Hanoi

This is only the beginning of a 3-part journey. The entire trip's documented here.

Nov 14 - 16: Departure

Local time: 4:30PM.

Went to JFK airport. First time using Amex lounge. They've got a very limited food selection, but it was good quality. Mostly enjoyed their truffle soup and pasta.

Oh yeah, and they have bottomless free drinks at their speakeasy, 1850.

Flight left around 10:20PM.

The flight from JFK-SIN is the longest flight in the world:

Currently, the world's longest flight is the 9,585-mile route between New York City and Singapore, operated by Singapore Airlines with a flying time of 18.5 hours.

It took us about 18 hours to get to Singapore. But we weren't done.

We had 4 hours before we'd need to transit to Hanoi. So, the first thing we did when we landed in Singapore was buy Kaya toast.

Then we went to the KrisFlyer Gold Lounge. This is similar to HKG's Singapore Business Class lounge. They had draft beer and a bunch of free, hot food. The best was their laksa.

Anyway, adding up the entire journey:

• 6-hour wait at JFK.
• 18 hour flight.
• 4 hour wait in SIN.
• 2.5 hour flight to Hanoi.
• 45 minutes to get our luggage.
• 40 minutes to our hotel.

The journey took about 32 hours to complete.

Once we checked in our hotel, we immediately taxi'd to one of the pho places we added when were first planning our trip. Had spring rolls (both fresh and fried), pho, and papaya salad.

After that, we walked around town and had some egg coffee. What is egg coffee? Basically, as a French colony, Hanoi was too poor to afford milk. So instead of cappucino, they'd foam up milk and mix it in with coffee instead. The foam tastes like foamy egg yolk mixed with condensed milk--very yolky, yet sweet and embracing.

Walking around, we also got some Banh Mi. Very good.

Around 4PM, we went to a tailor shop. The main mission is to get some dresses for Serena. And I was looking to get some shirts and pants as well. We went to Royal Silk.

Royal Silk's unique because they shop materials with you. We went to a local bazaar and she showed us around, and let us pick the specific fabric + color combo we want for our clothes. This is a big deal because instead of forcing us to pay a certain amount, we had full authority of our budget. If we chose something very expensive, the material cost is just passed back to us.

Afterwards, the tailor treated us to dinner. She was very nice.

One thing we learned from her during dinner is that she actual gets a lot of word of mouth customers, and does a lot of wholesaling on the side.

Exhausted after dinner, we went back home and slept.

Nov 17: Hanoi is fucking crazy

Breakfast (Michelin)

Woke up at 3AM because I couldn't sleep and did some work.

At around 8AM, we went to get breakfast. We saw the menu but didn't know what it said. So I whipped out google translate. Only to be not be able to input the accented letters.

The lady next to us started chatting us up and recommending things on the menu.

She also recommended a few of her favorite places as a local (her father's from Hanoi). She lives in the middle of the country but would visit Hanoi for business as part of her work for 3M.

One thing we noticed is that the people here in general is very nice and friendly. It's not like the US.

Walking around town / lunch

And then we had a massage. My first time doing cupping. Cupping is basically they have these cups that generate a vacuum with hot air.

What results is supposed to be detoxification. I'm not sure about that, but what I am sure of is the process is equivalent to getting a lot of giant hickeys on your back:

Then we had lunch. Food here is interesting because it's someone's house. The bathroom is their bathroom. Had bun cha, and it was fun because the owner shows you how to eat all the condiments together, and feeds you. Then, we had spring rolls and duck.

Afterwards, there's a presentation on how they make a sauce. They basically present to us some salt and peppers in a bowl. And then they would squeeze a shit ton of fresh lime juice in front of us into the bowl.

Once that was done, they brought out a fried tofu dish, along with a bunch of vegetables, and a spinach soup thing.

We ate most of everything and was extremely full.

Then came the entertainment.

Someone next to us came in and she had a horrified look on her face when the owner showed how to eat the food. And even more horrified when it was fed to her. Then an old vietnamese lady came to demo the lime juice sauce. Once she was done squeezing half a dozen lime's juice into a bowl, the girl diner asked:

To drink?

As the waitress is an old viet lady, she has no idea what the fuck the diner was talking about. So the old viet lady just smiled and walked away. The diner proceeded to drink the lime juice like it was a fucking soup. I almost burst out laughing.

