Day 13. Vietnam Diary – Hanoi

Egg coffee, purple dancers, hair cut

Day 13. Thursday 30 May 2024

I’m in an old-school café, Café Giang, with an egg coffee. I’ve had one before, in Tonkin Speciality Coffee in Saigon. Oh my, they’re good. I read somewhere that they came about from when milk wasn’t so easy to source but eggs and condensed milk were, so the eggs were whisked up to give a creamy, custardy milk substitute. It’s the texture of dense meringue foam with a gorgeous pale yellow colour.

This isn’t a writing café, the seats are very low. There’s another coffee place my AirBnB recommended not too far away that I might go to for writing purposes.

This morning didn’t quite go to plan. The 06:00 to 18:00 market times were inaccurate. There was “Night Market” in the signage around the market, but some non-food stalls, ie clothes, were setting up. It’s a huge market centred in an enormous market hall. It was apparent the wide street at the front “needed” to be filled with vendors.

I spotted two people on a moped waiting for their breakfast-roll filling to be assembled. It smelled great and I could see an omelette being cooked for them. I pointed at the omelette and, though the extent of the filling (there were all kinds of patties and meat skewers) was unknown, I paid my 20k vnd (65p) for a banh mi and went on my way, realising a slight flaw in my plan – nowhere to sit and eat a hot baguette.

I ended up eating it on the step to a shuttered food place. I had just finished, shortly after 07:00, when a man came to open up. By 07:00 (I had left the flat just after 06:00), the roads are a lot busier and a lot more places do open. There are plenty of places open for eating and drinking even before 06:00.

My favourite part of the walk was just two blocks from my accommodation. There’s a Gucci on one corner, McDonald’s on another, the corner of the park around the lake on another and what looks like a former department store on the final corner. It’s a wide, busy, main junction (with traffic lights). I could hear cheery pop music blaring (again, this was just after 06:00). On Gucci corner, a music system had been set up and on top of some steps, on a makeshift stage, was a woman demonstrating her dance-exercise class. Facing her were, I don’t know, 30 or 40 women (I think just women), all wearing purple, though not matching, following enthusiastically along. On McDonald’s corner opposite was a smaller group, in normal clothes, following along to the purple class (the music was easily loud enough!). On the department store corner were people also following along … to something I couldn’t quite discern. On the park/lake corner was another exercise class with loud music competing with the purple class. There was something unexpectedly lovely about it all.

The first time I went to the park, it was maybe 09:30 and there were a few people around. At around 06:15 today, it was very busy. Streams of joggers and walkers, people sitting on all benches and flower bed walls. People (men) were in various states of undress. An elderly woman in white was leading two or three people in white in a kind of tai chi session, with what to me sounded like old-style Vietnamese relaxation music. A woman not in white, lacking their grace and ease of movement, though knowing the moves, was joining in. A lot of, mainly 60 to 80-year-old women (very ish) were on their own doing stretches and bum wiggles. Bum wiggles, in this context, is exactly what it looked like. Another group of women in that rough age range were doing some kind of meditative clapping. It really was a joyful environment. They’ll all be gone now. Although to me it was very hot and humid, it’s the only time when it’s daylight and “cooler”.

I know, the whole group exercise thing, it’s a Communist thing. But it’s unexpectedly lovely to see. It reminds me that I always lament inadequate time to exercise, other than my daily walks. I’ve been planning to build a cabin for almost a year. My cabin in Scotland would be a lovely place (in the cold, the rain, the dark, when midges are rampaging outdoors) to get into a habit of daily exercise.

My cabin is currently nine foundation stones and a stack of timber, some robust electric saws and a repeatedly-viewed YouTube instructional video. It’s a big deal to me, building this cabin. I chose a “simple” cabin that “anyone can build” on YouTube. I’ve since read a lot about basic cabin structures and it all makes sense. He, the cabin man, Bush Radical, is right: anyone with physical capabilities can build a cabin. I remind myself there are more times than the cabin man suggests (he actually builds it with his very competent and experienced wife) where another person’s help is required. I have never built anything, I have never used the saws I now have, I have no indoor/covered work space, it rains a lot, I have no diagrams or instructions (just approximate instructions on the video). Actually, the biggest hurdle is me. And that’s why it’s so important to build it.

