A Beautiful Mess
You know the “Hot-Crazy Matrix” that graphs a woman’s crazy level on the vertical axis and her hotness level on the horizontal axis? I am reminded of that in Hanoi, because this city is off the charts on both hotness and craziness, with the chaos fueling the beauty and vice versa. Wandering the Hanoi Old Quarter, I run into a sight that fills me with incredulous wonder every fifteen minutes or so.
Hanoi Old Quarter is a dense labyrinth of meandering streets and back-alleys, with restaurants, bars, cafes, stores, tourist agencies, vendors, temples, and centuries-old trees all packed shoulder-to-shoulder and stacked one atop another. Space is at a premium in this old city where nothing goes to waste, so you see some very resourceful architecture as new structures grow up and around older ones to maximize the available space.
Ancient temples speckle the city, jostling for space amidst the commercial and residential. We took a stroll one Sunday to see paper offerings burning in little containers on sidewalks all over the city (as well as little piles of trash aflame). The streets smouldered with incense smoke, and ash drifted everywhere.
Life unfurls on the sidewalk, the epicenter of business and leisure in Hanoi. Little ladies wearing straw conical hats peddle wares / fruits / bread on the sidewalk. Restaurants, bars, and cafes set up their own systems of plastic stools and tables to serve street food on the streets, literally. Some even go as far to set up portable stoves, cooking on the street. Storefronts wheel out their wares to set up outdoors. Technically, all this is illegal. Locals claim that every once in a while, someone yells “Police!” and all the operators scuttle their plastic stools and storefronts back indoors.
Allen points out that I’m romanticizing extremes that only exist due to under-developed city infrastructure. While this may be true, Hanoi captures my heart with the beauty of resilient people making their own way, “anything goes.” The way Hanoi evolved over its long history lends to a unique and chaotic charm that I’ve never experienced anywhere else in the world.
Keep reading for the experiences we enjoyed in Hanoi during our stay!
Food (OMG the food….):
Tl;dr for this section: Everything in Hanoi is friggin delicious. The best bites are taken squatting on a shanty plastic stool on the sidewalk by no-name restaurants that only serve one dish. The shorter the stool, the better the food. I’m serious.
Street Food Tour: Hanoi has a vibrant street food culture. We found a street food tour to be well worth the time and money because we got a local’s introduction to the cuisines, methods, and culture around Hanoi cuisine.
Banh Mi 25: Every Hanoi tourist makes a requisite stop at Banh Mi 25 for the foreigner-friendly menu and delicious sandos. Interestingly, their kitchen and restaurant are across the street from one another, so the staff walks back and forth across the street couriering sandwiches.
Pho Tin: Pho Tin is technically a small alley, and a motorbike literally drove through the restaurant when we ate there. An (unaffiliated) old man outside sells Chinese donuts, which I recommend buying to dunk into the pho broth. Life-changing.
Bun Cha Dac Kim: Bun cha is a super-popular meal of fermented rice noodles dipped in fish sauce with beef. This bun cha restaurant was so successful that a copycat by the same name opened right next door -- go to the one on the right, that’s the authentic one.
Cafe Giang: This unassuming cafe is the birthplace of egg coffee, which is a Hanoi specialty using whipped egg yolks in lieu of cream during the dairy shortages of the French War. The interior decor hasn’t much changed since the 1940s.
Cultural activities:
Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and Museum, Hoa Lo Prison, The Vietnam National Museum: We visited several national / historical sites to make sense of Vietnam in the 20th century. This deepened our appreciation for the colossal hardships this country has overcome. I’ll save a more detailed discourse for a later blogpost, and just say here that Vietnamese modern history is mind-blowing and essential to appreciating the Vietnam of today.
Women’s Museum: I felt a surge of emotion visiting this well-done museum full of women’s stories. Many of the museum’s artefacts were donated by their owners, along with their stories. Some stories in the Women in History exhibit detailing womens’ roles in the war brought me near to tears.
Ethnology Museum: Did you know that there are 54 ethnic groups in Vietnam? This museum celebrates the culture of these groups, going so far as to invite ethnic builders from each group to reconstruct traditional houses in the land outside.
Temple of Literature: In Vietnam’s Confucian past, exams were held across the country every three years, and the top scholars were admitted to study at the Temple of Literature. Established in 1076, this picturesque complex is Vietnam’s oldest university.
Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre: Water puppetry developed in the North Vietnam rice paddies. It’s a surreal experience to see puppets dancing through the water, especially accompanied by the haunting melody of the traditional Vietnamese monochord.
Hanoi Opera House: The French built this remarkably ornate opera house during their occupation. Ironically, this was the site where Hanoi declared independence from French colonization. Worth passing by this beautiful and storied piece of architecture.
