Vietnam the third: Day 2, Hanoi

Coffee. Vietnam grows and exports a lot of this, though it’s over 90% robusta, the unfashionable cousin to arabica. It’s also starting to drink more of it and develop a bit of a coffee culture, with all manner of chains and little cafes springing up around Hanoi. I don’t recall seeing so many on previous trips, my impression from the first trip in 2014 was that tea was still the king. Coffee, where available, involved a tall glass of ice and a mix of evaporated and condensed milk.

Now coffee comes in many varieties. Want a glass full of coconut icecream and coffee? They have that. Want your coffee topped with something resembling uncooked meringue? Got that too. And the overseas chains are here too, Starbucks — proof that arabica beans can be made to taste like crap — and even Gloria Jean’s, if you feel the need to give $$$ to a cult.

Breakfast was at the hotel, a bit of fresh fruit, and a passable pho ga, enough to line the stomach before setting off to try some of Hanoi’s specialty coffees. Coconut coffee at Cong Ca Phe was first up, a nice big refreshing glass of coconut icecream and coffee while overlooking the pedestrian only for the weekend roundabout and lake. Definitely worth it.

Second stop on the coffee crawl was Cafe Giang to check out their renowned egg coffee. We’ve been here before, but I don’t really remember it, just getting old I imagine. Where was I? Ah, egg coffee. It just sounds bad, why do that to coffee? Why do that to eggs? What even is it? I can now think of one way that this can be made to work, which is whip that egg up with a lot of sugar into a runny meringue mix, and pour that over a shot or two of coffee. The result is sweet, creamy, and quite pleasant, definitely better than anything involving coffee and skim milk. (Taking the whole coffee/egg thing further, egg custard might also work, but then I guess it’s custard coffee.) Before anyone goes patting me on the back for braving the egg coffee, FYI I totally chickened out on one of Giang’s other offerings: egg beer. I just can’t.

A stroll around the lake, didn’t see the mythical turtle, did see lots of people doing what looked like photoshoots. And having avoided two of the regular money scams — the first a guy with a tube of supaglue offering to fix our shoes; the second a budding artist drawing our picture when we paused to sit for a while, who then wanted to sell us the picture, well not sell exactly, I’ll give it to you but then you need to give me a gift of money. I did manage to get ripped off buying a bottle of water for $6, as my brain didn’t do the conversion until I was walking away.

Pho. Vietnam has it, and generally has it better than anywhere else. Hanoi claims it, and certainly a good Hanoi pho is a thing of beauty. Pho 10 Ly Quoc Sur is ranked very high on the list, and for good reason. The broth, though mostly clear, is full of flavour, tasting of all the good things and with just a hint of oil. The herbs are full of flavour, the meat is a decent portion, and the quay are crunchy and soak up the broth beautifully. Speaking of portions, what was also good is that they serve their pho in a fairly regular sized bowl, not a huge trough, which leaves room for eating all the other things Hanoi has to offer.

Dinner was good but overpriced. Having tickets for the water puppet show, we wanted to eat close, and Avalon Cafe Restaurant had been recommended. Sadly it looks like this establishment is no more, so instead we went for 1930 Hanoi in the same building. Classic trick of putting a big menu out front with reasonable prices, then hit you with a limited menu with prices 3x once seated. We went with a couple of spring roll choices, which were definitely tasty, but there are certainly better value options around.

After dinner was the water puppet theatre, which was pretty amazing. It isn’t always the case that a hyped and popular event actually lives up to the hype, but this certainly did. Great entertainment, and the skill required to manipulate the wonderful puppets nothing short of admirable. Add a couple of fire breathing dragons and that’s a pretty great night out.

Today we also made plans for future days, doing a half day tour tomorrow, then a day trip out to Tam Coc on Monday.