The first night at our Hanoi home base was a pretty long one. We slept in until past 8 and started the day by making some coffee. We’re getting better at brewing our Vietnamese coffees every time we try…
We left the house at 11:30 and took a cab to the old town. Nearly 30 minutes of taxi driving cost a bit less than 4 CHF in total. After arriving in the old town we checked out another local brewery called Pasteur Street Brewing Company. The beers were okay, but not worthy of the 4.7 rating it got on Google Maps. The imperial stout called El Vietnamo tasted too much of ethanol for our liking.
After the first few beers we started exploring the old town. We walked through local markets, checked out a few coffee places, bought new sun glasses (mine broke a few days ago) and observed a lot of locals going after their daily business. We also strolled through a lot of streets featuring tube houses which have very small storefronts and a depth of up to 80m. This was done since they had to pay taxes based on the size of the store front.
In the early afternoon we ate some rice noodles with beef and some vegetables accompanied with a mix of two very nice sauces. As always they were super friendly and one of the guests quickly explained how to eat it correctly. The price was okay, even though we definitely paid for a tourist version of the dish.
We continued on to the Ho Tay lake to see the Tran Quoc Pagoda we’ve spotted on our taxi ride to the old town. The lake is a complete dump featuring garbage, lots of broken ceramics and dying fish. This does not seem to stop the locals from casting their self-made fishing rods in there though… I guess it’s probably better to stay away from fish here…
Walking back towards our home we have also seen a golf driving range where people hit the balls into the lake - just adding to the garbage problem they already have here at the lake.
After a total of about 2h of walking in our sandals we took a taxi and drove back to our flat where we met a couple from the US which will stay in the room next to ours.