The original plan was that female friends could help. I love this idea. But my two to three most likely helpers live nowhere near. If we booked a few days for them to stay, it could rain. A lot. As I said, no covered work area, though I might ask our neighbour if we could shelter in his open-sided barn.

I also feel guilty about spending time doing the cabin when I should be writing/editing/working. I know I could document its progress. I’d originally thought to video the build, but that’d be painful to view and edit. Maybe writing in this, more diary-style, would work.

I’m moving to the next café.

Damn, I feel cool (though certainly not temperature-wise). I’m in a ludicrously fabulous café listening to Edith Piaff. Anyone in the UK who’s thinking about opening an alternative, cool, bohemian café really should come to Vietnam. This one, Loading T, is on the first floor of a crumbling, once-grand French villa. The tiles are beautifully patterned, barely cleaned in decades, there’s a painted ceiling, a wall of half-glazed bifold doors (closed), exposed brick … I mean, it’s glorious. I have a small pottery cup of iced tea. I don’t know teas but it’s maybe Oolong. It’s very light golden brown and tastes like fresh nuts. I’ve ordered a Vietnamese iced coffee with condensed milk. I’d never have found Loading T or come here if my AirBnB host hadn’t said it’s one of her favourites. But there are/have been a few foreigners in here so I suppose it must be mentioned somewhere online on a touristy forum. Why am I surprised? Of course it would be mentioned, it’s great.

Overall though, I’ve preferred the Saigon cafes. Yes, really, the difference between cities extends to café décor and café vibes.

This is probably a more tourist-focussed area than Saigon. It’s prettier with all the old buildings and even more trees than Saigon. But I liked being away from more tourists and barely pestered in Saigon. Saigon was good for making me not shop. Here, it’s easy to wander into tourist shops. In Saigon, there are gazillions of Grab scooters and people getting lifts on scooter taxis. Weirdly, that seems less prevalent here.

Uh oh, it’s getting windy and I’ve remembered it’s forecast to storm soon.

I think I’ll head to the hair salon to see if I can make an appointment. I passed it at 07:00 (I knew it didn’t open until 09:00).

Something I know I do when I travel alone is to not bother with three meals. I’ve had breakfast today but I may skip lunch and have a meal at about 16:00. There’s a place my host insisted I try for the Hanoi fish speciality. It’s busy, apparently, so an out-of-meal-time visit will be good.

It’s now shortly after 12:00 and I’m hot and lying across the bed in my apartment with the AC on.

I bought another 17k vnd ice cream from what seems to be a bit of an institution, Kem Tràng Tiền, this time vanilla. Coconut was better. I’ve also just eaten the mangosteen I was talked into buying (definitely tourist price and with a few slightly older fruit – 50k vnd). I’ve had mangosteen before. It was while I was living near Brixton many years ago and was excited by all the fruit and veg I’d never tried and which was readily available at Brixton Market. I’d just moved to London; it was 2002.  These mangosteen were extraordinary, significantly more memorable than the ones I’d bought in Brixton. Sweet, soft, silky-soft, not as perfumed as lychees but with an almost floral sweetness. Sublime. I only bought them because a woman at the market pretty much thrust an open one at me and ordered me (nicely) to try it. While I was still eating it, a bit of juice trickling down my hand and distracting me, she started bagging some up for me to buy. I had been happy just to try one. Expensive though they were for here, I enjoyed the experience. She was happy to have her photo taken. Fruit and fresh produce does not last long here. I left two bananas in the kitchen for two days. The skin not only went black, there was furry white mould.

I have a few more small plums, a mango that feels perfect to eat now and an orange. [At the time I wrote this, I was clearly labouring under the misguided impression this might be interesting to read!]

I also had a small round doughnut thrust at me. Again, I wouldn’t have bought any. And again, as soon as I accepted the sample, loads were shoved into a bag. I asked for four. She gave me an extra one or two, probably because I agreed to 50k vnd. Again, tourist price. However, after I’d made the purchase, and before she put extras in my bag, she was the woman I had a lovely exchange with and whose photograph I posted in the context of bonding with someone despite no common language.

