Hanoi (North Vietnam)

Hanoi:

Hanoi is a strange, frenzied, beautiful piece of work.  It is pure, unadulterated chaos and anarchy. There are so many motorbikes rushing through the gridlock at any given second that walking out of your hotel feels like you’ve been instantly caught in a giant swarm of angry wasps.

Out here, life happens entirely on the asphalt.  The sidewalk isn’t for walking; it’s the local living room.  People eat and drink there, get their hair cut, repair shoes, patch motorbike tires, read the daily paper, and play games.  Good luck navigating the sidewalks to get to your destination—you’ll be stepping over tiny plastic stools and dodging hot soup broth the entire way.

Caffeine Culture

When you’re dodging traffic on any street in Vietnam, it quickly becomes apparent that this country is absolutely crazy about coffee.  The coffee culture is deeply entwined in the local lifestyle, and the collective need for speed and caffeine is inescapable.  The scene is buzzing from sunrise to late-night, with cafes acting as the ultimate social hubs.

In places like Australia or New Zealand, you see digital nomads hunkering down in cafes staring into their MacBooks.  Not in Hanoi.  Here, the locals are perched on low plastic stools right on the sidewalk, sipping their java and shooting the shit with friends.

There are thousands of coffeehouses serving up regular Vietnamese iced coffee (ca phe sua da), which is incredibly sweet, strong, and hits completely different than Starbucks.  But my absolute favorite, and the most innovative caffeine creation on the planet, is the famous Egg Coffee.  You can find it at the very funky Cafe Pho Co. or the original institution, Cafe Giang.

I had never heard of egg coffee before this trip, so I had to get my ass over to Pho Co. to give it a shot.  Vietnamese Egg Coffee (Ca Phe Trung) is honestly more like a decadent dessert than a morning beverage.  It was invented back in 1946 by the owner of Cafe Giang when the country was suffering from a massive milk shortage.

To make it, they vigorously whip egg yolks, condensed milk, sugar, and strong Vietnamese coffee into a creamy, meringue-like foam that layers perfectly on top of a dark, robust brew.  It’s a thick, velvety drink similar to eggnog, but this stuff gets you seriously wired and ready to kick some ass. It’s basically liquid tiramisu.  It is so damn good that even people who claim they don’t like coffee would probably fall in love with it.

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Cafe Giang – Hanoi

Cafe Dinh – Hanoi

The Maze of the Old Quarter: Sifting Through the Street Food

Hanoi is easily one of the greatest street food cities on earth.  Stepping into the maze-like, narrow alleys of the Old Quarter is like walking right into a massive, bustling commercial kitchen. Everywhere you turn, something is being fried, steamed, boiled, or rolled.  It is a certified foodie haven.  On every single block, you’ll see locals chowing down on steaming bowls of noodles.

While food tours are incredibly popular here for holidaymakers, Barbie and I are seasoned travelers, so we proudly wrote off the paid tours and decided to sniff out the local joints on our own.  We tracked down all the heavy hitters: Pho, fresh Banh Mi baguettes, and Banh Cuon.  But my absolute favorite—and apparently my main man Barack Obama’s as well—is Bun Cha.

Bun Cha consists of seasoned, chargrilled barbecue pork strips and patties swimming in a sweet, savory broth made of fish sauce, sugar, garlic, vinegar, and fresh chilies.  They hand you a mountain of fresh herbs and chewy rice vermicelli noodles on the side, along with an optional (but totally necessary) plate of crispy, deep-fried spring rolls.  You build yourself a small bowl with a little bit of everything, slurp it down, and repeat.  At lunchtime, you’ll find just about the entire population of Hanoi sitting on kid-sized plastic furniture devouring this dish.

During his presidential trip to Vietnam, Obama paid a visit to a local hole-in-the-wall called Bun Cha Huong Lien.  Naturally, the restaurant became an overnight global sensation.  Heaps of tourists now flock to the joint to order the famous “COMBO OBAMA,” which gets you a bowl of Bun Cha, a side of deep-fried Hanoi-style spring rolls, and a cold bottle of Hanoi Beer.

