So before I left for Hanoi, I did a bit of research online on where I might be able to find popular / good restaurant … decent ones, of course (in the event that we can no longer handle street foods). One restaurant that consistently came out on top was Restaurant Bobby Chinn. Our “Lonely [...]
4 days in Hanoi is a long time, so we spent a day in Halong Bay and on the last full day in Hanoi, we took a cooking class at Old Hanoi Restaurant & Bar. We wanted to go with Exotissimo’s cooking classes, but I believe they are USD 50, and then when we called [...]
With 4 full days in Hanoi, we knew we needed something else to do other than walk about the city. So, we were recommended a very reliable travel agency / tour operator called Exotissimo Travel, which I believe is a French company with offices in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand.
I haven’t looked at their [...]
Came across a Tour Cafe that sells coffee (grounded or not) …
I’m not much of a coffee drinker, but when my friends embraced this Weasel brand coffee like gold, I bought 2 packs (250g packets) to try for myself. THEN, I found out that like the famous (or infamous) civet coffee, this weasel version is [...]
So I took a picture of this on the streets of Hanoi while I was there … at first, I thought it was kind of funny how people would just slap on any global brand on anything – in this particular case, McDonald’s logo on a pair of slippers
Then I realized, I only saw a [...]
So after our rest at the Metropole, we decided to grab dinner and while meandering through the streets of Hanoi, we came across this local pho noodle joint, called (I think) Huyen Dung Pho Bo (pictured)
We got right down to business and got ourselves each a bowl of hot beef noodle soup or pho … [...]
The Metropole Hotel in Hanoi has been around since 1901 and is arguably one of the finest (and oldest) buildings in Hanoi. It houses designer brands such as Bally, Cartier, Chopard, Louis Vuitton, Mont Blanc, Salvatore Ferragamo, Sergio Rossi and Hermes. I might be wrong, but the hotel might just be the ONLY shopping mall [...]
My experiences with Vietnamese cuisine had always involved only 2 items:
Pho (noodle in beef soup); and
Bun (rice vermicelli poured with nuoc mam or Vietnamese fish sauce) with accompanying spring rolls, sausages, etc.
So when my friends suggested that we visit Hanoi for a couple days, I packed my appetite and flew 2 hours to the capital [...]