I bought one not-quite-ripe-enough avocado and the plums, which came to 40k vnd.

En route to the hair salon I’d decided on, I saw a different salon that looked inviting. The stylists appeared to be men, which I decided might be good in a country where most women have long hair, ie surely men would have more experience with short hair. [Really, I thought that when I was writing this??!!] Probably misguided [too right!]. But I did have a lovely hour or so. I paid 120k vnd (less than £4) for the hair wash experience and 250k vnd (c£8) for the cut. The cut also included a more conventional wash afterwards.

In the salon, I was taken upstairs, removed my shoes and lay on my back on a massage-type table. At the head of the table (the same as my head massage and hair wash at the spa the other day), there was a large, deep wash basin, above which was a kind of croissant-shaped headrest a bit like a bicycle seat. That’s where you rest your head, unsurprisingly. It was lovely. The man who washed my hair was gentle yet, at times, firm. Head massages here consist of some nail rubs (if that sounds weird or off-putting, no. I suppose it feels like a hairbrush with small plastic balls on the end of bristles – it’s lovely). There’s a lot of soap and foam. Then there’s a strong finger-scalp massage. More foam and washing and oil, or similar. My favourite bit was when he held my head around the neck and massaged the top of my head. So good. Towards the end, fingers press along “buttons” down the centre of your skull. It’s lovely.

My stylist then consulted someone who spoke slightly more English and a discussion was had. He didn’t want to use clippers for the short back and checked it was OK to scissor-cut. He was quite hip and young and I appreciated the importance he gave to his job, quite rightly. I am very pleased with my cut. I enjoyed walking away from the salon without being sweaty-haired for, oooo, 30 seconds. I feel good for having some treatments and the cut. I suppose I could have a facial and some polish on my toes but I think I have now had enough of beauty treatments.

I wandered into a few shops, contemplated going back to the market (not so keen) and remembered I’d wanted some agarwood incense. I found a shop on Google Maps, though I’m not sure I went into the actual shop I was looking for. The shop I did go into was wonderful. Very small, delightfully air conditioned and the owner spoke English. She told me about the incense. Here’s what I can remember. The tree, which is agar/oud needs to be at least seven years old. There is a distinctive grain. The dark colour is resin/oud, the light colour is dry. Vietnamese incense sticks come in a few kinds. The cones and stick-free sticks are made by hand from agarwood powder and a vegetable glue. The ones in pretty coils are more densely-packed agar powder without the glue. The ones I’m more familiar with have the bamboo stick. The bamboo stick is like a lolly. She said they’re suitable for temple offerings as you can stick them into the sand of the incense “trough”. She said they’re also particularly good for outdoor usage. I asked why. She said that, as well as the agarwood burning, the bamboo stick also burns, which generates more smoke. I bought a burner, which is a long wooden box with a magnetic lid. Inside, there is no holder, just a black mat. You lay the stick on the mat once you’ve lit an end and it burns on the black mat, so every bit of it burns. The lid of the box I bought has lotus flowers cut out, from which the smoke disperses.

There were two carved Buddhas I really liked, one slightly smaller but both 3 million vnd (a bit less than £100). The lightweight and lighter coloured one was dry. She said it won’t last as long as the hard wood one (which is full of resin and more aromatic). I told her I live in Scotland where it’s cold and wet. She laughed and said it might last longer in that kind of environment. I like the hardwood one more anyway and it has an intoxicating smell. I haven’t ruled out buying it as a birthday present from Chris.

In the Edith Piaff café, Loading T, I bought a bag of the coffee they used. It’s 3% cinnamon, which I hadn’t even realised. It seems perfect for iced coffee with condensed milk. But will it ever taste the same at home? Is it one of those things that tastes amazing in the right place, but doesn’t work back home?