The "Combo Obama" Blueprint:
[1 Bowl of Bun Cha] + [1 Side of Fried Spring Rolls] + [1 Cold Hanoi Beer] = Pure Perfection

The best part about the food scene in Hanoi?  Everything is spectacular, dirt cheap, and surprisingly healthy.  Vietnam has an incredibly low obesity rate; the people are generally lean, slim, and active. Eating well is effortless here because the cuisine relies heavily on fresh vegetables, seafood, and raw herbs for flavor instead of loading dishes with salt and heavy cooking oils.  I’ve been gorging on the fresh summer rolls—the ones rolled in translucent rice paper stuffed with veggies and pork, not the deep-fried variety.

Holes in the Wall and Century-Old Fish

The Old Quarter is packed with an unbelievable density of restaurants and street-side stands where you can woof down world-class Banh Mi sandwiches.  Our absolute go-to spots were Banh Mi 25 and Banh My P.

Now, Barbie doesn’t exactly fancy a steaming bowl of hot Pho noodle soup when it’s 100 degrees out, but she was a killer sport and kept me company at some of the best local joints so I could slurp down Hanoi’s signature beef Pho.  Just like the tight dim sum joints in Hong Kong, you have to be ready to share a communal table with complete strangers.  My two favorite Pho spots turned out to be right next door to each other on Bat Dan Street, and inexplicably, both shared the exact same building number: 49 Bat Dan Street.  Go figure.

It’s not often you get the chance to eat at a 100-year-old culinary institution on the road.  Cha Ca La Vong is a legendary name in Hanoi, but we actually skipped the original storefront to visit one of the newer, higher-rated spots serving up the exact same signature dish: Cha Ca.

This famous dish is made from a local catfish called Hemibagrus. The bones are completely removed, and the fish is seasoned with turmeric, covered in banana leaves, and grilled over hot coals.  When you sit down, they bring a sizzling skillet of fish, roasted peanuts, rice noodles, fish sauce, and a mountain of fresh dill, green onions, coriander, and mint right to your table.  You basically become the chef and fry it all up yourself.  The menu is exceptionally easy to read because there is only one single item on it.  When a restaurant has a one-item menu, it better be damn good.  I can confirm they delivered.  Big time.

Nightlife: Anarchy at Bia Hoi Junction

I’ve been around the block, and despite the fact that I’m an old washed-up fart nowadays, I’ve experienced a good majority of the nightlife scenes this world has on tap.  Between a lifetime of travel and our current round-the-world journey, I thought I had seen the most intense outdoor party blocks on earth.

Then I hit Hanoi.

Vietnam is a communist country, so it’s probably the last place on earth you’d expect to find a raucous, uninhibited nightlife scene.  But if you show up on a weekend evening when they close the streets to vehicles, you need to head straight into the Old Quarter to Bia Hoi Junction (on the corner of Ta Hien and Luong Ngoc Quyen).

The scene is absolute sensory overload.  Hundreds of people are packed shoulder-to-shoulder on the asphalt, drinking fresh, ice-cold 25-cent draft beers (Bia Hoi) on the pavement.  It is a classic nighttime destination.  Just a few blocks away around Hoan Kiem Lake, they hold a more mellow, but still supercharged, evening promenade where local families hang out, walk, and play music. Combine all that with a massive weekend night market cutting right through the Old Quarter, and you have an incredibly fun, hot, sweaty, smiling scene.

Bun Cha Hang Manh – Dac Kim

New Day Restaurant

I must also mention there’s a whole lot of copyright infringement going on in Vietnam.  Patents and trademark paperwork must have gotten blown up by all the B-52 bombings during the Vietnam war.  20 years ago, Ralph Lauren, Dolce Gabbana and Tommy Hilfiger were the main copycat targets.  They even had the Rolex watch copycats down pat.  Flash forward to today and the big copycat items are Under Armour, North Face and throw in some fake Beats headphones.  There are seemingly no copyright laws here in Vietnam.  If you have a successful business, it will be copied and copied perfectly and in many cases the copies looking better than the original.

In addition to Vietnamese salespeople trying to trick you into all the fake clothing, I did find it amusing to discover many minor league scams continued even outside of Ho Chi Minh City.  In Ho Chi Minh City, locals were taking advantage of tourists with the confusing currency valuations.  In Hanoi, the scamming was turned up a few notches to hit another level.  I pride myself on being on top of every possible scam.  I actually looked forward to the daily scam game to keep me current, on my toes, and help broaden the breadth of all new scamming opportunities.  The scams began as soon we left the comfort of the hotel doors and stepped foot on the street with that first blast of hot Hanoi air hitting our faces.  Just when you thought you had made it through the day scam-free, the rug will inevitably get pulled out from under you.  Just when you thought you got all your Dong in tact for the day, somehow they got some clever trap set up to extract this Dong from your pocket before you can blink.  Don’t let these little 5 ft. tall smiling Northern Vietnamese fool you as they are real good and are probably the most sneaky people of any Asian countries we visited.  The only time we were able to put our guard down was when we got off the well beaten tourist path.

