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Hanoi Street

June 10th, 2009

Bun Vendor

Hanoi, Vietnam – Just like a few cities before it, I’d been warned that Hanoi was intense, sometimes with a wavering smile as though it were a euphemism for “chaotic hellhole overrun with motorbikes, their dust and their noise.” Of course, I fell in love with Hanoi my first night. The faded, peeling painted buildings, the busy buzz of lives intersecting, the squat little plastic chairs scattered across sidewalks for bia hoi, temporary noodle shops and street hawkers.

In the morning I started my day squatting on a short red stool with a bowl of rice vermicelli noodles topped with tofu stewed in tomato sauce, a handful of fierce herbs, and a hefty spoonful of chili sauce. At a stop at the Hoa Lo prison museum (aka the Hanoi Hilton where John McCain and American war prisoners were once held), I spotted American Vietnamese cookbook Into the Vietnamese Kitchen because nothing gets a tourist’s appetite going like guillotine and solitary confinement exhibits. A stop after that at the Thang Long Water Puppets Theatre made me think that it would be much more fun if either (a) I was a small child or (b) had small children.

In any event, by the time we got out, there was a great stall across the street serving Vietnamese green papaya salad with beef jerky or goi du kho bo, as well as green papaya rolls with a sweet peanut dipping sauce. There were almost 30 people hunching on little red stools on Pho Ho Hoan Kiem eating those salads and drinking tea run over from a boy at a drinks stand across the street. The salad is a pleasant mix of thinly shredded papaya, shiny beef jerky, a heap of crushed peanuts and a layering of mixed herbs, tossed together with the sweet and sour dressing sitting at the bottom of the bowl, it was the perfect early evening snack after a long, hot day.

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