The past few days in Hanoi have been amazing. I love traveling and visiting Vietnam has let me look into and experience a whole other country, its people and their culture. There is a completely different feel here. From the bustling streets with thousands of motorcycles and vendors to the vast farmland, Vietnam has it all. It is truly an experience to walk down the streets of Hanoi. There are people cooking and eating in the middle of the sidewalks at low tables, dogs and chickens running around, and the rows upon rows of parked motorcycles. When you look up, the architecture is very unique. The faces of the buildings are very narrow and tall, but go back very far. There are multiple balconies and houses on top of each other. People could jump from one balcony to another for miles along the roads. It’s seems that the top floors are homes while the bottom floors are the shops that they own. I think that the architecture of the buildings here is one of the things that makes Vietnam stand out from other countries.
The food in Vietnam has been spectacular as well and is another reason why people come to visit. Their food is world famous and nobody else can make it as good. I eat a lot of vietnamese food at home and it is vastly different. I thought I knew kind of what to expect, but I learned that you can never really know fully until you experience it yourself.
The first day in Hanoi I ate at a place called Pho 10 and got beef pho (chìn). It was prepared differently than I usually eat it at home. At home I just receive a bowl of pho with the beef already in it cooked. In Hanoi they prepare really thin slices of raw beef that cook in the soup when they put it in. I found this really interesting. I found that cooking the meat in the broth with the noodles, scallions and onions gave it more flavor and made it a better dish overall. Bùn is also another dish I eat at home regularly and I think the way they present it here is more fun and makes the visual appearance more interesting. At home bùn is usually a bowl of vermicelli noodles top with carrots, cucumber, cilantro, grilled pork, lettuce, and a spring roll. Then fish sauce on the side that is meant to be poured over the dish. At a restaurant I ate in a couple of nights ago I ordered bùn and the noodles came separately in a basket on a piece of lettuce. The grilled pork was already in the fish sauce with onions and spices. There was mint and cilantro in a pile on the other side of the weaved plate. I didn’t really know how to go about the dish because I have never seen bùn deconstructed like that. Once I had a plan of attack on how to eat it I noticed that the fish sauce and meat was really spicy, unlike the fish sauce at home that was sweeter and lighter in color. The bùn here didn’t have the cucumber or carrots either which surprised me because they are all about fresh vegetables and herbs. The food here is so fresh and light that I am never really full.
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