The Scam Game: Getting Hoodwinked by Bun Cha Imposters

They have a whole arsenal on display: the taxi meter scam, the street donut lady scam, the travel agency booking scam, and my personal favorite, The Restaurant Name Switcharoo.

I was on a strict mission to eat at a highly rated, specific hole-in-the-wall Bun Cha joint.  We took an Uber, pulled up, and a smiling lady immediately ushered us inside a restaurant where we sat down and ate a decent meal.

As I walked out and looked down the block, I noticed a restaurant two doors down with the exact same name, the exact same colored signage, and the exact same layout.  Unknowingly, we had been intercepted right out of the car door and pulled into a fake clone restaurant.

Even if I had noticed the two identical signs beforehand, telling them apart is a nightmare when streetside touts are shouting in broken English that they are the original.  How these copycats get away with copying a neighbor’s business down to the font is beyond me.  We played like amateurs and got taken.

The good news? The fake restaurant’s Bun Cha was actually pretty tasty, and it cost the exact same as the real deal—about $4 a bowl.  My only real beef is this: if you’re going to run an imposter joint, at least offer a fucking discount!  We went back to the original spot two days later, and the quality difference was massive.  The real place even had a giant, colorful sign inside warning tourists about the shameless clone next door.

[Fake Clone Restaurant]  ──> Intercepts you at the curb, charges $4
[Real Deal Restaurant]   ──> Two doors down, tastes amazing, has warning signs

The Travel Agency Clones

The exact same thing happens with the travel agency booking scam.  In Hanoi, you can find five to ten travel storefronts on a single block trying to book you on day trips to Halong Bay or Sapa.

When we were down south, we booked our Mekong Delta trips with the highly reputable, legitimate agency The Sinh Tourist (formerly Sinh Cafe).  In Hanoi, we discovered literally hundreds of agencies using the exact same name, logo, and fonts.  After our restaurant debacle, I used my analytical radar and deduced that out of the hundreds of “Sinh Tourist” signs in the city, only two of them were actually the real deal.  It takes a solid couple of days on the ground to truly get a handle on the landscape.

The Sights

When you aren’t eating or dodging scams, the big historic ticket in town is a visit to Hoa Lo Prison, famously known as the Hanoi Hilton.  This is the grim complex where Senator John McCain was imprisoned after his plane was shot down.

The other major stop in the city center is Hoan Kiem Lake, which offers a much-needed respite from the traffic chaos.  It’s a great spot to walk or jog.  We also made the pilgrimage over to the massive Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum to view the embalmed body of the Chairman himself.  I can officially report that old Ho Chi Minh has a spectacular setup over there.

Saigon vs. Hanoi: The Verdict

Much like the classic rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney, Vietnam has a fierce cultural divide between Saigon and Hanoi.

• Barbie’s Verdict: She heavily preferred Hanoi. She loved the old-school Vietnamese architecture, the deep historical culture, and the fact that it hasn’t been completely poisoned by modern technology yet.  The people on the street definitely have cell phones, but they don’t seem connected to the global matrix—everyone just looks like they’re playing basic video games on the sidewalk.

• Big Doug’s Verdict: I liked both cities equally. Visiting both is an absolute necessity if you want to understand the alternative lifestyles of this country. Just make sure you visit Hanoi during the summer months, otherwise you will freeze your ass off.

The Official Big Doug Loose Stools Index

🚽 Loose Stools Index: 9/10 (The Steel Gut)

We are rolling right along and cool as a cucumber.  Bring on the B’s!  Out here, the culinary landscape is dominated by the letter B: Bánh mì, Bánh cuốn, Bún chả, Bánh xèo, Bún bò Huế, and Bánh bèo.

I ate every single “B” the local chefs in Hanoi could throw at me, and not a single one of them did an ounce of damage to the Loose Stools Index.  We are heading into Hoi An—the food capital of the country—a bit later in the itinerary with plans to execute some major-league eating.  Entering the food capital with a perfectly seasoned gut and a high index rating puts Big Doug in an elite position.