Beyond The Maple Tree

While looking for things to do in Hanoi, Dom discovered a super cool activity: Knife Making!  (Incase you didn't know - Dom LOVES knives 😂)

This was a 3 hour workshop where you get to design and make your own knife with the help of a Vietnamese blacksmith. 

The steps (as we understood them) were as follows:

• Roughly carve the handle
• Cut the blade to a rough shape/size 
• Strengthen the blade by heating and hammering
• Bash the blade with the bashing machine 
• Straighten the blade
• Shape the blade with the grinder
• Temper the blade
• To make sure the blade keeps its edge, the blacksmith put salt on the blade, heated it up, and then she dipped it in oil and sand. 
• Sharpen the blade using 3 different grinding wheels and manual honing
• Put the handle on and sand it 

We didn't get to do all the steps solo (since some steps require proper training and can be quite dangerous if you don't know what your are doing!), but we were impressed at how many of the actual knife-making steps we got to participate in.  We had so much fun!!

We previously visited Halong Bay 10 years ago and thought it would be a wonderful experience to repeat again with Dom’s mom. 

During our first trip here, we booked with Indochina Junk and sailed on a 10-cabin boat called the Dragon Pearl Junk.  Even though we really enjoyed the small and personal feel of the Dragon Pearl boat, we decided to try out the 3-day/2-night trip on their newest 24-cabin boat, called the Dragon Legend.   It has bigger cabins and a bigger sun deck, as well as a spa, a tiny pool, and a tiny gym 🤷‍♂️.

We only had a couple of days to spend in Hanoi, so we quickly saw a couple of sites and ate some of our favourite dishes that we had discovered before. 

Sites

When we came here back in 2013, it was the first time that we were ever scammed by a taxi driver who had rigged the taximeter to run significantly faster than it was supposed to.  Hanoi was also cold, cloudy, rainy, and uninviting during our last trip, so we didn't leave with the best impression. 

This time, we were able to use Grab for transportation (similar to Uber).  Having transportation at a fixed cost without worrying about scams made getting around a lot easier and stress-free.  We also discovered that Hanoi now has a metro!  Our days here were sunny and warm, so the streets were inviting and bustling with people.  Hanoi was starting to grow on us.  

We mainly wandered around the lake and old quarter areas.  On weekends, they block off the roads surrounding the lake, so it made our strolls very pleasant.  

West of the lake, we stumbled upon this quaint spot along a train track called Ms Huong Ly Vietnamese Restaurant.  Apparently, trains pass through here several times a day and you can enjoy a meal and/or coffee at one of the many cafes along the track.  If you are lucky, you will see the train pass, just a couple of meters from your table. We were not lucky enough to see a train, but still enjoyed a meal along the tracks.

When you travel in Asia, you are bound to see some motorbikes transporting interesting things.  Usually they are either unbelievably over-filled or carrying large items in precarious ways.  We thought that we had seen it all, but this time around we saw something new and quite unique: a motorbike parked on the side of the road selling live fish for aquariums/ponds 🐟🐠🐡!  We saw a few other interesting things, but that was our favourite 😂. 

Food

Jen had great memories of a small restaurant here called Bun Bo Nam Bo.  They serve a dish, called Bun Bo, which she and Guy (Dom's cousin) absolutely loved, and we couldn't find that dish anywhere else in Vietnam.  When we went to the restaurant, we barely recognised it because it has grown to 3 floors and become a proper-looking restaurant (instead of a small local kiosk with seats)!  As with everywhere, the price of the dish has risen quite a lot (70k VND, ~$4cad), but fortunately, the food did not disappoint and tasted as good as she remembered.  For Dom, it was also the same as last time.. "I don't understand the hype.. the dish is just ok" 😝. 

We wanted Dom’s mom to try Pizza 4Ps, a restaurant that Jen's coworker introduced her to when she was working in Saigon. Pizza 4Ps (pizza-for-peace) is a restaurant chain that was launched in Vietnam, by a Japanese couple in 2011.  It's normally difficult to find good pizza in Asia, but Pizza 4Ps has excellent pizzas that leave us craving for more!  

