Previous Day: Day Trip to Trang An
Destination: Hanoi, Vietnam
Duration: 4 Days 4 Night (Aug 29~Sep 02, 2018)
Day 4: The Sound of the Rain needs no Translation
After 2 days of joining planned day excursion, we’d decided
to spend our last day in Hanoi by foot to explore the rest of the city. This
was the last day we would be exploring the city as we had an early morning
flight to Penang tomorrow. We started the day with very light breakfast at
hotel before starting our food hunting.
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| Just couldn't resist the Baguette! |
Our 1st destination was
Dream Beans Coffee as it was highly rated in tripadvisor for their coconut
coffee & egg coffee. We ordered the 2 products and the owner seemed to be
really passionate about it and explained to us on how to drink it. The coconut
coffee consisted double shot of espresso with one already with coconut ice
cream on top but another shot to be added in on top of the ice cream. The main difference
between Dream Beans Coffee and the café we tried last 2 days was the stronger
coffee taste. The owner mentioned this was how he wanted to position &
differentiate from others. As a non-coffee drinker, I did managed to drink at
least some mouth of the coconut coffee before getting ‘drunk’. But I must say
that the coconut coffee did taste very refreshing due to the icy coconut ice
cream. Hubby had to finish off the remaining 3.5 shots of expresso by his own. Oops…
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| In Dream Beans Coffee |
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| Coconut Coffee & Egg Coffee |
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| Coconut Coffee after the extra shot of Espresso... |
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| Getting Drunk on Coffee! |
After the heavy shot of espresso, we noticed that the famous
Banh Cuon Ba Hanh was just like 10 steps away. We couldn’t resisted and walked
in to order a set of “Teen’s Choice Combo’ for sharing. The set consisted of 4
rice rolls, 1 omelet with mushroom, 1 lemon glass skewer & a glass of soya
milk. The set looked so instagrammable when it was served and it tasted great
as well. The rice roll was really silky and melt in your mouth goodness with
the mushroom inside added in extra palate. Gosh I wished I’d discovered this
earlier!
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| Banh Cuon Ba Hanh - a Must-try in Hanoi!!! |
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| Our Teen's Choice Combo - for some reason we were given 5 rice rolls instead of 4 per written in the menu... |
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| Yummy Rolls!!! |
After an overly full stomach, we continued to Hoa Lo Prison
to take a look at the living quarters of the POW. The place was really depressing
and was smaller than expected. The story there was during ‘peak season’, the
POW couldn’t even lay down properly due to the space constraint. Needless to
say there was a lot of horror stories on the board which was not for the faint
hearted. There was also a guillotine there which made the place even creepier.
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| Hoa Lo Prison |
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| Scary.. |
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| The drain where the prisoners escaped from... |
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| Cannot imagine how to crawl through this... |
After leaving the prison, we walked through the French quarter
to take some pictures of the Opera House and some other French buildings. It seemed
like the road around Hoan Kiem Lake had been closed for either weekend or in preparation
of Vietnam National Day which falls on tomorrow. People were setting up stages in
the square as well. We took advantage of the closed road to walk freely on the
road without having to worry about traffic. We visited the famous Ngoc Son
Temple and took more pictures around the lake before departing to Dong Xuan
Market.
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| Opera House |
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| A Full View of the Opera House |
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| At the French Quarters |
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| At the Square where the celebration is being setup |
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| Another nice French Style building.. |
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| Sammy & the Turtle Tower |
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| The Fallen Tree |
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| Entrance to Ngoc Son Temple |
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| The Red Bridge! |
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| Ngoc Son Temple & the Lake |
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| Turtle Tower on my palm! |
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| No Cars Day? |
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| Old Buildings at Old Quarters - look at how narrow they are.. |
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| The Old Quarter's Landmark! |
We actually walked past the Crab Noodle Soup place (which was closed
during the 2 nights we went) and this time it was opened!!! Thank goodness!!! We
sat right in front of the stall and ordered 1 bowl of the noodle with fried
fritters. It was a tomato soup base so it was really appetizing. The downside
was the hot weather which made us sweated a river while eating the hot noodle. Luckily
there was a convenience stall nearby where we bought cold Hanoi Beer before we
fainted under the sun.
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| Eating like a Local!!! |
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| Our Crab Noodle Soup! |
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| Another Nice Building at Old Quarter |
We finally arrived at Dong Xuan Market after some walk under
the hot sun, where is the rain when we needed it? The market had more than 1
level and was packed full of stalls. However, I think the non-stop walking had
caught up with us and we actually just sat there without actually exploring the
stalls. *facepalm* This was when our jaded lover decided to visit with a
vengeance – one might ask which jaded lover? The rain of course! This time the
scorned weather brought us torrential rainfall so we took the opportunity to continue
sitting inside Dong Xuan market. Well, this was definitely the classic example
of be careful of what you wished for! =P
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| The Famous Dong Xuan Market |
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| Resting during the Rain... |
Once the rain turned gentle, we walked to Serein Café which
had a fantastic view overlooking the Long Bien Bridge. The bridge was designed
by French Architect Gustave Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame. There was also a
stretch of mosaic wall in the area which was finished in 2010 to commemorate
the Millennial Anniversary of Hanoi. We sat at the covered balcony with some
soda & margarita overlooking the bridge. We also saw some brave souls
finding an opening at the railroad gate on the bridge to get inside to take pictures.
