Fabulous food, egg coffee, dated decor and terrible toilets on the walking food tour of Hanoi

Flag of Vietnam.

We booked a walking food tour of Hanoi, Vietnam's capital.

Problem Solved
The guide asked straight away about any food restrictions. Apparently the company which organizes the tours has a list of places of each type of food. The guide of each group must select from these but decides which route and which restaurants according to the dietary restrictions of the diners.

Our set of foods went like this:

1 White rolled rice 'pancake' with lettuce and vegetable filling. Not new to me. I am not keen on other people handling my pancake to demonstrate how to roll it. (After six months of having a member of my family with low immunity after chemotherapy - we had to walk out of any restaurant where even the fork tines or inside of the glass was touched by a waiter.)

Our group includes a couple from Melbourne, Australia which has many Vietnamese restaurants. The couple are familiar with the Vietnamese rice paper spring roll, but are used to buying it ready-made, like sushi.

A really grotty little place. Disappointed.On to the next place. Will they all be like this? Yes.

2 Bread roll with minced chicken and tasty sauce. 
Part of a chain.
Things are really looking up.

3 But the decor quickly goes down again. Upstairs, up spiral stairs, four-level place. Great minced pork in a soup with optional ground garlic.

I feel the need of a toilet. 'Next place,' says the guide, so, I presume, she has something in mind.

4 At the next little corner shop restaurant, before being served, rather than keeping people waiting at the end, I ask for the toilet at the start.

Our guide leads me across the road, down one of those filthy narrow alleys where people disappear to the back of buildings on motorbikes. We pass a room where a woman of about 110 years old sitting bent double on a darkened double bed counting money which I presume she is about to hide under the mattress.

I am reminded of the London of  Dickens time. The word Kidnapped jumps into my mind. Can it get any worse? Yes.

My guide is hunting on her phone, either looking in google for a toilet or phoning for a friend. She  asks somebody at the back.

The toilet is one of two darkened doors, askew, at the dark end. I glimpse a hole in the ground. No light.

'Is there a light?' I asked.
She asks.

The answer is: 'No light.'

I was very pleased because this was my excuse to leave.

'Is there a hotel nearby?' I asked.

'Yes.'

Back out of the unlit alleyway.  Only a couple of shops away on the corner is a brightly lit hotel with a neon front and a spruced up man on reception.

She asks the receptionist for the toilet location and permission. He shows the way.

At the back, a toilet with pedestal seat, a light, a washbasin, even a soap dispenser. Under normal circumstances I would have given it only 3 out of 5. However, compared with a minus 5 toilet, it was good.

It turns out the guide knows the owner.

Why wasn't the tour of five eating places, ending with coffee, arranged with toilets in mind?

Back at the 'restaurant', because of the delay, our group has not had the guide to explain that the soup does not go onto the minced chicken and minced nuts, a kind of satay without the skewers. Very tasty.

4 Fruit
Across more side roads of motorcycles. We survive.

We reach the fruit caffe. Great, fruits we recognize such as mango and jackfruit with tiny black seeds (new to some of the others) plus a transparent cube of jelly, and tasteless green balls of something or other, solid jelly, and milk. Mostly fruit. Very refreshing.

Vietnam invention.

5 Egg Coffee
I imagined we would end at somewhere smart with proper toilets, the Vietnamese equivalent of a Starbucks, trying something new. We did try something new. Egg coffee.

But first we had to go upstairs, up filthy black stairs. Back to Dickens. At first I refused to go up the stairs.  I did not want to hang onto the filthy grey stone banister which was far too low.

I would never run a tour like this in the UK or the USA. Or anywhere.

Up at least one level. I sent the others up first to report back to me.

The guide offered to take me somewhere else. No egg coffee. Just a drink.

I hear my friends. 'Come on up,' they said.

The upstairs room is filled with animated young people and long-haired older people perched on the usual backless low stools. It's like a student freshers night combined with alumni.

The egg coffee arrives looking terrific, with a pattern on top, like at Starbucks and the best coffee shops. You could have a passion fruit juice if you are afraid of being kept awake by coffee late at night.

I asked for decaffeinated coffee. This has either not yet reached Hanoi or not reached the guide's vocabulary.

The egg yolk mixed with sweetened condensed milk is underneath and you stir it together. The guide proudly tells us that this place is where it all started.

The owner used to work in one of the five star hotels. (I thought, what a pity their standards of decor and cleanliness never had any influence.) The owner started something uniquely Vietnamese, unique to Hanoi, which has now spread throughout the city. But it all started here.

