Day 2, Sept. 27

After a good night’s sleep, we set off this morning with Huy, our tour guide for the street food tour we had arranged. There was another family of four from California with us, so it was quite a small group.

It was a walking tour which meant not walking on the sidewalk (used for parking motorcycles, eating on very low stools outside of restaurants or selling merchandise).  We were in the old quarter of Hanoi, and it is densely packed with people, cars, scooters, trucks, buses, bikes, rickshaws and tourists.

All the restaurants were family owned and run for generations. Most of the families live either above the restaurants or behind them. Almost the whole time we were touring and eating, it was pouring rain, so it kept the temperature at a reasonable level. We first started with a green papaya salad which was cooling and refreshing. The next place we went, we learned to make our own spring rolls. It may sound easy but a lot of the insides of the rolls ended up falling on the table.   Our third stop was for pho, something we were familiar with as we have it at our local Vietnamese restaurant.   The fourth stop was for a bahn mi sandwich, one of our favorite lunches back home. Next came a stop for bun cha, a skewered meat that goes into an amazing broth and a favorite of Obama when he visited.  Another walk took us to our first egg coffee.  Vietnam, at one point, was very short of milk products, so egg coffee was invented.  Whipped egg yolks top the coffee and are mixed in at the table. It is served in a dish of hot water so it stays warm. It is absolutely delicious. We ended the tour with sticky rice and fresh coconut ice cream, an amazing combination.

We came back to the hotel, slept for several hours and planned on fruit and macarons for dinner. Tomorrow is our market tour and cooking lesson, then the water puppet show in the late afternoon.  More then.