As the warm season is slowly approaching, our minds are starting to wander off to far away places, where we can explore, relax and have some adventures. We did some research (purely for selfless reasons, obviously) and found some great places that seem to be becoming more and more popular as holiday destinations. Over the next few weeks we’ll be giving you our thoughts about each of these amazing places.
Destination: Hanoi, Vietnam
An online friend of mine, Loes, lived there for a while and she was kind enough to share her local experience with us.
Old quarter is very nice! I suggest going in early morning. In the area there’s also an authentic market and it’s not too crowded. There are a lot of nice shopping places, mainly around the cathedral.
They have really good food there, my favorite is bun cha (only eat it at a restaurant that serves nothing else than bun cha, you can get it between 11-12:30 or so), then there is bun bo nam bo, nem (spring rolls) and apparently the best coffee in the world though I can’t vouch for this because I don’t drink coffee. But the cha da (literally tea ice) is pretty good, and the fresh fruit smoothie too!
At the lakes Trúc Bạch and Tây Hồ is also very nice, there you can get bo bia (a very nice coconut snack) and go for a walk or cycle on a water cycle.
Ha Long Bay is amazing! That’s a day or two-day trip from Hanoi. I think it’s around 4 hours to drive there.
Tam Coc, is a beautiful place also known as Ha Long on land. It’s also a day trip from Hanoi. You can rent a cycle there and cycle through the rice fields. Cúc Phương is also super cool, it’s a wild national park. I would combine that one with Tam Coc, two day motorbike trip. Very nice!
There are also some very nice food markets to go to, Chợ hôm and one close to Trúc Bạch lake, not too busy. The Vietnamese street food is known to be one of the safest street eating places in the world, everything is fresh so don’t be shy in trying everything you find appealing!
Needless to say this got us thinking about booking a flight to Hanoi ASAP. If you’ve been inspired too, don’t forget to install uTalk before you go, it’ll help you get along with the friendly locals in all the situations that you could need to speak their language! If you want to see my friend Loes’s pictures of Vietnam you can check them out here.
Ioana
This aritlce is a home run, pure and simple!