Hoi An
Cafe Giang
Hoi An
Our safe words here in the middle of Hanoi are “sticky rice”.
Intrepid Travel tour leader Thao Do pauses at a busy intersection and holds an arm above his head. “Sticky rice,” he shouts back to us. It’s a call to stick to him like starch as he cuts a path through a torrent of honking scooters, which rush past in a thousand random vignettes: a motorbike smothered in ladders, a bicycle doubling as a mobile flower shop, a pop-up barber shop. Set against a kaleidoscopic backdrop of French, Chinese and Vietnamese architecture, there’s so much happening it’s hard to know where to look. “You just stand on a corner, and the world comes to you,” says someone in the group. That might be true, but it doesn’t help us cross the road. “Sticky rice,” yells Thao again, and we follow.
Watch: A Week In Vietnam With Photographer Michael Pham
An invitation into Hanoi
Like all Intrepid Travel leaders, Thao is a local and knows this place better than most. He leads us down a side street to an apartment block wrapped in webs of powerlines – not the kind of place you’ll find in any guidebook. We enter a small apartment decorated with teapots and ceramics, crouch on cushions and wait.
The guiding principles of a Vietnamese tea ceremony are conversation and contemplation. As sunlight streams through pot plants on the balcony of her apartment, we watch the tea master, Thó carefully prepare the drinks. It’s clear this is someone’s home – there are children’s drawings on the cupboards and a pile of shoes by the door. Together we sip grapefruit-flower tea and feel privileged to be invited in to share something so intimate.
Leaving the apartment, Thao guides us to Koto cafe, which stands for “know one, teach one”. The social enterprise (which includes a vocational school) was founded in 1999 by Vietnamese Australian Jimmy Pham, to provide career opportunities for young people from rural villages. Lunch customers like us are directly supporting the project. Eighteen-year-old Ho Thi Cho has been working at Koto for four months. “I feel more confident after working here,” she says. “The people are like family, all supporting each other.”
That evening Thao takes us on a street-food tour, where we meet local woman Hoa, who’s been selling bite-sized banh mi from a street cart outside the Dong Xuan Market for 26 years. As we watch her work, a mother on a scooter with two young boys on the back pulls up at the cart and orders banh mi to go. Hoa quickly assembles the fresh baguettes with pate, barbequed pork, chilli, coriander and cucumber. A drive-through restaurant, Hanoi-style.
Later we sample banh cuon – steamed rice rolls filled with pork, mushroom and crispy fried shallots, followed by banh ran, a Vietnamese doughnut made from rice flour and mung bean, with a soft centre and a sweet, toffee-like crunch on the outside. Our culinary evening culminates with a Hanoi speciality, bun cha – a dish of minced pork and noodles, lettuce, marjoram, Thai basil, garlic and chilli, papaya and cumquat. We end the night sitting on plastic chairs at stainless-steel tables set out on a street corner, drinking glasses of local draught beer, or bia hoi, filled from a hose. It’s the kind of place we’d have mistakenly walked past in any other circumstance.
The following day we can’t leave Hanoi without trying local favourite “egg coffee”. It’s as described: a mixture of egg yolk, sweetened condensed milk and sugar whipped into a velvety consistency, with espresso poured on top. I dub it the “chicken latte”.
The drink came about during a milk shortage in 1946. A bartender at the city’s Hotel Metropole, Nguyen Van Giang, substituted egg yolk for milk, and liked the results so much that he opened a cafe to sell it. Today, you can find egg coffee all over Vietnam – but it all started at Cafe Giang in Hanoi. His son, Nguyen Tri Hoang, now owns the cafe, still following his father’s recipe. The verdict? Surprisingly delicious. We sit with our drinks on doll-sized chairs at an elegant marble and timber table, surrounded by Renaissance-inspired paintings hanging on custard-coloured walls. In a quiet corner there’s a little egg-coffee shrine with burning incense and a box of eggs. Nguyen Tri Hoang tells us he’ll one day pass the business down to his two daughters to continue the egg-coffee dynasty.
On the way out of town, we pay a visit to Hanoi’s Temple of Literature, which dates back to 1070 and honours the Chinese philosopher Confucius. Dedicated to education and lifelong learning, it was the site of Vietnam’s first national university. On the day we visit, the venue is hosting a school graduation ceremony for hundreds of children. University students cramming for an exam also take time out to come here and pray for an A. Because what have you got to lose?