Frankly, if they are so well-known, why can't they, or the national tourist board, spruce the place up a bit? You go to Warsaw\s old quarter which was razed in the war and it has all been built brand new.

I don't know what the fastidious Japanese think. I could not ask because none of them had come here.

I did not ask for a toilet. I asked to go home to my hotel. Yes, to the lovely Japanese-owned Sun Line Paon Hotel, which has brand new toilets with two water jets to clean you and gleaming white sinks with soap wrapped in little packets.

When you see the Hanoi streets festooned with electrical wires, and the paving stones up ended broken or missing, it should not be a surprise if some places are like that inside.

However, I was not expecting to be taken to a place like this on an organized tour filled with people from the UK, Australia and the  USA.

Fine for hippy types who want to see the 'real' Asia.

For anybody with bad ankles, vertigo, or the least bit fastidious, sorry, not for you.

My companion loved the food tour. He sleeps in a tent on Everest, treks around volcanoes, rides motorbikes. he charges across the road through the motorbikes saying, 'they won't run you ove'r.

They might not run him over. But a car ran me over in 1984. He retorts, "because you were looking the wrong way."

So what of the food tour? I have told you the best and the worst of it, as I saw it. A picture tells a thousand words. I will add pictures shortly so you can judge for yourself.

Lastly, our hotel said we had to pay cash. But other people on our tour had paid with credit cards.

Travel Tips
For hotels
booking.com
For airlines
travelok.com
vietJetair.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Handy Portuguese Words For Restaurants When Ordering

Problem
How to order?

ORDERING
Do you have a menu?
We’d like some drinks.
We’d like some food.
I am ready to order.
Is it fresh? It is fresh fruit?

Do you have fresh fruit?
Do you have freshly squeezed juice?
I am allergic to shellfish.
Do you have sugar-free - somebody is diabetic
Can you ask, please?

No, thank you.
May we pay?
How much is the bill?
Do you have an address card?
The food was terrific.

Yes, please.
I’ll have this.
for my wife, husband, //friend, guest,// the lady, the gentleman - the child, the boss
Do you take credit cards?
Is service included?

Keep the change.
Are you open for lunch /dinner?

ENCOMENDA
Você tem um menu?
Nós gostaríamos de algumas bebidas.
Gostaríamos de algum alimento.
Estou pronto para encomendar.
Está fresco? É fruta fresca?

Você tem frutas frescas?
Você tem suco recém-espremido?
Eu sou alérgico ao marisco.
Você não tem açúcar - alguém é diabético
Você pode perguntar, por favor?

Não, obrigado.
Podemos pagar?
Quanto é a conta?
Você tem um cartão de endereço?
A comida foi fantástica.

Sim, por favor. (Sim, like si, means yes.)
Vou querer isto.
para minha esposa, marido, // amigo, convidado, // a senhora, o cavalheiro - a criança, o chefe
Vocês aceitam cartões de crédito?
O serviço está incluído?

Fique com o troco.
Você está aberto para almoço / jantar?

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Paying Bills When You Are Away On Business Or Holiday

Problem
How do you pay bills when you are away? How do you keep track? How do you spot surprise payments?

Lists
Before going away for a long trip you need to make a list of your outgoings throughout the year.

Take into account when holiday bills will fall. Your accountant or tax return may be able to tell you.

Note your income and savings.

Alerts
You can get alerts on your phone for high amounts paid out of your accounts such as Santander.

Passwords
Be aware of your passwords needed for credit cards and mobile phone and google and Facebook and gmail and all the others.

Don't leave your book of passwords behind. Nor carry it on you in a bag which could be stolen along with credit cards and phones.

Divide a code so somebody back home can send you your passwords in two or more parts. For example, you could ask a colleague, "How old is your grandad?" for the first two, four or six numbers of the password. And so on.

Or ask, "What is the name of your dog?" (Translating the letters of the answer into numbers.)

Outgoings and Credit Cards
In Romania, I have been warned, when you hire a car in Bucharest the credit card company will 'block' take? from your credit card the estimated cost of the car hire plus insurance.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, language teacher. Please share my posts.

Safety when travelling: credit cards, bags, bullet proof vests, life-saving

What can you do to prevent trouble, avoid trouble, or help the injured?

PREVENT OR AVOID ACCIDENTS OR BOTH?
Prevention and avoidance are different. To prevent means to go before (pre) and turn away trouble. To avoid means not going to something or some trouble already there. People often confuse the two words. But there is a big difference.

