some really awesome places in the city.  I haven’t made this a travel blog in the sense that I’m promoting any businesses, but Hanoi had two of the best services that we came across in all of our travels.  One was Hanoi Kids which can be found at:  http://hanoikids.org

And the other was the Golden Sun Suites Hotel which was hands down one the best places we stayed at for location, comfort, cleanliness, price point, breakfast buffet, shower pressure, spaciousness, view, perfect WiFi and most of all top notch hospitality.  We booked two rooms for the five of us and they set us up in adjoining rooms with an open door between them.  And there were five “real” beds which I know Avalon appreciated.  We stayed at a lot of wonderful places in SE Asia with different charm.  This hotel is very modern and the staff is especially charming and helpful from the very beginning of booking.  http://www.goldensunhotel.com/suites