Exploring Vietnam 🇻🇳 - The Country Capital Hanoi - Part 1

Hello there folks, I'm back again after disappearing for
months on end as usual 😂

This year I decided on Traveling to Vietnam 🇻🇳 for 10 days and I started building my Itinerary From April onwards and I convinced a friend to tag along somehow 😂 we used to work together as commis 3 pastry chef's in Mangalore some years ago and have been friends since then

The night of September 10th I flew to Vietnam 🇻🇳 from Chennai 🇮🇳 , I had a 1 hour 15 minutes layover in Bangkok and landed around 6:30 am on the 11th in the lovely city of Hanoi which is the country's capital.

Picked myself a cold can of Chang Beer during my layover at Bangkok 🇹🇭
OH HOW I'VE MISSED YOU CHANG 🤌🏻

The first 3 days in Vietnam we covered Hanoi and then took a flight to Da Nang where we visited Hoi An as well since it was close by, We were in Da Nang for 3 days and post that we took a flight to our final city in Vietnam which was Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) where we spent the last 4 days of our journey.

This trip will be split into multiple parts where I will be talking about all of the places I've visited in detail !

Hanoi will be a 3 part post
Da Nang will Be a 2 Part Post
Hoi An, Now this will be a single post
Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) will also be a 3 part post

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Day 1

Once we landed at Noi Bai International Airport In Hanoi, we had to get through immigration which was breeze and then buy ourselves a sim card. We found a booth at the airport itself and took a Viettel Sim card which had sufficient data to last us 10 days in Vietnam and the network was great as well, we didn't experience any lag/delays whatsoever.

We got out off the airport and booked a GRAB Taxi to The Hanoi Social Club to get ourselves some breakfast for the day. Neeta wasn't really hungry so only I had a filling breakfast here, I ordered myself a pulled pork, gouda & pickled cucumber sandwich which turned out to be a pretty hugh sandwich to my surprise but it was just so damn delicious. The pork seemed to be cured which would explain that tinge of additional saltiness in the sandwich. I wasn't able to order anything else here as I was full from the sandwich.

We then caught a cab to our stay which was Hanoi Buffalo Hostel which is a party hostel (More On This Later On). P.S Hostel Check In Timing At All Hostels Is At 2 PM At times they let you check in by 1 PM if they’ve got beds available. We left our luggage back at the hostel and quickly freshened up and left to explore the area by walk.

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In about 150 meters from the hostel you have Bach Ma Temple but it happened to be shut regardless of what google said. On enquiring with the locals they weren't really aware of it so we continued about exploring further down the roads and countless alleys and stumbled Đồng Xuân Market which happend to be on our itinerary as well and since we had time to kill, we decided to take a look around the market.

P.S if Hanoi happens to be your first stop. Please do all your shopping in this market because the rest of the places and cities will have the exact same item for a higher rate and in this market you will literally find it for dirt cheap rates and you can bargain as well and get them for even lower.

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This market has two floors and they sell a variety of items from household goods to luggage’s, arts and crafts, clothing, accessories etc I did shop for a few things but I wish I would have shopped for a lot more here LOL

By the time we were finished in this place, it was already 1:30 PM so we decided to head back to our hostel to check into our dorms, We went back by walk and on the way we stumbled upon a convenience store which is very similar to 7/11 and the only thing I tried here was the Ice Tea because I knew for a fact it would be amazing AND IT MOST DEFINITELY WAS !! we took the larger option which was for 17,000 VND (Rs 58)

We primarily stayed hydrated throughout the trip thanks to Lipton Ice Tea 😂

Once we got back and checked into our dorm, we unpacked our luggage kept all our valuables in our locker, quickly got ready and we left to our next location which was the infamous Train Street. Now this place was how do I put it ? a little difficult ? Why because:

1. The Street is sort of a private street where the train passes through and on both sides, You have multiple cafes.

2. You can only access this street if you visit a cafe over there. If not, they do not let you enter the street basically so only if you give one of the plenty of cafes some business, only then will they let you in, which makes sense plus some of the places have some really great bites and some of them can be quite rude to you from what we've seen personally.

3. It’s pointless asking the locals, the train timings because none of them will give you an accurate time. Some will tell you the train passes by around 4 PM some will say 6 some 7 and sadly none of them will be telling you the truth for god alone knows what stupid reason.

We ended up waiting for over six hours for the train to pass through, and I know we wasted quite a bit of time but somehow it was worth it. We ate a fair bit on this street while we were waiting, took a couple of pictures and even had a few beers.

So on a Monday you will have a train pass through at 9:20 PM sharp and then 5 to10 minutes later you will have the last train
passing through the street.

So I don't know if the same applies to the other days as well but I just wouldn't risk it I suppose because it's a really long wait so yeah I suggest you to just maybe go on Monday and be there on time and have a nice coffee or beer down the street.

Well, now that we finally saw the train passed through and it was kind of pretty late and the two of us were quite hungry. So we decided to just walk around the area and find ourselves something to eat for dinner. We walked by a few places but didn't really feel like going there so we just kept walking until we found this place that was sort of busy and it seem like they were doing well so we just decided to stop by this place and figure out what all the commotion was about. The place is called Ngoi CTR Lau Thai Tom Yum, You can find the exact location Here

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After much discussion on deciding what on earth to have from the menu 😂 we ordered the Thai Tom Yum Hot Pot which is a 250,000 VND (Rs 854) set for two persons. This hot pot consisted of a nice broth, it had Pork some Leafy Green Vegetables. You had Shrimps, Scallops, Squid, Crab Sticks, Pork Dumplings, Mushrooms, Tofu, Egg & Noodles. This was so filling that we couldn’t complete the whole thing.

https://youtube.com/shorts/WYEe6BjTmjk?feature=share

By the time the we wrapped up with dinner, it was about 10:30 Pm. We quickly got ourselves a Cab and went straight to the hostel called it a night since we had quite a bit of exploring to do the next day.

That's about it for this post. Hope you guys enjoyed reading through this and if you did then do stay tuned for the next post on Exploring Vietnam 🇻🇳 - The Country Capital Hanoi - Part 2 which will be coming out in a few days time.

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