How to spend the last day of your holiday in Hanoi? I’m going to tell you how!
Since we’ve spent a few days in Hanoi already it wasn’t easy to find something we really want to do today. But there’s one thing we just haven’t found ’till this morning in Hanoi: accurate street food. Of course we’ve seen a few vendors but that only could have been the tip of the iceberg. So the ambition was clear. But where to get street food in Hanoi? Not the stuff tourists get but the real one the locals eat. The one without the menu in English, the one you have absolutely no idea what you’re gonna eat.
During our last drive by Grab we’ve seen some street food vendors at the very north boarder of the Old Town. So we knew where to start our quest. Arriving there we tried to find narrow alleys and avoided touristic places. In other southern or eastern cities you’ll never enter such small gaps between houses, but we absolutely never felt unsafe in any moment nor place in Vietnam. So where the streets went dirtier and the life even busier we found a local market but no street food.
Thirsty as we were we had a beer and came back to this place a bit later. I can’t say what we had but we enjoyed four different dishes and paid local prices for sure. The kids around came to say hello and high fived us - a good sign to be on a place with low tourist occurrence.
Happy we’ve finally found some real street food, some we’ve never tasted before, we went back to our stay. Tomorrow we’re going to leave Vietnam behind us. Our luggage is physically still more or less the same as it was four and a half weeks ago. But in fact it’s jam-packed with lots of great memories, experiences and pictures - both in mind and on SD-Card. I do absolutely agree to Ste that Vietnam is an absolute must! But in case you already have some motorbike driving experience, travel by motorbike. You’ll see this country from it’s best side traveling the same way the locals do.
Though I enjoyed traveling with Ste very much, now I’m really looking forward to see my girlfriend, family and friends soon.
Tonight our AirBnB host took the biscuit. Since it was a hot day and we both were covered in sweat and sunscreen we wanted to take a shower. But there was no water. Not a big deal if we wouldn’t leave tomorrow. So after all we decided to spend the last night in Vietnam in an airport hotel. Just to make sure to get a shower before the 15 hours in the airplane. I guess they have to fix a few problems before accepting new guests… That’s just how it is. Unfortunately our hotel room has a minibar, so we’ll have to drink our last beer in Vietnam a second time.
Since this is our *second last post so far, we’ll share some more pictures of Hanoi and some we just tagged with a V during our trip, showing the outstanding experience of Vietnamese people packing their scooters. Even though it’s just a small selection it might give you an impression. Enjoy! Thanks for following.
Let me remind you at this point, that the competition is still running for one more day. It will end when we arrive back in Switzerland.
The last post is going to be published tomorrow at 11:00 (GMT+2) while we’re cruising about 30'000 feet in the air on our way back home. So stay tuned!
