Start of the Journey to Vietnam

 3/3/26

Travel started at 430 am after a frantic final week of prepping, packing, and moving out of our house so the renters could move in.  I admit to my hoarding tendencies after 15 years in that house. We were down to the wire and ended up with no sleep.  My nephew took us to the airport on March 3rd. We had originally planned to leave February 28th but changed our destination to Hanoi instead of Saigon because my sister was over there and we wanted to meet up.  Our flight path was RDU to Seattle to Seoul to Hanoi.  When we arrived at Incheon airport, we just showed up to our gate and Korea airlines converted our boarding pass from Delta to Korean air and handled the bag transfer right there when we gave them our bag tracking stickers.

Food on flight to Seoul was good... Not Delta One good because I'm now a simple peasant flyer, but it did the job  We both chose ginger pork with veggies because the description for the other option was literally just "chicken".  Like it was so uninteresting it didn't merit any description, so it did not merit bring chosen.  The blondie was good but the pretzel roll..omg..was a bocce ball...i mean just look at the picture!  The chickpea salad had good flavor but sucked the moisture out io my mouth like work sucked the life out of my soul... Which is why I'm here.

The food on the flight to Vietnam was really good.  Bibimbop, beansprouts, soft un-bocce ball dinner roll and fruit cup.  The salad was a yummy vinegary...salad.  Brian choose the chicken.  He should have known better.

After arrival in hanoi at 10pm, Immigration was a breeze.  Somehow the line moved quickly and efficiently unlike JFK.  We got a sim card from one of the big mobile providers called Viettel.  The plan for 9gb per day for a month was 13 bucks...i mean really!  That's more than Pokemon Go requires but I'll take what they give.  The downside was the minute we left the airport building there was no signal.  This contributed to our Grab (Asian Uber) dilemma.

Grab was a pain in my non-existent Asian butt.  3 drivers cancelled on us.. This is the wild East...they do what they want.  But the flip side is if they pull up and don't see you, they cancel and you don't get charged. But the flip side to that flip side is they can play this game forever. So when we left the airport building it was like stepping into Narnia's evil twin... There was no signal.  We couldn't wait at the numbered column and still have real-time location of the driver so we would miss them.  Grab quoted 370k for the ride to our hotel, Royal Hanoi.  After 1.5 hrs of cancellations and waiting, we finally did what we were warned against.  We took the first guy that offered a ride for 500k which came to USD 20.  He was the handler.  He called his buddy to pick us up... The wait was able 5 minutes.  I don't care what you naysayers are naysaying.. Cheat me and take my money, cause i ain't waiting no more.

I don't have alot of talents but I can claim one sorry power:  I can go in and out of incognito mode by pretending i don't understand Vietnamese.  Because of this i learned from the driver that he got 350k and his handler, got 150k.  We were ok with that because after 3 days of essentially no sleep, we just want to lay our heads down like civilized humans.  We are not yet at the singularity...we humans still exist and need rest.

3/5/26
We arrived at the hotel at 1 AM.  the drive from the airport to the outskirts of Hanoi was around a half hour. We had reserved a 10 dollar a night hotel called Royal Saigon.  I love it!  It's new, comfy, away from the tourist traps and noise pollution.  5 star...would recommend! 

A common thing in Vietnam and I think other southeast Asian countries are wet bathrooms.  There's no separate shower.  You clean your body, you clean the bathroom.  Win win for everyone... Except when you sit your butt on a wet toilet seat because you didn't put the lid down.  But that's a you problem.

Notice the bed can be seen through the window of the bathroom.  That's free voyeurism in case you want to watch your #1 do a #2.  But also notice the black curtain that descends to preserve your dignity.  Why, Royal Hanoi, would you offer this perk?

In addition to the beautifully appointed furniture and decor, they also provide a little drawer of toiletry items which I'd already ravaged so it looks janky:

Special nod to the fake Louis Vuitton wallpaper in the elevator

The only downside for other bougie people is it's out of town but we find a certain charm in the rough and tumble old schoolness of the less modernized neighborhoods.

So first thing in the morning, we went for that elixir of happiness that Vietnam is known for...no, you freak, the other opium called coffee.  First stop was Cafe Thai with nothing Thai about it.  The coffee is Vietnamese and the mural is Paris.  But the coffee was good... And strong.  Made you grow hair in all sorts of places.  Both of our coffees together cost a little over 3 bucks. You couldn't secondhand expose yourself to fentanyl for that little.

The extrance:

The Paris mural

The cute outdoor seating area where you can commune with the local chickens

After fueling or fuzzy brains we ate pho for breakfast because that's what they do here.  They eat pho for breakfast and they know things.  It was dirt cheap:  110,000 vnd, which is 4 bucks for both of us.. I was scared of the beef, so all the meat went in Brave Brian's bowl.  