We left and walked a bunch around town. Maybe 6000-7000 steps, mostly along a promenade. Visited Uniqlo as I was curious about pricing. The lime juice drinker was there. Pricing's about the same as New York's location. Which is very expensive, especially for Vietnamese standards. For comparison, it's about $16 for a Uniqlo T-shirt (NY is about $19).

Went home for a bit, and then went back out as there's preliminary fitting for Serena's dresses. Afterwards, we ate at a pho place where they serve chicken ovaries.

The ovaries tastes like ovos moles except not sweet. Just pure good yolkiness.

After dinner, I walked home. And traffic here is insane. No rules whatsoever. Just cars and mopeds just zooming by. Inches from you. Pure chaos. In the 15 minute walk back home I got hit twice by mopeds.

At home, I'm writing this entry and am absolutely exhausted.

Nov 18: 2 spa treatments in 1 day

Banh Mi

We ate banh mi for breakfast. The thing I love about Vietnam is that they give you condiments almost any restaurant you go. In this case, there's homemade chili sauce.

It was good for me but too spicy for Serena.

For drinks we had:

• Coffee + condensed milk, as recommended by the 3M lady from yesterday
• Some delicious tea

My first facial

At 10AM, we went to a facial appointment.

They took pictures of my face with infrared and other wavelengths, and analyzed it.

TLDR my face was fucked up. Age 41.

For about 2 hours, they put a lot of cream on my face and then washed it off. They also scrubbed blackheads out and did what they call "aqua peeling." I have no idea which part was the aqua, and which part was the peeling, but they also used a bunch of machines to treat my face:

1. They first steamed my face for like 15 minutes.
2. Once they removed blackheads, they blasted my face with what seemed to be very cold water, or liquid nitrogen (felt like cyro).
3. Then they did some rolly-scrub thing where the thing they used to scrub my face was super cold.

They analyzed my face after the treatment again. Age 38.

Still fucked. They told me to use sunscreen and lots of repair cream.

Shocked by how fucked up my face was, they had me go into the treatment room again and slapped some SPF 50 on my face.

Walked around some more

We had more tea, egg coffee, and snacks around town.

For lunch, we had bun cha in a crowded hallway. It was really good, because the pork meat they grilled were super juicy. The fish sauce was great, yet not overpowering. And we had soy milk. Here's a video of an old lady grilling the meat, fresh:

but we were trying to save our appetite for dinner since we booked a Michelin restaurant.

2nd spa treatment of the day

In the afternoon, we booked a foot massage. It was interesting. I thought it'd just be a 90-minute foot massage but they actually massaged the entire leg area, along with my arms. They also scraped dead skin off with a foot file.

At then end of the treatment, they also did something called parafin treatment. Basically they melted wax (hot), and applied it to your feet. Once your feet has turned into what looks like foot-candles, they wrap them in a plastic bag for ~10 minutes.

After the 10 minutes, they remove the wax layer from your feet like socks.

90-minutes, for 2 people, totaled only $40. So $20 per person.

+1 Michelin Star

Ate at a 1-star Michelin called Gia Restaurant for dinner. About $250 for 2.

Delicious. Everything's what you'd expect from a Michelin starred restaurant. A mix of luxurious and local ingredients ranging from monkfish liver to wagyu beef. If you've eaten at high-end restaurants, then you know exactly roughly the vibe and the quality of food.

But what stands out to me was the juice pairing. Most restaurants try to rip you off with alcohol pairings; it's rare to have something with juice pairings. I prefer the latter as they don't fuck up my taste buds for the course of the meal, and won't ruin the meal by making me too inebriated to be fully present with my taste buds. Here's the juices they made:

1. Kombucha fermented with pear and camomile (tasted like honey)
2. Tomato consumme with guava
3. Hibiscus and shiso leaf kombucha (tasted like cranberries and aftertaste smelled like lavender)
4. Passionfruit juice added to fermented rice (had a grainy texture, like beans, and tasted like guava)

After the meal, they had us go downstairs and pick 3 fruits for our dessert course. They made mini-sorbets from the 3 fruits we picked.

There's also 2 other desserts after that:

• A mix of lotus ice cream, and a bunch of other delicious fruit done in a very dessert texture
• Some biscuits / candies.

