Well we’re off tomorrow for Korea. It’s been a great (but IMMENSELY HOT & HUMID!) 4 days in Hanoi. We ate tons of street food — Bun Cha, Pho (pronounced like “fur”), Banh Mi, Banh Goi, Chao Ga, and a bunch of things we don’t know the names of but are listed on the wikipedia article on Vietnamese food but probably spent more on water and Vietnamese iced coffee! I think we mentioned earlier, but we decided that we’d relax our vegetarian ways while in Vietnam because we wanted to eat natively and not impose our own food requirements; plus we wanted to explore the street food for which Hanoi (and all of Vietnam) is rightly famous. That turned out to be a great decision as the street food stalls served delicious, fresh, affordable and filling foods and where the locals were always patient, helpful and friendly and showed us what and how to eat.

We also got a chance to go to Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site (and more infamous in recent US history for the Gulf of Tonkin incident). It was a nice day trip, but of course we would have preferred to have gone on our own without a tour. We peppered Tuon, our tour guide, with tons of questions throughout the day — about his favorite foods, Vietnamese economics and urban planning (on the way to Ha Long, there were several REALLY large but vacant apartment housing developments), things we saw on the streets of Hanoi like older men smoking bamboo pipes called Thuoc Lao (we found out they were smoking nothing more sinister than tobacco ) and so forth.

While I haven’t convinced Shinjoung of the efficacy of the guidebook (which is so bizarre for someone who’s such a born studier ), I’ve attempted to follow her example and put it aside (and have been successful for the most part). I ripped out the map of central Hanoi and its maze of streets and alleys, but we largely relied on our noses and our eyes to explore. I have to say that we got to know Hanoi better than Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon — but not sure if that’s because we left the tour book in our hotel or if Hanoi was a more manageable size. I totally understand Shinjoung’s point that tour books distort reality and perpetuate some of the worst bits about traveling to a foreign place (pointing countless travelers to the same restaurants, hotels, sites etc) but I don’t think she’s come around to my view that there is definitely some helpful information contained in the books (little historical tidbits, explanations of food, little helpful phrases etc). I forgot my Korea tourbook at home so we won’t have to worry about this issue for the coming weeks But needless to say, with or without the tourbook, we had an amazing time in Vietnam filled with heat, humidity, delicious food, laughs and serious discussions.

Related posts:

1. Vietnam day 2 & 3
2. Shinjoung’s Yalta
3. Overnight sleeper to Hanoi
4. Experiment of un-lonely planet guide experience
5. Traipsing around Hue