To prevent an accident you could slow down or put up slow down signs, improve the road, impose a speed limit. Take precautions. You can cause or prevent something from happening.

To avoid an accident you could take a diversion routing away from the traffic jam and the accident.
If you can't avoid it, you are stuck in the jam, witness it, or you are stuck nearby waiting.

Avoiding travelling
Americans are avoiding travelling overseas. Preventing themselves being on planes. Visitors to the UK from America in early December 2015 said their planes had about 160 seats filled in a plane seating about 300, which would usually be increasingly full in the days leading towards the Christmas holidays.

TEMPTING LOW PRICES
If you are courageous or phlegmatic, prices of airlines and hotels may come down in a keen marketing attempt to obtain more business, or a bigger share of the little available, or reluctant obligation because they have no choice.In London in previous years, hotels and restaurants were going out of business.

Why are prices lower?
Hotels lowered prices because they needed to do so. Hotels were the worst struck because they relied on foreigners coming in. Although Americans were a small percentage, they were the big spenders. Business people are often risk takers but had to cancel for insurance reasons.

Elderly Americans with time to travel and no families were the ones who had taken the expensive hotel suites. The older travellers were thinking now or never. The 50 and 60 plus were the main travellers. (More than the 70 year olds, fewer of them left. A UK study by Saga found this long ago, in fact their discovery led to the creation of their company. The seventies and older are in poorer health and have done their travelling. They also spent their retirement handout in their sixties. Result, a hotel loses only two bookings out of 100 rooms, but these two lost bookings are the £100 or £200 suites, and ten percent loss of income is the difference between profit and loss, cash flow problem.

So, price wise it is a good time to travel if you are courageous / foolhardy / phlegmatic.

CHECK GOVERNMENT WARNINGS
If your government issues a do not travel warming many forms of transport will cancel because of lack of demand or perceived heightened danger and they cannot get insurance and companies could be sued for sending staff into danger without insurance or ignoring public warnings.

MESSAGE SYSTEMS
In Asia in previous years a system of linked messages was set up. In case of any emergency such a tsunami or attack, certain people had the phone numbers of everybody in the group (embassies, schools, American nationals working in the city) and called them all by phone personally or sent out a mass mailing or mail shot to get everybody to a collection point, or into hiding.

EVACUATION
A system of relays was organised to get people on unmarked buses and vehicles along designated roads or off road cross-country routes leading to airports or sea ports for evacuation. A system of vehicles for emergency evacuation was also organised.You need a passport or copy of it so you body can be identified or you can get onto an evacuation vehicle.

EMERGENCY BAG
In Japan and the USA and other earthquake prone areas, the family has an emergency bag by the door; so if you have to run out in a hurry, you don't race around a collapsing building trying to find your passport or go back for your water bottle. The emergency bag contains photocopies of documents, identity, insurance, numbers to call for help, family contacts, food and water and first aid.

You can also make yourself a similar kit for travelling, then keep it in your hand luggage. When you evacuate a plane you should not delay others by stopping to reach into overhead lockers or block aisles with your luggage. You just run for the exit. Seconds count.

You want to be out of a crashed car on a motorway. The same goes for an aircraft which had crashed - get out before it explodes. In the dark you might so the right thing and run for the exit without your bag. Good. But you need your emergency kit in your pockets - your credit cards and something to eat. Chocolate, nuts - I am against forbidding nuts on planes. At least have nuts in unopened packets or tins or sealed in Tupperware type containers. Then you have a source of protein.

Imagine being stuck on a motorway for hours. Just a traffic jam. In a snow drift. Anywhere, waiting for reduce. Trapped under a collapsed buildings.

You could avoid travelling to major malls, stadiums, public events, restaurants and cafes and shops and stay home.

If you are that type. Others insist 'I'm not changing my life.' Or, 'If you change your life, you've let them win.'

ATTITUDES
Reasons are:
People may go to two extremes, seeking danger or being reclusive to avoid it, taking a middle path, or oscillating pendulum like between extremes. You may find your family and friends follow some of the following systems. To keep out of danger, you may decide to identify what's happening and mix with like-minded people, or rely on your own judgement and preparation.