Our favourite is the Burrata Parma Ham pizza - a sauce-free pizza topped with arugla, parma ham, cherry tomatoes, and home-made burrata cheese which they slice open at your table.  Compared to eating local food, this 10-inch pizza is relatively pricey at 298k vnd (~$17.50cad) plus VAT), but we couldn't resist and ate it 4 times this trip (twice in Saigon and twice in Hanoi😆).

For dessert, Jen wanted to try a fruit dessert from Hoa Quả Dầm Hoa Béo that is also famous here.  We were super full from dinner, but since it was our last night, we walked the extra mile to try it out and she really liked it. 

From all of our travels, one of the most memorable tours that we did was the Original Taste of Hoi An Food Tour.  Having enjoyed and done that tour several times already, we decided to try a different one this time.  Since Hoi An is known for having great food, there are a lot of new foodie tours that have sprung up here over the years.  We found a free walking food tour (tip-based) with good ratings and decided to give it a try.

We met Vinh near the post office and had a great feeling from the start.  He was friendly, energetic, passionate, and his English was really good.  He did a particularly great job of giving an upfront explanation about what a "free tour" entails and what to expect on our journey. 

Che (10,000vnd, ~$0.55cad)
Our first stop was at a small stall by the main market, where we tasted a common desert in Vietnam, called Che.  It’s a mix of beans and jellies made from agar (seaweed gelatin), topped with coconut milk and condensed milk.

Banh Mi (30,000vnd, ~$1.70cad)
Next, we stopped at the Banh Mi stall that was made famous by Anthony Bourdain because it appeared on his TV series, No Reservations.  Hoi An has so many Banh Mi stalls, and each offers different variations of great tastes. At this stall, we tasted the traditional Banh Mi sandwich, filled with pate, savoury meats, vegetables, herbs and sauces.

Banh Dap (5,000vnd, ~$0.30cad)
Banh Dap is a layer of a wide fresh rice noodle sandwiched between layers of a crispy baked rice pancake. The fun thing about this dish is that you have to karate-chop it before you eat it. This action creates bite sized pieces that you dip into some fish sauce and enjoy. At this particular stall, the owner makes a very potent homemade fish sauce that is well known amongst the locals.  The fish sauce was really tasty, but too strong/fishy for most of the people in the group, so most of them switched to soy sauce instead.

Banh Kep (15,000vnd, ~$0.85cad) and Chen Trung (10,000vnd, ~$0.55cad)
For the next location, we walked a ways before turning down a small random alley.  Vinh stopped at a local lady's house where she cooks and serves Banh Kep (Vietnamese Pizza) and Chen Trung (cooked quail eggs) in the front veranda of her home.  This particular "stall" closes early, so we were their last customers of the day!

Che Xi Ma  (15,000vnd, ~$0.85cad)
Nothing like a bit of desert to cut your meal!  Our next dish was Xi Ma, a sweet black sesame soup.  We stopped at the oldest shop in Hoi An where the family has been serving a generation-old recipe for decades.  Their recipe includes medicinal Chinese herbs to maintain health, so in addition to enjoying the delicious taste and warm texture of the dish, locals come to eat the soup for good health.  Vinh told us that the owner doesn't allow customers to have more than 2 servings a day!

Bale Well
Before going to the next spot, we stopped at a well that was hidden behind a building.  We were told that this is the special well that everyone in the city uses to make the yellow "Cau Lau" noodles.  We're not sure what exactly is so special about the water here, but apparently every morning, people gather around this 1000 year old well to gather the precious water to make the noodles. 

Cau Lau (30,000vnd, ~$1.70cad) and Ban Xeo (20,000vnd, ~$1.10cad)
We proceeded to a restaurant near the Bale Well to try the typical and famous dish from Hoi An called Cau Lau.  This restaurant is owned by one of the original Cau-Lau-making families.  They used to only make and serve Cau Lau, but because they have become popular and customers request other food options, they now they serve other dishes as well.  Since this was our last main food-stop of the evening, we also decided to try their Ban Xeo (Vietnamese pancakes) and it was great as well!  