Ha Long Bay
After the big city buzz of Hanoi, the waters of Ha Long Bay – a three-hour drive east of the capital – offer a chance to relax and recalibrate. Climbing onboard our floating home for the night – a converted fishing vessel named Starfish – it’s quickly apparent why this Unesco World Heritage site is so well visited, as we glimpse the famous limestone islets rearing dramatically from the sea. With around 1600 islands and islets dotted throughout the bay, it’s a dreamy spot to sip cocktails on sun lounges on the deck and glide past towering, jungle-covered cliffs. At least until a locally caught lunch of stir-fried squid, fish cakes and shrimp is served.
Our afternoon is spent exploring Sung Sot Cave, on the island of Bo Hon. The 10,000-square-metre limestone cave has slowly hollowed out over 20 million years, transforming into a desert-like landscape of stalagmites and stalactites. By night the surrounding bay becomes a floating city of boats strung with festoon lights and the sound of karaoke ringing out across the water. Humble fishing boats nudge up to the flotilla, selling freshly caught seafood. While the crowds of Ha Long Bay at times overwhelm, our cleverly curated itinerary delivers blissful periods of serenity. The following morning we wake at sunrise and take a tai chi class on the deck. Afterwards, I sit with my coffee and watch the limestone pillars materialise in the sea mist and float past, their reflections quivering on the water. The rising sun, orange through the fog, floods the bay with soft light.
Docking at a floating pearl farm, we swap our cruiser for kayaks and paddle close enough to these towering islands to see how millions of years of erosion by the sea has cut into their bases, like waves eating away at a sandcastle. It’s an unforgettable moment shared with no one else – not something you can often say on Ha Long Bay.
Hoi An
Our final stop on our Intrepid tour is the historic coastal city of Hoi An. It’s another Unesco World Heritage site, due to its remarkably well-preserved old town, whose buildings date back to the city’s heyday as a major trading port from the 15th to 19th centuries. Our guide directs us to Bean House Books Cafe, a light-filled space on the outskirts of town with vintage furniture, a garden courtyard and an overflowing bookcase. Bean House Books is owned by five local women who ran a guest house together pre-pandemic. One of the women, Hanh tells me that reviving human connection was the motivation behind the cafe’s bookish theme. “We have books in many different languages, because we want everyone to feel welcome,” says Hanh. “We love learning about the people who come here and hearing their stories.”
They also love making coffee. Nha Dau Cafe’s speciality is “salt coffee”, made with condensed milk, cream and salt, resulting in a sweet salted-caramel flavour. We sit with our coffees and chat, as friendly dogs drift between tables and people sign up for leather-making workshops also run by the women. Our visit feels like an invitation into something deeper than the cultivated shopping strips and lanterns of the old town.
Afterwards we’re led to alleyway restaurant Bale Well, which is named after the nearby Ba Le well. Locals have been drawing water from the well for over a 1000 years, and it’s still used to make the traditional dish of cao lau noodles. Restaurant owner Be says she loves feeding people. With dishes laid out on the table, Be sidles up and constructs my lunch, wrapping pork, kimchi, fresh greens, shrimp and chilli sauce in squares of rice paper, and then insists on actually shovelling it into my mouth as the rest of the group laugh and snap photos.
It seems almost unbelievable that you can feel safe riding bicycles in a Vietnamese city, but that afternoon Thao guides our group on two wheels along quiet streets to a trail cutting through rice paddies at the edge of town. We pass wallowing buffalos, farmers fertilising their crops, and a group of boys barbequing clams on an open fire, before ditching our bikes at a house in a small village.
There we meet Jam, a local chef, for a Vietnamese cooking class. On a lantern-lit table outside her home, Jam leads us through the creation of an eight-course feast. It becomes evident that this is more than just a meal to Jam. She explains she was raised by her grandparents, and from the age of 10 was making her own lunch. In the evening, her grandparents taught her how to cook, instilling in her a passion for both cooking and teaching. With Jam’s guidance we wrap chargrilled fish in a banana leaf, learn how pepper vodka brings out the flavours of chicken, infuse a tomato-garlic soup with tamarind, and get the lowdown on the secret behind Hoi Ann’s famous mi Quang noodles. Mango puree and Malibu rum is blended with rice and vanilla essence, then melded deftly into shape for a show-stopping dessert.
We’re so engaged with Jam we don’t notice darkness has descended over the rice paddies. The division between visitor and host relaxes; we’re just friends enjoying a meal we’ve made together. Every course tonight is a treat, but it’s the dessert the lingers long after we leave. Simple and sweet, it could only be one thing – our safe words: sticky rice.
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Intrepid. See more information and book your Intrepid Premium Vietnam trip.
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