Here's an example video of the staff explaining one of the dishes as is typical of any fine dine restaurant:

Nov 19: FULL DAY OF EATING

It's weekend today so I didn't have to work. This means I can just explore and eat the whole day.

Breakfast

For breakfast, we went to a closeby pho place. It was really good. Only 80K (or about $3.30). This is for 2 people.

After, we walked to a place called Banh Me Mama. She was very slow. Took about 30 minutes to serve 3 people ahead of us. But this place receives high ratings and people say it is worth waiting 2 hours for.

It was good because she makes everything fresh: the eggs are freshly fried and the bread is freshly baked. The meat is mostly freshly cooked. All this "freshness" contributes to slowness.

Again--this was good, better than the average Banh Mi, but not world-changing: I wouldn't go again due to the wait.

Snacks 1 & 2

Then we stopped by a coffee shop to have some coffee. We ordered a "silver" coffee which is basically iced black coffee with condensed milk on the bottom. You can scoop up and mix as much condensed milk as you want to adjust the sweetness. Also ordered a hot black coffee with milk; this was less sweet than the iced version, giving it the perfect balance.

Done with that, we wanted to walk around. But right next door was a coffee shop that served egg coffee, so we went there first. 55K dong for 1 yolk and 75K dong for 2 yolks. The coffee is cold coffee, so the egg yolk curdles at the top. Sounds gross, but I like it since you can scoop it up and eat it easier. You can also mix the egg yolk with the coffee to give the coffee a smoother flavor.

Walking around + more eating

We then walked around and found that the roads were closed. There was a Japanese festival going on and kids were dressed up in Demon Slayer costumes, performing songs on stage.

Throughout the area, there's tons of stores that sell fakes. Fake Moncler, Nikes--any clothing brand you can think of, they have it. The quality is suspect.

Except for 4 fake Nike shirts I bought for $16 total (4 per shirt). They were very stretchy and are dry-fit. This was put to the test later with great success.

Saw a high-end mall where they had Rolex stores and the like. We went in the mall, walked around a bit, and then went to the Rolex store where they don't have anything in stock, per usual.

Many steps later, we were thirsty and drank a fresh coconut (30K) + sugar cane juice (20K).

At the time of this writing, you can estimate cost by thinking about 25K Vietnamese Dong (vnd) as $1 USD.

After that, we saw an old lady selling roast pork on a kebab. We bought 2 sticks and it was only 30K. She reheated them fresh with a friend's coal stove. It was juicy and the meat had just enough fat in it to make it very succulent. At the same time, the outside had a nice charcoal flavor to it.

Lunchtime

We then went to some noodle place as recommended by Mark Wiens. Their specialty is fish with greens. And instead of regular white pho, the noodles were brown. It was very good, and dirty and ghetto.

2 bowls of noodles and 2 plates of fried fish later = 170K.

Drinks

After lunch, we got some drinks at a place called Hanoi House. We got:

• A passionfruit tea--a little too sweet, for about 50K
• Coconut coffee, for about 75K. This was good.
• A cocktail (overrated), for 250K. This was expensive for what it was, in the context of Vietnam.

Taking a break from eating

We walked home afterwards and showered and napped for a bit. This was because we still had jetlag and had a 4:00PM appointment to do private Pilates.

Exercise (finally)

4-5PM was Pilates. I thought this would be mostly flexibility and torture, as I am not flexible.

But this wasn't about flexibility; it was more about controlled strength. So a lot of slow reps in bodybuilding comes into play.

A lot of abdominal holds and muscle control, combined with deep inhales and exhales where you need to focus on expanding and contracting your ribs--while simultaneously "using your pelvic floor to lift up your shoulders," whatever that means. But there's a lot of interesting cues and body-control instructions that definitely challenged my mobility skills, even after many years of lifting and exercise.

Off top of my head, the moves we learned really translated to:

• Squats
• Calf raises
• Ab holds / boat pose
• Lat pulldowns
• Chest flyes
• Side ab raises

Some can't really be translated and are fairly mobility / Pilates specific.

Mild exercise for an hour really worked up an appetite, so let's eat some more.