Adventure (people who go to war or join the armed forces); attention seeking (desire to be in the newspapers as a hero, victim, villain, whatever); bravery; carelessness, curiosity (I wonder what it will be like, where's the crowd going); defiance, duty, fatalism (if your number's on it/ what will be will be); happy go lucky nature; ignorance; loneliness (prefer to be with in danger in company than alone); observers (journalists, photographers, war correspondents seeking news and events to record); sheepishness (follow the crowd into danger like lemmings, run with the crowd away from danger in a panic like rabbits; stay with the crowd like Wildebeest hoping those on the outside will be caught but those in the centre will survive - safety in numbers); patriotism (my country, right or wrong); precaution (prepare for the worst but hope for the best - quotation attributed to Benjamin Franklin); stoicism; suicidal - suicide by cop / can't cope - if they kill me at least I won't have to do my tax return.

SECURING POSSESSIONS
Credit cards /debit cards

DIVIDING CARDS
You could have one card at home, not in an empty house. You could leave your spare/emergency card  with a family member at another address. Even sent by courier to a safe place.
One system is to have one card at home or with a friend.

Divide CARD and CLOTHES
Some people have half of each person's clothes in the other person's suitcase. Makes no difference if all your luggage goes missing. But if one suitcase out of two is lost, you both have clothes.

Similarly you can divide your cards. Or swap cards. If both of you have one of your cards and one of your partner's cards, if one of you is robbed or in an accident, the other person still has a working card.

DEBIT / LIMIT CARD
Take out a new debit card. Open a new account for travels with a small amount in that account.

Then if the card is lost the thieves can only remove the amount you allowed yourself for your weekend stay. You cannot overspend. You cannot have your entire savings wiped out by an online theft. Nor by a card robbery whilst travelling.

BAGS
Consider whether hard cases are safer than soft cases. Consider safety of vehicles you buy or hire. Consider safety of airport transfer. (eg hotel car ,rather than hire car, or shuttle bus?). Decide which is the safest option.

Bullet proof vests
You might try to get away from military people who are a target. Or stand behind the police so their bodies and body armour protect you.

You can buy these on the internet. If heavy, they could slow you down when running.

A policeman told me that a high power automatic can cut through a tree. Same goes for a machete. You need to be behind a concrete wall. And/or in a bullet proof vest.

Reading newspaper reports of survivors of events ranging from WWI to WWII to recent, I have read reports of people saved by
a) The bible (in effect a thick book might be like a block of wood deflecting bullet)
b) A phone deflecting a bullet (old phones in your pockets?)
c) Any metal shield

Insurance
Check your travel insurance. You might be covered for illness, sickness, injury repatriation. You might not. Some insurances excluded hooliganism or riot. Our insurance would not cover our car for damage from crowds or falling fireworks on New Year's eve in Europe. Out hotel advised us to park off the street, not outside the hotel in a busy street, but just for that one night in a car park, whatever the cost it would be less than the stress of damage to the car.

Knife proof vests

Live-saving

CODED MESSAGES
When travelling when your children are travelling away from you have a coded message. To prevent strangers picking children up from school saying they were sent by Mummy, tell them nobody should pick you up without the code word or phrase or name.

Plan a signal message for children. For example, 'you need to get back for your swimming lesson' might mean we must get away from this character trying to pick us up in the market, so follow me hold my hand and if and when I run, hold my hand and run with me.

DISTRACTION WITH WORDS

Simply shout 'behind you' or shout 'George' and look over somebody's shoulder then run.

Life Saving - Appealing for help
At a recent Toastmasters International meeting we were treated to a talk on getting help to save your life. A woman in New York was attacked over a period of hours and many people heard or walked past but took notice and didn't get help.

The moral is don't rely on anybody in general to help. They all assume it's somebody' else\s duty or if nobody else is acting I can't or should not. Appeal directly to one person by addressing them, looking them in the eye and telling them exactly what to do. For example, 'Help - old man - call the police!'

DISTRACTION WITH BOTTLES OR COINS
Whether you are a victim or a bystander trying to help, if you have nothing else, distract an assail by throwing bottles or coins, ideally at their head or eyes so they blink and give the victim(s) a chance to run.

Apart from major incidents, there are a few nutters about, plus belligerent drunks. Keep well behind the yellow lines on station platforms when waiting for trains.

Putting yourself in danger, by climbing a mountain peak without taking safety gear, proper clothes and shoes, a charged phone, a GPS device, could put colleagues or rescuers in danger. Same goes for chasing your dog into high waves.

Maybe you can be the hero of the day and save somebody else's life. Or as the saying goes, the life you save my be your own.

Wishing you safe and happy travelling

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.