A Slower, Quieter, and Less Spicy Side to Southeast Asia (Hanoi & Ha Long)

Vietnam was a country that sat at the top of our must-visit list for years. Offering a lengthy, fractured tribal history, a strong royal tradition, a long-term link to Chinese philosophy, religion, and education, and with lingering, elegant hints of a much-detested French presence, Vietnam had the potential to be a melting pot of a totally different kind. We were fascinated to see the impact of the devastating “American War” today, and to understand history from an alternative perspective – and to witness the major upheavals still taking place in the wake of economic liberalization and increased engagement with the rest of the world. We were also falling over ourselves with excitement to try some authentic Vietnamese cuisine, since Vietnam seems to be the darling of many a celebrity chef, and our New York experiments set the bar pretty high.

The real Vietnam was, honestly, a bit underwhelming. We questioned whether this was our fault, since we definitely arrived with sky high expectations, pumped up by stories from friends and fellow travelers of life-changing bowls of pho and epic urban adventures. Overall, though, we just felt that much of the country lacked the energy we’d expected to find in a growing nation full of opportunity, and that the tourist industry was in many places overly exploitative, staffed by cynical and unhappy people. We did eat some beautiful food, we learned a huge amount, and we had some warm and genuine encounters – it was just that nothing blew us away, at least until we got to Ho Chi Minh City (where we could have spend quite a bit longer).

Southeast Asia Meets Paris?

Hanoi pretty much encompasses the problem we had with Vietnam. An important city for millennia, it became the center of activity for the communist North during the 1950s, and went on to become the capital of Vietnam after the war. Today, it’s nominally the capital – but we got the feeling that Ho Chi Minh City is where the real action is taking place. Much of Hanoi is comprised of blocky government buildings and industrial areas, with nary a trace of white collar, private sector activity. Understandably, most visitors spend all of their time in the colonial heart which, in contrast with the rest of the city, offers a beautiful array of terraced buildings, cozy alleyways, and the occasional grand mansion. Were it not for the constant buzzing of the legions of scooters whizzing past, you could imagine yourself to be in some charming, if run-down, European town. Unfortunately, this also means Europe-level crowds of tourists, expensive tourist-oriented restaurants, and armies of aggressive touts.

Back to the scooters, though, since they were possibly the defining feature of Vietnam. They were everywhere, all of the time. The noise was incessant. We saw old ladies, small children, men in suits, mothers dangling babies, groups of friends, often entire families – not to mention their luggage – zooming along at breakneck speed. Street crossing became a high stakes game of chicken. And even the sidewalks weren’t safe, since we saw bikes taking a “shortcut” around the traffic with some regularity.

A typical Old Quarter scene – elegant yellow colonial houses, serving as a background for overflowing shop displays, aggressive street traders, and a stampede of harried people on scooters

Even the markets operate on a drive-through basis

One of the highlights of colonial Hanoi, St Joseph’s Cathedral

Hanoi’s more recent significant architecture comes in more practical shapes

The heart of the old quarter sits around a large lake, and is one of the few places where traffic is occasionally effectively blocked for weekend street festivals

Aside from the bikes, the other ubiquitous sight in Hanoi is the street traders. Almost universally women, these lonely salespeople trudge around the streets balancing baskets of produce, or pedal around on bicycles packed with fresh flowers. Hanoi is a city set amidst hundreds of miles of wild mountains and rolling hills, and they play host to many traditional villages which mostly depend on agriculture. Often it’s hard to make ends meet, and we learned that many women – including mothers of small children – are forced to head to the city to eke out a living. It’s common to spend months at a time away from one’s family, living in cramped shared rooms and working seven days a week.

One of many traditional wedding costumes on display at an exhibit we visited – there is huge cultural diversity among the many villages in the North of Vietnam, a product of the separation forced by vast distances and isolating geography

Baguette-like bread rolls for sale, perfect for banh mi (we’ll get to that later)

Capitalism in All But Name

Hanoi is home to a couple of big museums, which seemed like a great jumping off point for learning a bit more about the country’s history. Quality varied considerably (the Women’s Museum was amazing, while the National Museum provided zero context for the average foreign visitor), but together they did help us to start forming an idea of the narrative for Vietnamese people. Of course, Ho Chi Minh is universally venerated, and tributes abound throughout Hanoi. Everywhere, commentary emphasizes Vietnam’s long-term oppression – by the Chinese, the French, the Japanese, the French again, and finally the Americans – and the end of the War as the nation’s eventual victory in an epic struggle for sovereignty.

