Last updated on January 14, 2024
Hanoi was a chance for me to truly experience Vietnamese hospitality. I stayed with a local friend, T, and her family and they were incredibly kind and generous to me.
T’s mom made me a delicious dinner one evening, including crab, because I’d mentioned my love of crab to T. Plus, she got me my favorite fruits, custard apple and jackfruit. ❤️
The whole family was incredible. Her brother and sister in law joined us for some delicious meals and her niece and I sang Baby Shark together 😂. Her dad drove us around and would have done more if we’d let him.
I came across a blog willtravelforfood and that is totally me! T told me that Hanoi is great for food and we made sure to sample a wide variety of options. The only limitation was that I was too full sometimes for planned food adventures, particularly Vietnamese desserts/ice cream!
We are at very local places with small tables and chairs. I needed to get used to sitting so low but I loved the experience and flavors of eating local. Plus, the prices were very affordable, with meals for a few dollars.
Sightseeing
We went a couple of times to Hanoi’s old quarter. The first day was on Saturday evening and it was incredibly busy. There seemed to be several festivals taking place around Hoan Kiem Lake.
The next day, we went back and visited Ngoc Son Temple so I got to see the area in the daytime. We planned to go to the water puppet theatre or Hoa Lo prison but I was still jet lagged and wasn’t sure I was up to a 9pm show! I thought I’d have time to see a show in Hoi An instead.
There seems to be a lot of development going on in Hanoi, both roads and housing. At times, traffic was quite congested so it will be interesting to see which one outpaces the other and what that means for life in Hanoi.
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