So begins the constant chime of my dexcom.  It's impossible to avoid carbs here...i don't know why diabetes doesn't realize I'm Asian and rice and noodles are my life blood.  But Vietnam is unique... Not only can you get noodles at almost every restaurant, you can supplement it with a side of rice and some french bread appetizer.  It's a diabetes party in your mouth every meal.

After morning coffee and breakfast, it was time for second morning coffee.  We went to a fancy cafe called K&K coffee.  I had egg coffee and Brian had salt coffee.  Mine was definitely better. A little history about the egg part of the coffee:  during the Vietnam war, there was a shortage of milk.  A genius man found that if you whipped an egg yolk with a bit of condensed milk, you would get a creamy consistency like whipping cream.  It did the job to make the coffee rich and creamy without fresh dairy.

The proof on the left... Real cream on the right in Brian's salt coffee 🤮

We (I should amend that to I) had coco matcha latte.  This was virtually a matcha latte with coconut milk, great for non-dairy disease.   They put it in a little carry bag so your hands don't freeze off... Genius.

The total for all 3 drinks was 4.50USD

We fully intended this to be a day of rest and recovery after a stressful week of packing, cleaning, moving, and traveling. Instead we decided to walk an hour so we could walk.  It was a bad decision.  We were aiming for a park called Yen So Park.   It was an interesting encounter of back alleys and friendly locals.  And trash on the side of every dirt road.

Here is a sign that says do not litter as a grand invitation to in fact please do litter.

The city is quite a mix of old and new, poverty and grandeur, eastern and western all right next to each other to the dismay of every HOA in existence. 

Grandeur:

Old:

Diagon Alley:

Back to our Google Maps-aided mishap:  there were turns that weren't actually there and paths that were highways.  We ended up barreling straight through overgrown brush and shrubbery praying the many poisonous snake varieties in Vietnam would stay away.  God complied because I'm here updatng this blog and didnt die.  The best part of the whole thing?  Wasn't worth it.  Sure it was a clean swimming lake.  But that was it.  They were still building the entertainment center and it was all under construction.

All I got was a gratuitous picture of the carousel

We had dinner at a kbbq place called yumyum. The two young men were so nice and attentive.  The cost was 412k with pork belly, marinated beef, and pork cutlet.  including 2 beers and a chia fruit drink.  There is no air condition in these back alleys, but there are a ton of pool halls.  Priorities.

I had dessert at Che Ngon, a back alley kiosk that could be mistaken for Dexter's kill room. Che is a traditional vietnamese dessert similar to halo-halo or bin-soo. She allowed me to choose what goes in it. I asked for 1 but she understood 2 because what i eat Brian also eats regardless of whether he wants to or not. They just see us as a copy/ paste of each other because we literally look like twins.

Us looking like twins:

-------------------------------------------------

Grand total for day was 792000
30usd worth of food and drink.
Hotel was 10usd
Grab was 100k
Brian's hair was 50k
My glaucoma drops were 375k
Various toilet sundries were 300k
Total spend for the day was almost 70 dollars for everything including lodging, food, entertainment, sundries.

3/6/26

We went to bed last night at 7pm and woke this morning at 4 because jet lag is real.  Need coffee.  Went to Nhat Long coffee.  The kid was not happy and not engaging but maybe because it's 630am.

Went to Hu Tieu Top Mo 1985 for breakfast at 630am.  It's cool enough in hanoi to eat noodle soup for breakfast.  Good cheap crab and beef noodle soup with lardons.  2 hearty soups for 3 bucks can't be beat and they were very friendly and smily.

Traffic in Vietnam is next level.  Crossing the street is like bungee jumping off a 300 meter cliff with a 400 meter bungee.  I'd be stuck on the sidewalk still if not for Brian walking me across like an elderly auntie.

Sidewalks are not for side walking.  They are for restaurant tables, car and scooter parking.  Humans walk on the street with moving cars playing dodge ball with fate.

We decided to blossom and grow into good tourists by venturing to the city proper where we could get a true taste of walking in traffic and to meet my niece for lunch.  We killed time till then by going to Train Street.   Train street must be experienced by everyone.  It's a street in Hanoi with restaurants on either side of the tracks.

There was an older lady who saw us get out of the Grab taxi and told us to come with her because the train was coming in 15 minutes.  She conveniently led us to her coffee shop by the tracks.  We were ok with it because she was so sweet and so happy to see us happy.  As we sipped on our third coffee of the day,  a train came whizzing by 2 feet from our heads. 

You could literally reach out to touch it as it passes if you're done with your arm and no longer have need for it.  It's quite an adrenaline rush

-------------------------------------------------

Nhat long coffee - 2 x 35k = 70k
Hu tieu top mo - 80k for 2xbun rieu with lardons.  Really good
Grab to train St 102k
Coffee phuong anh on train St- jackfruit frozen yogurt and egg coffee for 120k.  Sweetest old lady ever
Cha ca thang - 300k
Grab - 102k
Room. - 10usd