[Last week, having read that Vietnamese iced coffees often have condensed milk, dairy or oat milk, I bought some oat milk and made up three cups of iced coffee for both me and a friend to taste-test. We each had a cup using the beans with cinnamon from Loading T. Dairy was the first. We both liked it. I thought I wouldn’t as I don’t like milkshake or milk, but I really enjoyed it. The second was oat milk. I saw him grimace. I also didn’t like it. Neither of us finished the whole cup of oat milk iced coffee. It had an odd taste. Obvious though it sounds, it had a kind of dusty, oaty taste. The final one was with condensed milk. That was a clear winner for me but Mitch doesn’t generally consume sugar so, although I put less condensed milk in his sample, he still preferred the dairy. However, having also had a lot of hot Vietnamese coffee and now being a regular purchaser of tins of Carnation condensed milk, I was wrong. Vietnamese-style coffee tastes amazing here too and I suspect I will keep making it and drinking it every now and then.]

Talking to two young women at the spa, the one I spoke less to, Trinh, when I’d asked them if there were any countries they wanted to visit, she said only Vietnam. I think I wrote before [I didn’t; I suspect I was talking to myself and thought I’d written it down, d’oh!] that Nhur had said Thailand, Cambodia and China, because it’s affordable. I don’t know if she actually wanted to go to other countries. I also don’t know if Trinh only said Vietnam because she was being realistic and couldn’t currently afford travel or because she genuinely didn’t want to go anywhere else.

I spoke to someone in India once about travel, his having told me of relatives in other countries. I asked if he’d like to go anywhere. He asked why would he when he had everything he wanted in India.

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about why we – maybe I should just stick with “I” – travel. For example, is my life enhanced by my having been here? My first thought is “massively”. The people exercising in the morning, for example. I’m merely making excuses, saying I don’t find or make time for exercise. I could do it. Maybe I need to think more about what. I love the idea of Tai chi and/or some simple stretches. [Typing this up five weeks later, I had completely forgotten how enthusiastic I was about doing more exercise when I got back. Ho hum.]

All food here is fresh, and in many ways simple. Using what’s in season is something our food culture isn’t good at embracing. We import too much and force too much.

While it feels busy and hectic here, it’s also somehow kind of unrushed. A lot of food is presented quickly, eg the components of pho. The broth is cooked and hot, the rice noodles are added to the soup, ditto thin slivers of raw meat (which cook in the broth), leaves are presented as leaves, to be added according to taste. A proper phin coffee takes a while because it is dripped. A salad takes a while because the veg, lemongrass etc are sliced fresh. A hair wash is what we’d probably market as mindful hair washing. It takes ages and it all feels better for taking so long. I love that fresh food is bought from individual vendors, not chilled supermarkets. It’s so hot and humid that I’m walking slower. There are very low stools for people to eat from. You’re hungry, you order, you sit, you eat. It all works. I’ve not seen any aggressive queueing or impatience.

As I’ve said before, there is a fair bit of beeping on the roads but nothing that seems fuelled by rage. It seems more of a warning. People driving behind you seem to give way more than people pulling out, ie the person in the UK who would normally give way, entering the flow in front of you, is the one who seems not to even look or hesitate so the person being obstructed is the one who dodges them. They deal with it. When the lovely owner of this flat came round to deal with a fridge full of the previous guests’ food, I asked her about where to hang my drying wash. There are five apartments on my floor, five on the three floors below. She offered to show me the sixth floor drying area. I went to shut the front door and pick up the key, she laughed and said, “It’s Vietnam”, ie no one is going to go into the flat or steal anything even with the door wide open. I have left my handbag in the hair salon, spa and I’m sure other places. There is no sense any harm will come to it. I’ve read that you should be vigilant around the touristy markets, but that seems obvious. It feels significantly safer here than in the UK. Apart from being a pedestrian where scooters are concerned!

My travel experience has allowed me to have a tiny insight into how other people live their lives. There are things I love and things I don’t like here (communal areas are dirty, far too much traffic and the pedestrians are at the bottom of the hierarchy, scooter riders at the top). I have things to talk about that are different to what I might usually talk about. I hope that phin coffee is now in my life, though I may need to learn to love it with unsweetened milk.

