Asian culture, lifestyle, food, travel & entertainment
Cha Ca La Vong is a restaurant in Hanoi famous for its grilled fish (Cha Ca) dish which was created some 130 years ago. The restaurant/dish is so famous that the street is named after it, and it’s featured in almost every single Hanoi’s travel guide.
There’s one problem though, as some other restaurants are riding on its fame with similar name and menu to take advantage of naive foreign travellers, and I was one of the fallen prey of the conspiracy during my Hanoi trip in July 2008…
Photos of some outdoor exhibits of various Vietnam’s ethnic tribes at the Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi, taken during my Hanoi visit in July 2008…
Quán Ăn Ngon is a popular restaurant in Hanoi (18, Phan Boi Chau Street), Vietnam, which offers a variety of traditional Vietnamese dishes and street food.
The restaurant was quite cozy, and the food decent. Not my favourite Hanoi restaurant, but if you can only have one meal in the city… this is probably the place you want to be because of the great varieties.
The Museum of Ethonology in Hanoi is a great place to have a glance at the traditional culture of Vietnam’s 54 ethnic groups. The museum is located the Cầu Giấy District, about 8km from city centre… took a bit of travelling time but worth a visit.
Sharing some photos below, taken inside the museum building…
One of the most iconic Hanoi features… bicycle loaded with variety of baskets and fish-traps. Images of these fully-loaded bikes have graced the cover of various Vietnam travel guide books and magazines for decades.
The photo above was taken at the Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi. You know you won’t have a good chance to see this in real life when you can find this in a museum lol.
Would be cool if I could just catch this once in real action… will have to wait until I visit Vietnam again, perhaps years later. Chances are getting even slimmer in future though, as the feat will gradually fade away altogether.
Vietnamese have quite a unique way to prepare their coffee. One of the most popular coffees is the ice-milk coffee (cà phê sữa đá) which is also popularly called the ‘drip coffee’ by travellers because of how it was brewed… like this and this.
Didn’t manage to drip the coffee myself when I was in Hanoi in July 2008; the cafe I visited served the well-prepared drink instead (pic).
My sister who tried some coffee in Hanoi prior to my visit told me that Vietnamese coffee was stronger than common espresso… can’t agree on that, at least not with the one I had. A decent glass of coffee though… smooth, thick and rich.
Yein Jee is a 32-year-old Malaysian traveller, food lover & self proclaimed entrepreneur. YeinJee's Asian Journal is about Asian culture, … [more]