Dorothy, We're Not in Kansas Anymore

We arrived in Hanoi, drove from the airport to the hotel, dropped off our bags, and immediately headed out to see the city. OMG. Hanoi is like nothing that I’ve ever seen. Honestly, I didn’t know where to look first — the street food (which is literally served on the sidewalk), the untold number of motor scooters that crowd the roads, the small shops that sit next to each advertising the sale of items that are “made in vietnam,” or the enormous number of people. Just walking down the street was exciting and a little bit overwhelming.

Although we were tired from our travels, we decided that a good way to get an introduction to Hanoi was to go on a “street food tour.” I had found a tour which cost $20 per person, for 3 hours. So, we figured that even if we were too tired to complete the whole tour, we’d be fed and get to meet someone local. And, it turned out exactly as planned . . .

We met “Loan” at the office for Hanoi Street Food Tours, which is located in the Old Quarter. She told us that her name is pronounced “Lo-Ann,” but that it was spelled like loan since she liked money! She is 20 years old, and is a student at the university. In the course of the evening, we learned that university students often lead tours because it is a good way for them to earn some extra cash, and practice their English language skills. She was charming, and chatty. However, when we asked her why she didn’t eat any of the food that we were sampling, she told us that she didn’t want to gain weight because no one would marry her. When I laughed, she told me that she was quite serious about this. (I must admit, most of the Vietnamese girls that we saw are both petite and quite slim.).

Over the course of three hours, we tried 7 different dishes. I won’t attempt to describe them all, but a few were of particular interest. We started with Bun cha, which is pork noodles. This is a very traditional dish, and can be found on virtually every corner. Next, we had Nom Bo Kho, which is a beef salad that has both dried beef and grilled beef over shredded green papaya.

One stop was for rice pancakes. Loan explained that the rice pancakes were freshly made by pouring the batter over a cloth and steaming the pancake. This didn’t make any sense to me until I watched the pancake being made — it was actually a type of rice paper, made from scratch. (You can see it in the attached video). The “rice pancake” is then filled with minced mushrooms and pork, and topped with fried shallots — totally delicious.

We then had a group of fried foods — a couple were like spring rolls with different filings, but one was sweet and had a substance inside that reminded me of taro.

One of the most surprising dishes was “egg coffee.” When I had seen this advertised on a sign on a shop that we walked by, I thought that the sign meant that you could get a cooked egg, and a coffee, for the indicated price. But, no. Egg coffee is a drink made with espresso, which is topped with a raw egg yolk which has been mixed with sweetened condensed milk until it is frothy. It sounds strange, but it is like the richest latte that you’ve ever had. Everyone in the group thought that it was extremely tasty.

Our final stop was for sticky rice and coconut ice cream. The color of the rice is green, due to some leaf that is cooked with the rice. And, shredded sweetened coconut is on top.

By the time that tour was over, we were exhausted, but full. So, we headed back to hotel for some well-deserved sleep.Read more