Back to Hanoi for the second time we decided to do some of the usual tourist things but there was a downpour on our first afternoon so we settled down in a little cocktail bar round the corner from our apartment. We were the only customers and the owner and his team seemed quite surprised that these two middle-aged English people wanted to rattle through their cocktail menu at 3pm on a Wednesday. We had some great conversation and shared lots of information, most of it understandable even after the owner delivered a free tray of shots. Lovely people, great cocktails and we managed to make our excuses after 3 hours before we embarrassed ourselves. If you are ever in Hanoi give 528hz cocktail bar a try.

Day two involved a walk to Train Street, a well known but weird phenomenon where you pay over the odds for drinks and sit so close to the track that you can touch the huge train as it rumbles past, the exact opposite of something you would do at home. Tourists find the strangest things exciting!!!

Then it was on to the “Hanoi Hilton”, the notorious prison that housed a lot of political prisoners and also a number of US soldiers who were captured during the Vietnam War. Conditions were very rough for all prisoners and food rations were small but apparently the budget was 1 dong for Vietnamese prisoners and double that for those from the US. For reference the current sterling exchange rate is now £1 to 35,000 dong.

Food, how brave are we?

In every country we have combined street food stalls and restaurants with more established places. We have a couple of vague rules but they are only thinks like not eating at places where they are washing chickens on the pavement in 33 degree heat, or those where the meat skewers sit out in the sun all day.

So far things have been pretty good with a minor bout of “Bali belly” for Pip the biggest issue. That seems to have become a common phrase in Bali as the pharmacies and medical centres we visited when looking for normal medication were advertising “Bali belly” IV drips either onsite or by Grab delivery. I get the impression that it is more of a code for a hangover remedy than an actual medical condition. Given that Bali is full of Australians maybe they can’t handle their beer as well as we think?

Occasionally we refer to a trusted source for recommendations and as a result have visited a few places in the current Michelin guide, not Michelin starred of course, our budget is nothing like that. They are more expensive at c£7 rather than £4 for a meal but you hope that those recommendations and higher price will deliver better quality and taste, not just nicer surroundings.  Unfortunately the one we tried in Hanoi rewarded us with raw chicken on skewers and prawns that had not been deveined. A timely reminder to us that previous reviews are no indication of who is cooking your food today. Good chefs get poached regularly so maybe the pot washer had a promotion when we went.

Shopping

The weekend night market is huge in Hanoi, stretching for c3km. A lot of the stuff available is what you could buy in the day market but shopping at night does seem more exciting and interesting, as well as being about 2 degrees cooler (I wish it was more).

There are fakes of everything you can think of, and the quality seemed good, but that is to be expected when Vietnam is actually producing a lot of the real products for designer brands.

I have only bought functional clothes on this trip to replace existing stuff. Pip has taken a more enlightened view of the shopping options so both rucksacks have increased in weight. As our next stop is Hong Kong and Pip is planning to send some of her new purchases home, I agreed she could max out my rucksack.  She took advantage of that offer.