September 10-12
We took a very cold but otherwise uneventful overnight train from Hoi An to Hanoi. We had booked this train before our less than ideal train ride in China, otherwise we would have just flown. But it was mostly fine. We watched the new season of Ozark on Netflix and tried to stay warm. We did have two cabin mates, but they came in, went to bed immediately and said almost nothing.
An hour or two before arriving into Hanoi, we realized we didn’t have a hotel booked. Whoops. We haven’t had this problem too often – the spreadsheet keeps us fairly organized, but the overnight train confused things on the schedule. But we nabbed a place and dropped our bags off before heading out to see the city.
Our first stop was Cha Ca Thang – a restaurant that Michael had found that serves a famous catfish dish. It was delicious, but half of the experience came from the dish cooking right on our table.
After lunch, we went to Hoa Lo Prison, a prison used by the French for political prisoners during their occupation of Vietnam and then used by the North Vietnamese for US prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. During this time, American POWs sarcastically named it the Hanoi Hilton.
John McCain was one of the most famous prisoners of the Hanoi Hilton, spending part of his five and a half years as a POW there. Here are some pictures of McCain.
The entire place had a bizarre feel to it. It was really just one big propaganda museum. A lot of effort was exerted to outline the abuses inflicted on Vietnamese by the French while painting a picture of how incredibly comfortable US POWs were while staying there.
Here’s a POW flight suit:
Although North Vietnam claimed that prisoners were treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention, prisoners suffered severe torture methods and abuses. Despite the reports, the memorial shows pictures of US POWs decorating Christmas trees and celebrating Thanksgiving dinner together.
After our visit to the propaganda machine, we took a trip to a nearby brewery to cleanse our palate.
We also had this amazing pizza for dinner. That’s spicy ham with a huge ball of burratta on top. Mmmmmm
Then we stopped to see St. Joseph’s Cathedral.
The next day we had some solo time. I got a massage, read, and worked on blog posts while Michael went to a cook class.
And for your reading pleasure, here is some information about the cooking class from Michael:
We’ve taken cooking classes in Valparaiso, Marrakech and Tuscany on this trip. The cooking class in Hanoi would be ranked #2 behind Tuscany. Unfortunately Jane did not come along, so it was just me and a recently engaged couple from Israel.
As a side note, when I was waiting to be picked up for the cooking class the hotel receptions was giggling at me. At first I thought she was just being friendly. However, Jane talked with her later and she was laughing because a male was taking a cooking class. She was surprised that a man who she called “so masculine” would do something so feminine. She also couldn’t grasp the idea that we were spending our day apart. When Jane told her that sometimes we just “need it”, she was very confused.
I don’t subscribe to gender stereotypes and am comfortable in my masculinity. However, Jane is required to attend any and all future cooking classes so locals wont question my manhood again.
Back to the class – we started by making chicken broth for the Vietnamese national breakfast soup called Pho (pronounced “fuh”). It consisted of a chicken carcass, water, onions, shallots and random spices. The process requires several hours of simmering so during this time we left the kitchen and went to the market to pick up a few street food snacks and ingredients for the other dishes.
Some of the highlights of the market included fresh seafoods from the local river, bullfrogs, and snapping turtles. We also ate something that included worms. My new Israeli friends tried it even though they doubted worms were kosher.
After collecting our ingredients we went back and made pork spring rolls (for me) and chicken spring rolls for the Israelites. Keeping kosher doesn’t mean that you cant used giant cleavers to mince pork.
Here are the spring rolls:
The final dish is called Cha Ca which is a northern Vietnamese dish consisting of catfish with dill and fish sauce. We had gone to the best Cha Ca restaurant in Vietnam the day before so this version we made was not quite as good. But the pho and spring rolls were amazing.
Upon leaving the class I received a certificate of achievement, chopsticks and a metal tool used to make fancy vegetable art to improve my food presentations when we get back.
Ok, I’m back. Although I missed my incredibly masculine husband on our day apart, it is nice to have some alone time. Ten months is a really long time to be spending every minute of every day together. Also it’s good to know that he’s constantly upping his cooking game.
The next day we wandered through the old French town where we saw the Opera house and the other Hanoi Hilton.
I had heard a lot of great things about the Opera house and wanted to see a show, but nothing was playing while we were in town.
Then we walked to Bun Cha Huong Lien.
This is the restaurant that Anthony Bourdain and President Obama ate at in Hanoi. That episode of Parts Unknown is really special and communicates great messages about food along with the importance of travel and experiencing other cultures. I encourage everyone to go hunt down that episode on CNN.com and watch it.
Obviously we ordered the “combo Obama”.
Here is the table that they ate at:
Afterwards we wandered around town, enjoying the beautiful lake and markets in Old Town.
No way of knowing who this guy is:
We also checked out Den Ngoc Son temple which sits in the middle of the lake.
That night, we tackled public transportation to get up north to an expat community. As a general rule, I like taking trains in foreign countries. Things are usually well marked and it is usually clear how to get tickets and such. Or at least we can figure it out. But this time we were going to be riding buses. It’s just always a gamble while standing on a random road waiting indefinitely for a bus to arrive. Then you have to worry about how to pay for the ticket. Do you need a ticket in advance? Do you pay the driver? Is there a third party on the bus that you pay? Do you need exact change? Is google maps telling us the accurate price for the ticket?
Despite all this anxiety, the bus arrived after 20 or so minutes and we had a slow but successful stroll through traffic up to visit a brewery.
Michael chose it for its 20 beers on tap, but when we arrived they told us the draught beers weren’t available, so we had a few bottles and a pizza before tackling the bus back to our hotel.
Good news! Hello Kitty World is coming to Hanoi soon!
That was the end of our time in Vietnam. The next morning we had some breakfast Pho before boarding a flight and heading to Hong Kong to meet up with Ken and Janine.
See the play on words there? Better Pho You?
Vietnam is a beautiful country with great food that was really easy to travel through. We loved the country and will definitely be back.