The notorious “Hanoi Hilton”, formally Hoa Lo Prison, where we learned a great deal about French imprisonment of the Vietnamese, and a small amount about a (very reluctant, but necessary, and of course torture free) hosting of American POWs

The torpedo tubes allegedly used by a Vietnamese navy patrol boat in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident

The blurb below the smiling people reads “Farmers were happy to receive allocated buffaloes in land reform,” with the proper flags of course centrally placed. The National Museum included a lot of this type of thing… 

It’s interesting to observe the way the government manages this narrative, and a nominally communist ethos, in the context of an increasingly open and privatized economy. For the most part, it seems like the voiceover is still strongly pro-socialist, while in the background everyone is reveling in their newfound ability to better their circumstances. There’s a huge designer shopping mall in the middle of Hanoi, but nobody acknowledges it, or its inherent conflict with the goals of the government. People drive around Hanoi in supercars, while others scrape a living selling fruit, but little was said about inequality while we were there. US chains are everywhere, despite the horror stories of American warmongering and neo-colonialism relayed in the museums next door.

Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, which allows mourners to file past his embalmed body and pay their respects

A Lenin statue overlooking one of the parks – the kids hanging out at his feet are brandishing mass-produced plastic rifles!

Ho Chi Minh revolutionarily overlooking a Louis Vuitton store…

The center of colonial Hanoi is a buffet of American fast food (we may or may not have paid a visit to Burger King in a moment of weakness)

Among other visible Western influences, we noted the preponderance of cute and fluffy pet dogs on the streets. Something rather at odds with traditional Vietnamese cuisine, which involves quite a bit of dog meat, some of which we spotted for sale in the market. Naturally, this poster raised some suspicions…

Reading Blurbs at the Temple of Literature

We were keen to learn a little more about the roots of Vietnamese culture, and we signed ourselves up for a tour which would include the Temple of Literature – an 11th century Confucian temple which also hosted Vietnam’s first national university. Unfortunately, the tour was less than enlightening, and we although we picked up on some sketchy details, these were mostly gleaned from a few poorly translated blurbs around the place. Our guide was pretty clueless, which we could have forgiven in a newly blossoming tourist town, but he also didn’t seem to care very much – something we encountered too often in Vietnam. He does get some redeeming points, though, for taking us for some scrumptious breakfast pancakes.

Pancakes, Vietnam style. Layers of mix are spread out and steamed, then delicately retrieved with a single chopstick, packed with shrimp and / or pork, and plenty of herbs, and served with a tangy sweet-and-sour dipping sauce

The Imperial Academy was founded on the site in 1076, for the study of Chinese history, literature, philosophy, and language. Like in Japan and Korea, the core of the ancient culture shows a massive Chinese influence owing to proximity and China’s impressive development at the time

A visit to the Temple takes you through a series of courtyards, including one featuring these stelae dedicated to historical graduates. The turtles represent longevity and wisdom, and modern students traditionally stop by to rub their heads for luck before big exams

Ethan’s heretofore unknown obsession with bansai trees roared to life as we were graced with the first of dozens of wonderful specimens that we were to encounter in Vietnam. Rather than your ordinary pine or oak bansai tree, these included amazing variations like bodhi trees whose intricacies are magnified in miniature. Only severe editorial intervention from Jess prevented this post from being half-bansai

An altar to Confucius. While our understanding of Chinese history is still far from complete, we were amazed at the countless links to Confucianism that we were to spot across many places in Asia, and the continued vibrance of public displays of reverence for the man and his ideas. Even today, students put out offerings of candy and bottled water in the hopes of doing well on their results

The Inevitable Feasting Section

While Hue is the home of peppery, punchy student favorites and sophisticated royal cuisine, and Ho Chi Minh City provides the cutting edge restaurants, Hanoi keeps things traditional. Playing to the city’s strengths, the local favorites use plenty of fresh ingredients trucked in from the vast expanse of farmland surrounding the city.