Sinh Tố Thập Cẩm (25,000vnd, ~$1.45cad)
To finish the evening, Vinh took us to a small stall at the side of a main road to try Sin To Thap Cam, a fruit salad served in a cop with ice and sweet milk.  If you want, they will blend it to make a smoothie for you, but Vinh recommended that we try the traditional version where the fruits are left in slices and you get to use your spoon to smash all of the ingredients together until you have the consistency that you want.  It was delicious and a great way to finish our meal! 

We've done quite a few food tours during our travels and always end up overly full by the end.  The thing that we really liked about this tour is that the food was not "included" so we just paid for each of the dishes as we went along.  This gave us more control over the quantities of food that we got, so that we didn't have to over-eat or "waste" food.   This, and the fact that Vinh was such a passionate and awesome tour guide, made this experience super fun and memorable.  We all really enjoyed the tour, so it was a perfect way to end our last evening in Hoi An!

10 years ago, we did a cooking class with Van at Green Bamboo Hoi An and really enjoyed our experience.  Although there are many cooking-class other options available in Hoi An, we wanted Dom’s mom to have the same experience that we had before, so we booked with Green Bamboo again. To our delight, we had even more fun this time because we lucked out and had a very small group of only 5 people.  

Van picked us up at our hotel and gave us a tour of the market while purchasing all of the fresh ingredients for the dishes that we would be cooking.  She introduced us to various foods that you can buy at the vendors, explained how to identify which meats are fresh, and described the different ingredients that she was purchasing for our dishes.  We stopped for a quick snack and coffee break before driving to her house to start cooking.

The dishes we chose to learn this time were: 

• Vegetarian Curry with Coconut Milk - Charlotte
• Vietnamese Pancakes (Bàn Xéo) - Dom 
• Grilled Pork with Noodles (Bún chả) - Jen 

The 2 other students chose to make: 

• Fish in Clay Pot (cá kho tộ), and 
• Egg plant in clay pot with Stir fry tofu, pineapple and tomato.  

We started by prepping the ingredients for all of our dishes, together.

One thing that differed from our first experience was that we cooked and ate one dish at a time, instead of everyone cooking their dishes and eating everything at the end.  We really liked this because it allowed us to enjoy each dish while it was hot and also gave us time to digest a bit before stuffing ourselves even more!

Since we only had 5 students, Van added some extra dishes to the list including: Vietnamese Sweet Potato Leaf Soup, Green Papaya Salad with Tofu Skin, and Egg Coffee for dessert.

We were super full and a little tired by the end, but we all really enjoyed the wonderful day spending time with Van and eating so much delicious food.  

For the last part of our trip, we went to Hoi An to meet up with Dom’s mom so that we could share some of our favourite foods, places, and experiences with her, in Vietnam and Thailand.

Charlotte's flight from Montreal was originally supposed to take 26 hours with layovers in Toronto and Taipei.  Unfortunately, when she arrived to check-in at the Montreal airport, she found out that her first flight (to Toronto) had been cancelled due to bad weather.  They rerouted her through Vancouver->Seoul leaving 12 hours later, so she had to overnight in a Montreal hotel and return to the airport early the next morning. She managed to board the Vancouver flight, but the plane got stuck on the tarmac and arrived in Vancouver 5 hours late, so they had to reroute her again.  She was stuck waiting 12 hours in the Vancouver Airport, then took a 16 hour flight to Bangkok, and had a 13 hour layover in Bangkok until her final flight to Da Nang (near Hoi An).   

She finally arrived ~36 hours later than her original itinerary, buuut... her checked luggage didn't make it 🙃.  Fortunately, they located her luggage in Seoul 2 days later, so she finally received her luggage 3 days after she had arrived.  Despite her crazy long 60 hour voyage to get here, Charlotte arrived with a positive attitude and a smile on her face.  She was tired, but surprisingly not as exhausted as we thought she would be!