Grand Adventure 2017 Day 13: Hello Moto
Wow was yesterday a long but glorious day. After nearly eight hours of driving and five hours on a boat, we slept incredibly hard last night. I woke up before Jenn and snuck out to get a quick run in, in the beautiful gym here at the JW Marriott. One quick note on the gym. When you walk in its a cool 70 degrees but the treadmills are right up against the floor to ceiling glass which means its 10-degrees warmer on them making my run this morning a tad more difficult.
Last night on our way back to the hotel from Halong Bay we booked the hotels shuttle to take us to the center of Hanoi at 9 AM. We assumed like yesterdays trip that meant we'd be boarding a typical hotel bus to take us to the stop. Instead, we were the only ones taking it so they just paid for a taxi to take us. We were dropped off 45-minutes later in the center of Hanoi near a beautiful lake. We walked around the city center in search of one of the only Starbucks in the city. We stopped there got our fifth coffee mug of the trip and enjoyed a hot chocolate and cappuccino. We sat there enjoying a quiet moment listening to Christmas music, even getting a few seconds of being homesick.
We left Starbucks a little before 11 AM and walked 10-minutes to our one tour today, the Hanoi Street Food tour. Because the majority of Hanoi ride motorbikes we thought it would be fun to do a food tour on a motorbike rather than walking and we are glad we did. We met up with our two tour guides who drove Jenn and me on separate bikes throughout Hanoi to seven different food stops; all with traditional Vietnamese dishes. After paying for the tour and asking the receptionist to hold our Starbucks mug we were off. We jumped on the back of the bikes and were off to our first stop.
Our first stop was one of our favorites of the day, pork noodle which they call Bun Cha. It was a small dish but packed with a ton of flavor and anytime I can get noodles, pork, and peanuts I love it. Jenn finished her plate as well.
Next up was both of our least favorite of the day and the one and only stop that I had to eat Jenn's portion. We had dried beef salad which was a combination of as you might expect dried beef, lettuce, onions, and peanuts. The one saving grace to the dish was when I added chili sauce to it, otherwise, it was rather boring.
From there we rode off to one of the nicest restaurants on the tour where we had a barbecue beef noodle soup with rice noodles. It was amazing how well the ingredients came together and made for one of the best dishes of the trip. I also appreciated that we didn't get a full serving here, but instead got a half portion which helped us not overstuffing ourselves.
At this point, we were only half way through and had a lot more food stops to go. Our next stop was one that I was worried about right when we arrived but turned out to be amazing. As we arrived too what looked like an abandoned storefront there were two ladies in their 40's making rice pancakes. We then went inside to what ended up being Jenn's favorite dish of the day a pork-filled rice pancake.
We made a quick pit stop at a beautiful Catholic church in the heart of Hanoi to take some photos and to help give our food a little bit of room to digest and were off again. Next up was a fried food stop in yet another rather run down looking restaurant. Here we had four different fried foods including a spring roll, three that I didn't catch the name of, and a Vietnamese donut, which was incredible. Jenn and I both had beers (our only option outside of tap water) which hit the spot on the nice warm day.
Our second to last stop was at a coffee shop where we started with a pork sandwich which was OK and then we had Vietnamese coffee. What's interesting about their coffee is because milk is so expensive they instead use a raw egg. Although that idea terrifies me I had to try it and at least as of this writing both Jenn and I are doing well and the coffee was delicious. Jenn didn't go with coffee but had the same dish except she had chocolate instead of coffee.
And then we made our way to our final stop, for dessert. Here we had a sticky rice with vanilla ice cream and coconut shavings that outside of the coconut was one of the best things I've had all trip. I've never had a sticky rice dessert before so it was a real treat. We also had a mango ice cream that was also delicious.
After nearly four hours our food tour ended back at their shop where we parted ways with our two amazing tour guides and grabbed an Uber to take us back to our hotel. Both Jenn and I were still recovering from all the food today and the incredibly long trip yesterday to Halong Bay. We came back to our hotel room and just vegged out. I worked on catching up on these posts while Jenn went through photos and took a nap.
At 6 PM we took advantage of the first and only time in our stay here in Hanoi of the executive lounge at the JW Marriott. It was absolutely incredible. Right as the double doors opened we were pointed towards a window view overlooking Hanoi. We started off with two glasses of red wine and some light appetizers. We both had some deli meats, pita bread, hummus and other light snacks. Jenn then found out that they had Bailey's and two glasses later we had basically closed the happy hour down.
We made it back to our room at close to 8 PM and ordered a burger to split from room service and began packing up our stuff to ready for tomorrow for our flight to Cambodia. I cannot believe how quickly our time in Vietnam has flown by but also how great it been. When we arrived we expected to rain the entire time and were fortunate to have amazing weather and a wonderful time. Goodbye Vietnam and hello Cambodia we're excited for the adventures that await.
