Hanoi was our destination after visiting Halong Bay, we stayed in a budget hotel, called Platinum (67 Hang Than - Ba Dinh Dist, Phone: 84 4 39274222, Fax: 84 4 39274223, eMail: sales@platinumhotelhanoi.com) which’s located in downtown area. It’s already 16:00 when we arrived in the hotel, Dong Xuan traditional market built in 1889, the oldest and biggest market in Hanoi, just in a walking distance. Dong Xuan Market is also a historical place where there was a combat of Vietnam soldiers against the French attack to the heroic zone I, in February 1947.
If you want to buy souvenirs, you could find various things here, such as keychain, Vietnam dolls, T-shirt, paper fan, painting, clothes, snacks, etc. The market is not only for tourists consumption but also for local people, it did not only sell the traditional stuffs, but also daily needs such as allspice, peddler stuffs, uniform materials and clothes, household, etc. The market was contained of 3 levels, it’s quite clean, but very crowded with many merchandizing, because the seller could display them outside their stand. You had to bargain in the market, so many stands provided the same thing, you could easily compare the same stuffs in different store, but most of them would give the same final price. Don’t worry with the language, although I could not speak Vietnamese, I could communicate with the seller using calculator to show the price.
The market closed at evening, around 18:00 o’clock, so we didn’t have much time to shop. However all of us managed to buy many souvenirs only in an hour for friends and relatives in Indonesia. At night the function of the market changed into the brightly-lit food zone, so many food stalls open serving late night guests to have dinner or just snack until early morning. Actually I wanted to taste some foods, but the seller could not speak English at all, so we had difficulty to understand what food it was, then we canceled to order.
We stopped by at Cha Ca La Vong restaurant (14 Cha Ca street, phone: 825 3929) recommended by our colleague to have dinner. The restaurant demanded a fixed price for the food, although you’re not eating, you have to pay 70.000 Dong/person for the drink you have to pay more based on your order. The place was quite small, it’s consisted of 2 levels. The first level was for praying place, we should climb a very narrow and steep ladder to achieve the second floor. Wow… it’s very crowded room upstair, so many people cramped in the room with some tables arranged very close to each other. If you’ve just shopped such us, you would find a difficulty to find the place to put the item purchased.
The restaurant only provided one kind of food, a white boneless fish cooked with yellow oil such as curry then adding vegetables on it, a full plate of white rice noodle as the companion to eat.
It’s served on a hot small frying pan on the brazier put on the middle of the table. The waiter will add the fish from the bucket after the oil and sauce boiled, you’ve to be careful to avoid touching the hot pan and sauce. Take some of white noodle to your bowl then pouring the yellow sauce, fish, vegetables and also fried peanut; the rice noodles was unlimited, you could ask more if you would like to. One of my friend likes it very much, while all of us could not enjoy it :-). Anyway it’s good to know the traditional dishes.
After eating we bought some breads for my mom’s friend (she could not eat in Cha Ca), water and snacks on the way back to the hotel. On the way back to the hotel, we saw many people sat on the small bench on the pedestrian streets in front of the shops, drinking and eating while chatting with their friends. Many shops were still open around 20:00, my friend’s mom was very tired, we tried to bargain for Xyclo, but the oarsman asked a very high price (60.000 Dong), although the hotel was only 2 blocks further. My friend’s mom decided to walk slowly, so many shops to visit on the way or just see the merchandise on the shop window, it could help reducing her exhaustion to reach the hotel.
At the hotel my friend run out of her money, so she decided to change her USD to Dong. The rate in the hotel was quite good, 1 USD could get 18000 Dong, she thought she’s rich at that moment, but it didn’t last too long. It’s finished so fast in a few seconds, only left a few hundred after she paid me and my friend, because she borrowed from us when shopping. We decided to take a rest after walking, eating and shopping that day.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Exploring Clamorous Hanoi
Labels:
Food,
Historical,
Market,
Shopping,
Vietnam
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