North Vietnam 12D11N Day 5

01/01/2025

HAPPY NEW YEAR IN VIETNAM!

 Breakfast in hotel before leaving Sapa for Hanoi.

One hotel staff came to us and gave us a woven tote bag, it was such a beautiful surprise.

I always felt sad to leave a place, knowing I probably wouldn't be able to visit again.  Sometimes I felt like crying.  Yet at the same time, I was looking forward to explore the unknown.  Too emotional...

A car came to pick us up to the same gathering point, then all boarded the sleeper bus.

My last pic of Sapa.  Old man didn't hold his bladder too well, mine was weak too, but we made it after 6 hours, heehee...

After dropping our luggage, it was time for food and fun.

Xoi Yan glutinous rice was located 2mins walk from our hotel.

It's a road side stall with local vibe of low tables and stools, not for fussy people.

We ordered a bowl of glutinous rice topped with a fried hard boiled egg, thinly sliced chinese sausage and some stir fried chicken with mushroom.  The glutinous rice was super duper soft, I made the right combination, the bowl was DELICIOUS!

Missing this so much, but nowhere found in Singapore I think.

Walked down a few shops, we had Banh Cuon.

The (seemed to be) lady boss kept scolding her worker who was only a teenager girl.  Sounded bad enough even though we didn't understand the language.

Totally clueless, google translate didn't help to translate the big menu on the wall.  So we ordered the same pointing to another table.  We had small talk and they were from Taiwan.

Rice rolls with minced pork and soup with eggs, a big bar of fish cake and some minced pork.  Probably there would be better stalls, but we very happy with these, so yummy.

Rice rolls were so soft with generous fillings.

If my memory didn't fail, we walked to Long Bien Market and it closed on us at around 5pm.  But old man managed to buy some tibits outside it.

Lady butcher here.

Old Quarter of Hanoi.

Stall selling cooked fish cakes.

Not quite possible to get Grab taxi in small lanes, we took a trishaw to the Train Street.  We weren't light, the trishaw elderly had to forgo peddling to push the trishaw at some points.  I felt so bad but it wasn't a bad deal for him though, he carrot chopped us S$8.

There are 2 ways to get "into" the Train Street:

1) chose and book a cafe you like in advance, and they will wait for you at the "entrance" to bring you in.

2) there will be cafe owners approaching you, just follow one of them.

(I had also read from somewhere there were other entrances without aggressive cafe owners which I found out only after the trip.)

Either way, you will have to buy a drink, about S$2-S$3, they aren't asking for too much.

We saw a family being chased out.  One cafe owner asked them: "You want coffee or drink?"  They said "No, we just want to see..." "Please leave..." with a hand gesture they asked to leave the train track.  Obviously they were not aware of the culture, before we could help, the family left.

To me all cafes are more or less the same.  Ours was the 2nd way since we didn't know what time we would be here.

I had mojito, around S$5.

Old man don't drink coffee, it was really nice that he gotten to try egg chocolate instead.

We saw 2 trains within half an hour, how lucky.

Different from the one in Thailand, the train was fast and furious, very long too.

We were inches away from it, I was scared that I might lost my knee caps.

If paying for a drink was too passive, one could still see the train pass by from "outside", just a few meters away.

Not sure how but we managed to walk back to Hoan Kiem area.

Hoan Kiem Lake at night.

By plain chance we found another Vietnam dish so worth to try.

This was located behind the Aldo Building.

Our paper rice roll platter was about S$2.60.  One big guy beside us had it all by himself, me sharing with old man and was filling enough.

The price was crazy and it was surprisingly tasty.  Highly recommended if you are around this Aldo Building area.

Looking at the bridge that linked to a temple.

We passed by, not too interested to get in.

Fortune teller in ancient robe (at the right corner) looked as if he time travelled from the pass to here lolxx...

Too lazy to look for the name of the monument.

Clay figurines.

Found Singapore's ice-cream in bread lolxx...  Seemed more ex but again I wasn't sure how much it was in Singapore now.

Surprisingly the night market was still going on.  Maybe cos it's New Year's Day.

We had the best non-diluted sugar cane drink for S$0.50.

Very big cup some more.

Next day was a full day exploring Hanoi.  We went Mega Grand World (took a lorry load of photos),  lesser known Bat Trang Museum but totally worth it, Dong Xuan Market (we made it early) and finally Uniqlo Hoan Kiem as the last stop.