Overall, Hanoi food fell a bit flat for us. Food bloggers seem to universally worship Vietnamese cuisine as perfection, and if you watch shows about food, you’ve probably caught a few celebrity chefs hopping onto scooters to show you their favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Hanoi, punctuated by breathy soliloquies about deliciousness and making the most of ingredients. All of this, plus some delicious Vietnamese meals back home, meant that we came in expecting to be blown away. Maybe it’s because our taste buds were still reeling from the spicy, throw-everything-in parties of Thailand and Myanmar, but although we enjoyed some really great meals we regularly found ourselves asking “is this it?”

For us, the highlight of eating in Hanoi was really the context – alongside more sterile, modern options there are thousands of hole-in-the-wall operations waiting to be discovered, often conjured up from nothing at sundown and utilizing any available space. At night, familiar streets would become unrecognizable as shops transformed into restaurants, and open air tables crowded the sidewalk.

By day a hairdresser, by night a cozy restaurant

Resourceful packaging for on-the-go snacking

Vietnamese cuisine has flourished through adaptation, and most dishes have evolved simply based on availability of ingredients. Banh mi (those crispy-yet-juicy sandwiches) are a product of the introduction of the French baguette, but today the cultural fusion continues in the form of a doner kebab filling

There are two constants when eating in Vietnam – there will always be a little bit of meat, and there will always be fresh green leaves. The former proved to be something of an issue for Jess, who even found bits of meat sneakily embedded in the middle of a block of tofu. The focus on herbaceous, peppery, bitter, and sweet leaves – whether as a side dish, a wrap, or a topping – delighted us both. Almost as omnipresent is fermented fish sauce – a foul-smelling but deliciously umami spritz – but by this point in our Asian adventures, our palettes had adjusted to the point where we were more likely to notice its absence than its presence.

Vietnamese food is extremely well-balanced, with tasty combinations of sweet, sour, salt, and savory, as well as nice contrasts between textures – soft noodles and meats along with crunchy fresh vegetables. What’s most noteworthy about Vietnamese cuisine, though – and possibly the reason so many chefs adore it – is how minimalist it is without being pretentious. Most of the dishes use odds and ends like vegetable trimmings and the non-prime parts of animals, but manage to combine them in such a way that the result is quite impressive. And although there’s some meat in nearly every dish, it’s mainly used to provide flavor, and large cuts are rare to find.

Ethan’s first bowl of pho in all of its glory, which was, unsurprisingly, a delight. A rich-tasting but thin broth of boiled beef bones and cinnamon houses slices of beef, rice noodles, charred onions, and loads of fresh vegetables. You walk away warm and incredibly satisfied, but nonetheless feeling light and grease-free. Health food meets hearty?

Rice paper rolls, with a shrimp pancake, some leaves, and a spicy-sweet sauce to go inside – fajita style

Another day, another plate of rolls – this time they’re full of mushroom (and, we soon discovered, a generous but unspecified helping of sneaky pork)

Prawns bathed in a mouth-tingling caramel sauce. Vietnam does the sweet / protein very well, be it this dish or beef stewed in cinnamon sauce

Hanoi’s famous cha ca, or grilled fish – featuring rolls again, along with rice noodles, umpteen green vegetables, and various crunchy bits. The on-table do-it-yourself sauce bar had us hooked

It’s important to sample the full array of local beverages, as well as the food – in Vietnam, this proved to be particularly fun since every city has its own beer (or two, or three). Here we have the Hanoi / Saigon showdown

Also on the menu: egg coffee. We were wary, but it turned out to be delicious. We couldn’t quite face the egg beer, but we hear it makes a great, hearty breakfast, especially for those suffering from excesses of the previous night

Rusting Bridges and Game Arcades

Eager to venture beyond the tourist-focused city center, we took a day to explore the neighborhoods to the northeast of the Red River via the famed Long Bien Bridge. Originally built for trains by the French, and a key target for US bombing of Hanoi during the War, it now serves as the primary avenue for hordes of scooter commuters as well as a few terrorized pedestrians like ourselves.

Although the central bridge span is still for trains, most traffic is via scooter

As the ground dips below the bridge towards the Red River, a compact but lush network of miniature farms emerges, replete with rows of crops, chickens, goats, and even the occasional water buffalo. On the other bank, the gray city begins again, and the green interlude is visually very striking

A line of restaurants offer a more-or-less lovely view of the bridge, unfortunate weather notwithstanding

Across the bridge we found ourselves in exactly the sort of neighborhood we love to explore, with covered markets, a series of sleepy riverside restaurants, and most importantly, a mall. Perhaps surprisingly, malls are a great window into a new country – whereas a westerner in a street market is generally at a loss for how things should work, most do know what a mall should look like, so exploring local interpretations of familiar things from back home is a great way to learn about how things work.