Dinner + Dessert

For dinner, we took Grab to a place called Pho bung Hang Trong. It's basically this old lady's home, and we went up to her bedroom (you can tell because her bed's next to the window, and the rest of the bedroom is repurposed into a dining area for guests--it was about maybe 150 sqft).

Really great pho. Had fried bread to dip it into the broth as well.

80K VND only.

Then, still hungry, we went to a closeby dessert place. We then proceeded to eat 2 cheesecakes, 1 loaf of bread with coconut butter filling, and another fresh coconut.

Then we went home.

Summarized list

To count how much I ate from my POV, here's a recap of the day (highly inaccurate calorie estimate in parenthesis):

1. Pho (350)
2. Banh mi (400)
3. 2 coffees (300)
4. Half a fresh coconut, half a cup of sugarcane juice (150)
5. Pork skewer (100)
6. Bowl of fish pho + fish spring rolls (700)
7. Half passionfruit tea, half coconut coffee, half cocktail (550)
8. Pho with fried bread (550)
9. 1 cheesecake + half loaf of bread with coco butter filling + fresh coco (600)

Very roughly 3700 cals. OK I'm done.

Nov 20: Fun Outing

At 6:30AM, a private car was here to pick us up. The car's pretty new and had a new car smell. Drove us 2+ hours to meet up with our guide.

Then, we climbed the 2 viewpoints in Mua Caves. One's about 500 steps and has a dragon at the top, with jaggedy rocks. The other is an Insta-worthy pole--kind of like how the top of Misson Peak looks like.

The climb's not too bad; what was gross is that the park operators were burning plastic trash, so the climb up was really gross / carcinogenic.

Quick fun fact about "Mua Caves"--it is supposed to be accented, but the sign is not. Non-accented has a very different meaning:

• Mua = buy
• Caves = prostitutes

Accented, it means "cave of dance (mua)" instead.

After we climbed the mountain, we had a fresh coconut + coffee with condensed milk.

Walked around a bit in these large lotus fields. And our tour guide did not give a fuck. He just straight up ripped the lotus from the pond and showed us that if you rip apart the stems, you can spin the fibers into silk. He also found a lotus root that he ripped out and showed us that the seeds inside are edible. It was crunchy, like a radish would be, but inside the seed is gooey. Yum. My first time trying this ingredient.

I love trying out new food ingredients because having eaten a lot of food for 30+ years on Earth, it is such a rare opportunity to try out something I've never eaten before.

We were then driven to take a boat ride around the famed Tam Coc, where the lady in the back rows the boat with her feet. Check it out (ROFL at the rowing lady's face)

90 minutes of this later, we went back to our car and visited a large Pagoda. Buddhism is quite interesting and has a lot of mythology around it that has a lot of modern-day references. I learned today that:

• The tiles represents the scales of goldfish, and it is lore that goldfish turns into dragons. And the dragons help protect the temple from fire (since they are water-based). Wait, but this is just Magikarp -> Gyarados!
• When Buddha was born, he had 1 finger pointed to the sky and 1 pointed to hell. And he uttered: "Throughout heaven and earth, I alone am the honored one." But wait, this is just what Gojo said during his fight with Toji!

Then, our tour guide brought us to the outside of the pagoda where he showed us some exploding plants. These plants, when it rains, crack open violently, and spray their seeds everywhere, as a way to pollinate. Here's a science-fair demo:

It was around 2PM then and we were driven home. Each trip was about a 2-hour drive, and the total cost was about $200.

Haircut cost

We dropped our stuff off and I got a haircut + hair massage / hair wash. It was supposed to cost $9 (haircut) + $9 (for washing hair + massage). But because I had so little hair and they finished everything within 20 minutes, they only charged me $9. They charged Serena $9 even though she only opted in for the hair wash, because they ended up taking 40 minutes to:

• Wash her hair
• Massage her head
• Massage her back
• Massage her face

So even though I also cut my hair, I ended up being the one waiting.

Dinner + Dessert

For dinner, we ate 2 meals.

First, was the pho we had on Nov 17. Right after we ate a bowl of pho, we immediately headed to Cha Ca Thang Long--another Mark Wiens place where they do fish + thick green vegetables. The Google images don't look that amazing but eating there was. The way the fish is freshly cooked in oil, and how it juxtaposes the bun cha (dry rice noodles), fish sauce, cilantro, nuts, and other greens--when it is all mixed together, the texture and the taste profile is nothing short of magical.

