Yesterday was chill. I got up, had breakfast, had coffee, got a haircut, had two more coffees, watched a train pass within half a metre of my nose, went to a skyscraper and looked across a cloudy and polluted Hanoi, looked straight down at the ground 65 floors below, saw a cat, drank a coffee, ate Bahn Mi, drank a coffee, had a nap, had a crisis, had Pho, had a margarita, had a beer, met a guy cycling around the world, had some more beers, went to bed, couldn’t sleep, shouted at drunk Americans and now I’m on a bus waiting for it to move to Ha Giang.
I think I’d had my fill of Hanoi by yesterday. It’s relentless: noise, fumes, horns, motorcycles, horns, cars, horns. There was a point where I was checking if I should just pack it all in and go somewhere quiet, like Bangkok. Then I realised I should probably eat and things got better.
Train Street
Hanoi has a thing where some streets are kind of dedicated to one thing: books, sweets, whisk(e)y, paper.
Train Street is perhaps a little different because it’s not a real street but a train track where a whole bunch of coffee shops have set up right next to it. Since trains are infrequent, it’s a thing to do to sit with a coffee and watch a train rumble past your table.
This is perhaps where my problems started because I had two incredibly strong coffees while all this went on. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t really drink coffee (and might therefore wonder why I’m in Vietnam).
The view from above
I am low-key obsessed with skyscrapers and their viewing platforms. When possible, in each new city I go to, I try to go up.
In Hanoi, that means the Lotte Tower. At a little under 300 metres, it’s not a super tall, but it’s got a viewing floor and two glass floors to test your mettle.
The ticket lady warned me – and showed a picture – that the view was pretty limited, but I’m committed so up I go. And, uh, yeah. Nobody is going to take spectacular pictures today.
Moar kwaffs
Back to the old quarter for lunch and more coffee. That’s six now, and – who knew? – a recipe for sleep disaster. Still: there’s a cat.
Minor crisis and Michelin Pho
Surprisingly, I managed a mid-afternoon nap and then woke up all jittery grouchy. This, I decided, was all Vietnam’s fault and I’d be better off somewhere familiar like Thailand. Cue a wasted hour or so looking to see what I should or could cancel to make that happen.
Then I decided to get pho from the place I was recommended on Monday evening. The store is extremely unassuming, given that while it doesn’t have a Michelin star, it’s been commended by them in 2023 and 2024. Personally I couldn’t tell you the difference between Michelin-level pho and regular pho but it was tasty all the same.
Serious backpacking
To round off the evening I went back to a little bia place near my hotel. I got talking to a guy called Fred, who’s 27 and has spent the last eight months cycling from the UK to (so far) Vietnam. He’d just spent three months travelling across China and I was the fourth English-speaker he’d talked to in all that time.
Cycling. Cycling. Like, on a bicycle, with a tent, for eight months. It sounded like a lot of fun but I think there are people who thrive on that and people (like me) who’d catastrophise the fuck out of it by Calais.
And after all that coffee:
I slept like ass. Lesson learned.
