Ngày 4
Spent the day exploring Hanoi, roaming along the streets and soaking up the atmosphere. I must say, for a city so congested and crowded, Vietnam's capital does have its streets nicely aligned and organised(maybe because it was colonised by the French in the past).
Each street has its vendors selling goods of a particular type, eg. there's a silver street where all shops sold silver jewelry, silk street, coffee street etc., you get what I mean.
Visited this grand old cathedral, the oldest of its kind in the city that was built by the previous colonial French government.
Standing in front of it. We wanted to enter the church compound but it was closed for Christmas preparations(on the left, you can see people setting up the scene of the birth of Jesus)
Hoàn Kiếm Lake or Lake of the Restored Sword. Didn't capture the lake at the right angle and location, and thus this shit photo does not do justice to its beauty.
On the other hand, I absolutely adore this photo, kind of aptly captures how much Vietnam has modernised and opened up to the world, with Korean eateries and foreign labels such as Swarovski blending in with local businesses.
Wanton mee, a rare find here, and it tasted heavenly.
Visited this famous coffee place called Giang Cafe, apparently many people on tripadvisor have said that this place is a must-go because of its unique incorporation of egg yolk, YES, EGG YOLK in coffee, hot chocolate and even BEER.
I was a little skeptical at first, like eww raw egg yolk in my drink?! But it was the BEST cup of coffee I've ever drunk. I don't know how the guy does it, but one gulp and you can taste this magical concoction of creamy egg-y goodness that goes hand in hand with the aromatic coffee.
This ingenious use of eggs in coffee was invented by the cafe owner's dad when milk was scarce in Vietnam many decades ago, so raw chicken egg was used as a close substitute(hehehe econs reference).
The owner was extremely cordial and spoke to us even though the whole place was packed, with a long line of customers outside. He was raving about Singapore and how he loves it so much that he visited SG 5 times when he found out about our nationality. Hehehe love it when foreigners praise our dear country :)))))
Egg coffee, in hot and cold forms.
Egg hot chocolate, yummy but can't be compared to its coffee variant.
Ngày 5
Set off in the morning towards Halong Bay, which was a four-hour bus ride away. Shared the tour bus with a bunch of Australians, a Russian couple and a Singaporean family.
We were supposed to go on an overnight cruise on a huge boat with cabin rooms and all but everything got ruined because of the weather. There were about a hundred foreigners including us stranded at the Tourist Wharf because the shitty weather meant that all of the night cruises for that day had to be cancelled.
Yeaaah, total waste of time + money. In the end, no refund was made but they did provide us lodging at a 4 star hotel for the night.
Ok la, the room was super big with 2 single beds and one double bed, with a wall separating the double bed from the single beds.
Took the double bed while my parents took the single beds cause it would be weird(and scary in case something joins us) to leave a bed empty.
Went to the market via taxi and there was nothing of interest there.
waiting for foooooooood
Had dinner with the Russian couple, and the food was very...unique. Man, haha basically what we ate for lunch earlier at another restaurant was the same as what we had for dinner(at a different place).
HAHA anyway, the couple was very funny and crude, the woman was commenting on the people sitting behind them(the Australians) about how some of them were so fat yet they still ordered extra fries and fried chicken hahaahah couldn't stop laughing. And they even brought a bottle of rum everywhere and would shout cheers during lunch and dinner to ganbei with us HAHAHAH. Russians are really true badasses.
Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel, born is the King of Israel :)
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