Also good about the 2nd restaurants is that it is a set meal so you don't have a choice and don't have to choose. You just choose drinks, of which we had 2 Vietnamese tea. About $16 for dinner which is kind of expensive, but keep in mind there was a lot of condiments / veggies they give to you on the side.

After our 2 dinners, we had some desserts. We had 2 lotus-based dessert, and another dessert where they were 2 mochi balls: one with coconut and one with sesame, along with a strong, sweet soup base kind of like the base of "tong yuen" in Cantonese dessert. It was nice because unlike Western desserts where it is just diabetes on a plate, the dessert here had only natural sweetness and was very mild.

Went home after.

Nov 21: A lot more eating (and shopping)

This is our last full day in Hanoi, and there's nothing to do here other than eat. So we ate. Chronologically:

• [Breakfast] egg coffee, 40K.
• [Breakfast at another place] tomato pho, 40K.
• [Breakfast 3] went to another place to get milk coffee, 40K.
• [Brunch] walked to a Bun Cha place we ate in one of the earlier days and had a Bun Cha + spring rolls = 55K.

• [Lunch] walked to a closeby Banh Mi place. Ate a banh mi for 25K.

Getting full, we took a shopping break. Serena and I bought 9 pieces of clothing (5 cotton, zippered shorts for me, and 2 long sleeves + 2 leggings for Serena). All for only $76 USD (about 1.9 million VND).

Tired from all the shopping, we continued our calorie onslaught:

• [Lunch 2] we went to the same exact coffee place at [breakfast 3] and ordered some other drinks. Had banana coffee (which turned out to be basically a banana smoothie mixed with coffee + 2 slices of dehydrated bananas--very good), and also egg cocoa (like egg coffee, except instead of whipped egg mixed with bitter coffee, it was mixed with sweet cocoa--very good also). Cost 80K.
• [Lunch 3] We then walked around and had sugarcane juice for 20K.

We then did more shopping, where Serena got some earrings and I got some prints that you can iron on clothes. They're printed but look like they're embroidered so when you glue it on clothes, it'll look like it's embroidered. I plan to iron these onto white hoodies / shirts. I got:

• 2 different designs for NASA (50K)
• 2 sesame streets (30K)

Or about $3 and change.

Then, I had a 2 hour massage where they used hot stones. And Serena got a 2.5 hour massage. The total for both of us cost the same as the 9 pieces of clothing (about $76 USD). After the massage, it was about 5PM and we picked up our tailor-fitted clothes.

To my disappointment, I had ordered suit pants that were made of flexible material, but I also explicitly requested the waist be able to be adjusted. She told me she couldn't find the band to buy, so instead of a 4cm slack at the waste, I get 0cm.

I also forgot to tell her that I want my initials embroidered on one of the shirts, so it wasn't.

All in all, it was very cheap for an OK quality tailor, but it kind of felt like a bait-and-switch due to the whole:

Me: Can I have this waist be adjustable?

Tailor: Yes, instead of side tabs I can also just add a band to the waist to give you 4cm of flex.

Me: Sure

Tailor (few days later): Here's the final product without what we talked about.

Despite the waist being kind of mediocore, the pants material is 4-way stretch and very good. Normally, this would be very expensive but for some reason, lots of women's pants use another 4-way stretch material and is for some reason cheaper. So we used that instead. I did squats and the pants material didn't catch at all.

To fix the waist situation, I requested 2 additional buttons to be added onto the pants so that I can button the pants in a very loose position when bulking, and a very tight position when peak cutting.

As this is our last night in Hanoi, she will drop off our clothes at around 9P-11P at our hotel.

Meanwhile, we had dinner once again at Pho bung Hang Trong. It was just as good as the last time we had it a few days ago. This was 40K.

We still had about 200K left, so we spent 195K of that on a dessert place. If this money isn't spent, it would have been wasted as VND isn't really good for much.

All in all, we spent (per person) 340K across 7 meals ($14) not including dessert. And 440K including it ($18).

For shopping, I spent about 900K + 80K (or about $40) to get 5 zippered shorts and 4 pieces of decor I can iron onto clothes.

Finally, we spent about $76 USD for a massage. This was for both people, so it cost about $40 per person.

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