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Where to Eat in Hanoi

by Brian on December 29, 2014 in Asia, Travel, Vietnam

Typical sidewalk restaurant in Hanoi

Travel in Asia is all about the food. At least it has been for us. And nowhere have we found ourselves so overwhelmed with dining options than in Hanoi, Vietnam. It’s hard to take a step in the city’s old quarter without passing someone cooking up something wonderful. Deciding from which of the many food shacks, sidewalk stalls, and sit-down restaurants to sample is the hardest choice we typically faced on any given day.

Making matters worse, restaurant review sites like Tripadvisor and Yelp aren’t terribly helpful here. We’ve always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with those sites anyway. But in Asia they have the added challenge that many of the best eateries don’t have western names, or even any names at all.

You won’t find a review on Tripadvisor for the lady spooning up Pho Ga from some random alley because there really isn’t any way to add her to the site. What you will find instead are reviews for a bunch of larger establishments with identifiable names and addresses. They may not serve the best food, but they are popular among the westerners who use Tripadvisor.

Because of that dynamic we spent a lot of time trolling through alternative sources of information like blogs, travel articles, and local recommendations to find the best places to eat in Hanoi. We don’t offer this as a definitive list, but these are the best places we sampled during our week-long Hanoi food odyssey.

How to survive the streets of Hanoi

by Brian on December 22, 2014 in Asia, Travel, Vietnam

Other travelers had warned us about a lot of things concerning Vietnam, most of which turned out not to be true. The one thing that they had mostly right, though, was the unique challenge of simply trying to cross the street in Hanoi.

Motorbikes, scooters, bicycles, and cars all bear down on you from every direction. It never stops; not for other vehicles or for red lights and certainly not for pedestrians. If you want to get anywhere in the city you’ll eventually have to wade into these waves of rushing metal. Fortunately there are rules that govern this madness of crowds which, if followed, will see you safely through the seeming chaos.

Here’s how to survive as a pedestrian on the clogged and crazy streets of Hanoi.

Why you can’t listen to anyone else about travel

by Brian on December 15, 2014 in Asia, Travel, Vietnam

We heard so many mixed things about Vietnam that we weren’t quite sure what to expect when we arrived. Some people spoke very highly of it. But even in those cases the endorsements were usually qualified, as in “I love Vietnam, but . . .” or “It’s beautiful, but . . .”

Other folks dispensed with the “buts” altogether, claiming that “the northern Vietnamese HATE westerners” at worst, or – at best – “they aren’t very friendly.” On one thing most people seemed to agree: “Everyone tries to rip you off in Vietnam.”