I am enjoying the food, but South East Asian food is unlikely to ever win me over. I’m not massively excited by soups or broths. I have limited enjoyment of pork and most herbs and greenery that really give the flavour would never be fresh even if I could get them in the UK (as it happens, I am often near Deptford in southeast London and a large Vietnamese community). I will, I will, I will take longer to massage my scalp when I wash my hair. [I have actually made a real effort to take longer washing my hair since I got back, but I’ve probably only added an extra thirty seconds, maybe one minute, and I have a suspicion that sometimes I forget about mindful hair washing]

Seeing things (buildings, people, activities, food culture, religious practices; everything) that are different to your own country/culture mean you are learning and seeing/experiencing new things. All those insights can possibly affect your own life, not necessarily in an obvious way like eating Vietnamese food every day once you’re back home. I think I have also sort of seen myself from the perspective of people here and it’s sort of made me aware of some of the things I do that are specific to me and the culture I’m familiar with. I genuinely believe my life is enhanced by my having been here. I hope I am always able to travel while I want to.

It’s now about 20:30. I ended up being out for longer than I expected. The dinner place was fantastic. I’d never have gone there or eaten that without a local recommending it. The food is chả cá and the restaurant was Chả Cá Thăng Long [which Google now tells me is mentioned in the Michelin guide 2023]. OMG. As it happens, that restaurant is on a street full of chả cá restaurants. It’s even sort of make-able in the UK as the main greenery is dill (I so only associate dill with Scandinavia and the UK and Germany … northern Europe) and spring onion. The fish was perfect, but I suppose some of our meaty white fish would work too. Google it. Make it. It’s delicious.

[I have made it twice since being back in the UK, once with cod and once with haddock. The fish in Hanoi was better, as was everything about the dish, but the recipe I used is tasty and I will make it again, though I might try a few other recipes.]

While I was eating, people started coming into the restaurant looking soaked. There was, finally, a thunderstorm. Good timing for my early dinner. I was presented with a load of dishes, a stove and no bloody clue what to do. A Vietnamese couple at the next table had started cooking before me so I watched them. Then a waiter came and showed me what to do. He placed the empty bowl (small) in front of me, added the cooked (cold) rice noodles – I can’t remember the order and it may not matter – then all the dry things, so the threads of spring onion, a few slices of chilli, some herbs (unlikely to be recreated in the UK) and lightly toasted peanuts. He then added some of the fried dill and spring onion, which had been cooking with the fish. And a piece of the turmeric-infused fish, and poured over a fish sauce mix. Well, I didn’t expect it to taste so incredible. Superb. I cooked the rest of the dill and spring onion, a few sparks flying out from the flame (I doubt we’d be allowed a naked flame in the UK at a table). The whole restaurant smelled wonderful – that’s all they serve, with some sides. I ordered a set, which came with two oh-so-delicious and crispy and perfect spring rolls. I have no idea what was in them, whether meat, fish, vegetable or other. Whatever it was, it was amazing.

I waited for the rain to calm down and headed home via a few shops. The roads were very wet – it was a major 30-minute downpour but it had cooled down significantly. It was truly lovely. Shame it isn’t like that all the time. As seems to be the norm, pavement priority is for people on low stools and tables to eat and/or drink, followed by scooter parking. Annoying to be a pedestrian as you have to walk into the road a lot more than you should have to.

I bought the £100 sandalwood Buddha. Chris said he’d buy it for my birthday. I’ve no idea how I’ll get it home. I realised that the incense, agarwood, the tree with the resin, is oud. I mean, I really registered that fact. I love oud. That would explain why I loved the smell and it seemed so familiar.

I also returned to a shop I’d been in before to buy a few prints of Vietnamese propaganda posters. I love the style. I went for the agriculture themes rather than Ho Chi Minh and more political matters.

I bought a pineapple and coconut juice for pudding as a takeaway, which I drank by the lake. I love the takeaway strap you get for drinks, though it’s horrifying how much plastic is involved here and positive to realise that in the UK we are a lot better than we were, though still a long way to go.

My final stop was Uniqlo. I’m sure there are things in there which aren’t for sale in the UK. I bought a Vietnamese design, made in Vietnam t-shirt for Chris’s birthday. Surely that won’t be available in the UK.

[Wow, my hands must have hurt that day. It seemed I had something to say on all manner of topics!]