Supermarkets are one of the great but underrated ways to get in touch with a place. Step inside to find your standard array of international ingredients, but also the variations on the standard supermarket theme that show local priorities – like these massive bins of different types of rice

Street markets of course provide a more chaotic window into what’s popular…

A seemingly out of place but nonetheless massive arcade covered an entire floor of an indoor mall. Eager to relive childhood moments, we dove in

Bet you haven’t seen this many tons of pineapples in one place!

What really struck us upon visiting this other side of Hanoi was how quiet everything was, noisy scooters excepted. Here, and in many places, Hanoi felt like a ghost town, with empty sidewalks and a total lack of bustle, despite having many businesses and lots of public spaces. The weather wasn’t great for much of our visit, which probably didn’t help things, but for a city that’s reportedly growing fast, this did feel odd.

(Semi) Private Luxury Cruising

Ha Long Bay sits a few hours’ drive east of Hanoi, along Vietnam’s northern coastline. It’s world-famous for its seemingly-endless cluster of jagged, monolithic islands, cloaked in jungle greenery and surrounded by gleaming emerald water. Although we sensed another tourist trap coming our way, the photos won us over, and we realized we couldn’t risk missing out on something this amazing – as well as another opportunity for some “seafaring”.

Driving in Vietnam is definitely the scariest of anywhere we’ve seen. While it’s chaotic like India, it’s also very fast. Furthermore, lots of objects cross the path of your vehicle, be they other vehicles, livestock, or pieces of rebar falling off the back of a dump truck. This, combined with a stint of very unfortunate rain, had us in a grim state of mind about the state of our luxury cruise

Adding to the misfortunes of weather and roads, we developed engine trouble. While we were drafted to assist with some improvised repairs, they were unsuccessful, and we had to beg a lift from another tour van heading to the same place

There is a special set of rest stops for tourist buses in Vietnam started by some very entrepreneurial entrepreneurs. All foot traffic flow is in a single direction, so you get dropped off at one end and have to move through a few hundred yards of merchandise for sale to get to the bathroom and eventually out the other side, where your van is waiting for you…

Ultimately, the weather gods smiled upon us, and we were treated to a perfectly sunny 24 hours which began approximately 5 minutes before we arrived at the port. Even better, since the outlook had been looking rather dismal, our cruise consisted only of us and one other brave couple (who, being Swedish, were naturally well-prepared for any and all weather events). We spent the afternoon reveling in our semi-private boat, which had more staff than passengers, an ample supply of beer, and a spacious roof deck.

Miraculously, the sun came out when we arrived at the port, and our fortunes shifted dramatically for the better

The sundeck, ideal for lounging, watching the islands go by, and making rude gestures to the other boats

Ha Long Bay was just as touristy as we’d feared, owing partly to its proximity to China – but once aboard our boat, this didn’t matter at all. The views were spectacular and really did go on and on, and the atmosphere was relaxed and fun. We even had our own private guide, who went to great lengths to provide us with Ha Long Bay trivia, as well as scoring us some kayaks and taking us on a cave tour. Ha Long means “descending dragon”, linking to a myth that the islands come from jewels dropped into the sea by dragons as protection from invading forces. Of course, that’s just a story – more importantly, there are precisely 1969 islands because Ho Chi Minh died in 1969 (according to whichever government official did the count).

Ready to sail!

Another junk, “speeding” ahead of us. There’s a sort of mass “race” for the first few hours since all boats leave the harbor around the same time and all are heading for a bit of seclusion. Admittedly this happens at a glacially dignified crawl

Settling into the lovely views

Yes, this is my yacht, and that’s my island…

As we were sharing the whole boat with only one other couple, we had the massive dining room and bar area basically to ourselves

A bit of spooky spelunking to change things up – because of the geology of Ha Long, caves are in great abundance, and many have funny names and legends attached to them

Surveying the “Secret Lake” / Bond villain lair in the middle of one of the islands, accessible via tunnel