Vietnam for me evoke images of millions of motorbikes and insane traffic, makeshift stalls in the streets with low tables and chairs, amazing rice noodle dishes and the ever present traditional conical hats, and narrow tube houses.
Vietnam is also good coffee, a legacy from its colonial past that was introduced by a French priest in in 1857, and I tried to have all local variations in Hanoi: from the regular cafe suada (black coffee with condensed milk), cafe sua chua (black coffee with yogurt), cafe trung (coffee with egg yolk), and cafe cot da (coffee with coconut milk).
Vietnamese coffee is mainly of the arabica variety, strong and harsh whose insomniac effect foiled a nightly parade of Vietnamese beer (Bia Hoi, Hanoi, Saigon, Truc Bach, La Rue, and even Beck's Ice) and sky bar cocktails (mojito, Song Cai gin with soda).
Coffee shops and stalls are everywhere but for beer and cocktails, perhaps the best place will be at the Old Quarter, the heart of Hanoi and a myriad of various sights, sound and smell that collide in each street to reverberate a chaotic yet enigmatic symphony.
There is of course the Bun Cha, the queen of Vietnamese noodles made famous by Anthony Bourdain and Barack Obama, and I had my first in a cramped shop across the Oxfam Office along Le Dai Hanh Alley which I have vague recollection of after I started missing my bike...
Vietnam is also good coffee, a legacy from its colonial past that was introduced by a French priest in in 1857, and I tried to have all local variations in Hanoi: from the regular cafe suada (black coffee with condensed milk), cafe sua chua (black coffee with yogurt), cafe trung (coffee with egg yolk), and cafe cot da (coffee with coconut milk).
Vietnamese coffee is mainly of the arabica variety, strong and harsh whose insomniac effect foiled a nightly parade of Vietnamese beer (Bia Hoi, Hanoi, Saigon, Truc Bach, La Rue, and even Beck's Ice) and sky bar cocktails (mojito, Song Cai gin with soda).
Coffee shops and stalls are everywhere but for beer and cocktails, perhaps the best place will be at the Old Quarter, the heart of Hanoi and a myriad of various sights, sound and smell that collide in each street to reverberate a chaotic yet enigmatic symphony.
There is of course the Bun Cha, the queen of Vietnamese noodles made famous by Anthony Bourdain and Barack Obama, and I had my first in a cramped shop across the Oxfam Office along Le Dai Hanh Alley which I have vague recollection of after I started missing my bike...
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