Hey, hey! Long time no see! I actually did one big trip in 2021, but that blog will come later. For now, we go to Southeast Asia for yummy food and hot, humid weather.

The backstory: I got a new job! Yay! This job is actually more of a promotion, in that I’m being converted from contractor to full-time-real-employee. And with this promotion came the opportunity to take a couple weeks off. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere originally, but my new beau offered to come along, so that pretty much sealed the deal.

With less than two weeks till departure, we made a mad dash for flights, covid testing, visa applications, and basic plans. It was pretty hard to figure out some of our days because Vietnam has been closed to foreigners for over two years. Online, it was clear that a lot of tours weren’t running, but it wasn’t obvious which ones were, if any. We made the bold choice to show up with a few days unplanned so that we could figure it out once we arrived.

Our packing differences were pretty funny, and a bit of a window into our different habits for traveling and life in general.

The flight left Wednesday afternoon, with some squabbling over how early to arrive at the airport. We made the plane with plenty of time to spare and tucked in for our 12 hour flight, which turned into 14 due to changes in the flight path.

We got some gorgeous views of Kodiak and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, and then much later, we saw a bunch of pretty islands off the coast of Japan.

The highlight of the flight was the bibimbap dinner! The lowlight was only getting two meals on a 14 hour flight. I was starving for most of it, even though I ate almost all of my snacks. The sun also never set, which was crazy. We chased that sun down!

We had a quick layover in Seoul before another four hours in the air, and we were exhausted when we landed in Hanoi around 11pm Thursday night. We spent a good chunk of time crankily trying to figure out how to get to our Airbnb, but once we arrived, I was pleased to discover it was just as relaxing and wonderful as the pictures. Then we passed the heck out.

I woke up around 5am, completely jetlagged and discombobulated after only a few hours of sleep. I dinked around on my phone for a bit while I waited for Sean (the aforementioned beau) to wake up, and we eventually set off for breakfast.

Breakfast was yummy, but it was also our first lesson in “less is more.”

Next, we wandered around and shopped a bit. I found a bunch of tiny spoons (eep!), Sean got a pretty pair of chopsticks, and I found these pants I’m obsessed with and have basically been living in ever since. We also learned lesson number two of traveling together: “Don’t let Lizzy bargain. She is bad at it.”

We stopped back at the Airbnb to drop off our goodies, change into my new pants, and do a quick photoshoot of the amazing bathtub area. I was shocked to see these guys on our roof pulling these twenty foot long aluminum rails up from the ground floor using just a small rope with a hook attached. Check it out in the background of this photo:

Off again, we walked around the lake and explored Ngoc Son Temple.

I wanted to try some of the yummy-looking fruit people were selling from carts and tables on the street, but I bargained poorly yet again, and couldn’t even communicate which fruits I wanted to try.

The jackfruit was a success! The mango was mango, and the pineapple, pineapple. I’m not a huge fan of wax apples, and the curious little red fruit was super tart! There’s still one fruit she didn’t give me that I hope to try before we leave. We also kept dropping the fruit as we tried to eat it. It was a comedy of errors.

After the fruit fiasco, we got ahold of ourselves and sat down in a lakeside cafe for coffee, tea, and pho.

It was all so delicious! Sean had another “less is more” moment when he dumped the whole side dish of chilis into the pho and made it practically too spicy to consume. Still yummy, though.

We were pretty tired and hot at this point (high of 90F and very, very humid), so we went back for a quick nap. I had also been told a lot of very scary things about mosquito diseases in Vietnam, so I was pretty conscious about wanting to be inside during dawn and dusk. (So far, we haven’t been bitten too much, but we’ve been super, super careful. I’ve been wearing long pants and sleeves pretty much whenever we are outdoors. It seems like it might be overkill, but perhaps better than getting sick!)

Once darkness had fallen, we ventured back out to wander. The city is constantly loud and bustling, but the streets really come alive with pedestrians at night. It’s hard to capture just how many people there were around us, but trust me when I say it was cray.

We had trouble finding our chosen dinner venue because it was on the top floor of a giant cruise-ship-like building, but we eventually made it in one piece. We ordered the sharing hot pot since it seemed like everyone was doing so, and I ordered a drink that looked interesting in the picture, without bothering to investigate what the drink actually was.

The hot pot was SO GOOD. The flavor was coming from straight up cow hooves and beef fat. The only other time I’ve tasted broth that flavorful was when I had that famous fish soup in Taiwan. Mmmmmm. Mouth is watering currently, haha.

We were definitely confused when the food first arrived because we didn’t know what should go into the hotpot and what should go into our tiny personal bowls. I tried putting the hard, raw noodles into my own bowl, but we aborted that plan pretty quickly. We were the only non-Vietnamese people in the restaurant, so we did our best to spy and pretend we knew what we were doing, even though it very much felt like we were messing it up! I think since it tasted so good, we must have done something right.

The drink I ordered was… interesting. It was sweet, but also tasted very vegetable-ey. Sean translated the menu with his phone and… Turns out it was vegetable juice! Hahaha.

I was surprised how long people were staying in the restaurant. Nobody left in the time we were eating, but we were so confused by our food ineptitude that we decided to head out so as not to continue embarrassing ourselves.

We were delighted to find night markets set up in the streets after dinner, so we walked the long rows of tables and Sean bartered for a skirt for me. (:

We also found some live music in the streets!

The craziest part of the night, though, was when we stumbled upon this nightlife-food street. The street was narrow, with tiny plastic tables and tiny plastic chairs spilling out from all sides so that we could only walk single-file between the center lane. The tiny chairs were filled to bursting with people eating and drinking, chanting songs before taking shots, and generally being merry. We were constantly being asked to “sit outside?” as we bumbled our way through the ruckus and noise.

When we finally made it out the other end, Sean caught up to me, and all he could do was shake his head and say, “That was crazy!” I didn’t even get any proper pictures because I was just trying to make it out alive. Here’s what it looked like on a calmer street with about a third as many people:

Fully satisfied with our day’s adventures, we admired the lights on the lake and hit the hay.

And that’s a wrap on Day 1 of my return to travel!

Trân trọng/ best regards,

Lizzy-wa