Before we left the café, we went to the rooftop which was closed initially due
to the rain to take more pictures.
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| Found Serein Cafe |
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| Happy Family! |
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| Let's have some Margarita while we are at it! |
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| A View from the Rooftop |
With some alcohol in our brain, we walked towards the bridge
and found that small opening of the railroad as well. Well, my advice was DO
NOT TRY THIS!! At least go read the train schedule 1st before doing
this. The schedule was right at the train station on the way to the bridge. We quickly
took few pictures and jumped out of the railroad – the process took less than
5minutes as we did not want to risk our life further even in our alcohol-fuel
mind. We continued to walk towards the middle of the bridge on the pedestrian lane
to take picture of the muddy Red River. One thing we noticed was the
motorcycles there were absolutely crazy on the bridge as a lot of them were
driving on opposite direction and they did not care about it at all and horned
all the way. Seriously!
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| This is Forbidden!!! |
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| The Mosaic Wall - too lazy to walk down there to take a closer picture though.. |
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| The Bridge & the Red River |
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| The Train Station! |
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| The Train that went through the Bridge!!!! |
We finally made our long walk back to our hotel after a long
long day. However the journey was distracted by the street foods – it was as if
we hadn’t had our tummy full to the brink. We bought the meat skewer from the
roadside stall and had some dessert thingie in the front of the shop since we
saw lots of locals eating that. The skewer was quite hard to bite but the
dessert was quite refreshing with milky taste. I think it was quite similar to
the Thai dessert – tub tim krob. One could even requested to add Durian inside
that dessert.
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| The Skewers Stall |
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| Got our Dessert as well! |
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| Refreshing!!! |
We made another detour again to the famous Banh Mi 25 as it
was just on the way back to our hotel. We ordered the mixed banh mi and an egg
& pate banh mi. I must say I was not disappointed as their Banh Mi was
indeed delicious and packed full of flavors. It was definitely on par with An Café’s
- the main differentiator was An Café had fried shallots on the banh mi. So if
you are not a fan of fried shallots, Banh Mi 25 is the one for you!
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| More Banh Mi!!! |
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| Yummy Yummy!!! |
Our tummy almost burst after the non-stop eating but hb
decided to make another detour to another dessert shop! OMG!! I think the shop
is called che ba thin and hb ordered this sticky rice thing with thick ginger
broth and a sweet drinks with tons of ingredients in it with coconut flakes
topping. The shop was packed full of locals and we had to make our order by
pointing at what the local was eating there since the menu was in Vietnamese. I
liked the drink since it was revitalizing but the sticky rice and the
ingredients inside the drinks were definitely not my cup of tea.
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| Yet another Dessert Shop!!! |
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| Vietnamese Traditional Dessert! |
We finally reached the hotel by 8pm and we could hardly move
anymore. We kept hearing horning during the night no doubt due to the national
day celebration but we were too old to join the party anymore. We had an early flight
tomorrow and had to leave the hotel by 6.30am.
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| Can't feel my legs anymore |
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| Last Night at Hotel |
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| Sammy getting Attacked!!! |
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| On the Nose!!! |
Day 5: The Best thing one can do when it's raining is to let
it Rain
We had an early checkout from the hotel at 6.15am. Our
booked car from klook called the hotel and told us to walk outside to the left
to meet the driver. However, it seemed like the hotel mixed up and escorted us
to walk to the right instead! We were waiting there for a while before decided
to walk back to the hotel to re-confirm before seeing the driver waiting at the
left junction. *facepalm* We finally arrived at the airport and the immigration
and scanning queue was really long. At the end we had to rush to the gate
without having a chance to browse the shops in the airport.
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| Time to go back to Reality... |
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| Run Forest Run!!! |
The flight was quite empty so we got to take the whole row
for ourselves. Yay! The flight departed & arrived in Penang on time. Little
did we know that torrential rain had followed us back to Penang! There were
even floods in the Bayan Lepas area…
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| Sammy has his own seat!!! |
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| Goodbye Hanoi... |
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| We will miss you!!! |
All in all, a trip to Hanoi in the rain? Why not? There's
just something romantic about a walk in the rain especially in a city full of
French architectures. Not to mention the surprises and advantages one may face
traveling in a ‘bad timing’. Other than beautiful architectures and landscape,
Hanoi also offers lots of mouth-watering local cuisines to warm your tummy in a
cold wet day. The memory of rain-kissed Hanoi will definitely imprint into our
heart.
