We couldn’t tell last night, but the view from the hotel in South Korea was actually quite nice, overlooking the water and sunrise. The hotel had provided some complimentary chocolate and instant coffee, so I went about combining them to make a budget mocha for the morning. After packing up and showering, we caught a shuttle bus back to Incheon International Airport. This airport is massive by the way.
Incheon is one of the busiest airports in the world, and despite that, it’s also one of the most efficient I’ve seen. Aside from the fact that it took us a good 15 monutes to figure out which direction to go in, the rest of it was very painless. Self service immigration terminals, fast security checks, and getting to skip most of the check in line meant we made it to our gate with time to spare. We tried going to the food court, but it was completely full, so after meandering a bit, we found a sandwich and coffee place that had what looked like lettuce and herbs growing in a large glass room. We decided to grab a sandwhich and coffee each (both of which were good by airport food standards) and waited for boarding.
Finally on the plane over to Hanoi, which aside from the constant turbulence, managed to get us to Hanoi. The bumpy ride made it hard to study, but I tried to get as much Viet vocab down as I could before we touched down. After landing and making it through the airport, we caught a shuttle bus over to hotel.
The trip over to the hotel through the city was our first experience with the jumbled streets of Vietnam. The city was also decorated with a ton of Vietnamese flags, addorning basically every building. At first I thought the country might be a bit too nationalistic, but it turns out tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of Vietnam’s reunification (basically their equivalent of Canada day). I’m not sure how my dad and managed to accidently travel to a country celebrating a massive festival two trips in a row, but you won’t find me complaining.
We got checked in by some very helpful hotel staff, who explained a bunch of nearby points of interest in the district we were in while we waited for our ride to the market to start our cooking class with a Michelin star restaurant. After a brief delay, we hopped in a car and was dropped off at the market where we met the chef.
The chef showed us through Hang Da, an absolutely massive market with piles of things I can’t even name. The market is a large 3 story building with the entire surrounding neighbourhood being an extension of it. They have vendors for essentially everything under the sun, but our focus was on the ingredients we would be using for our cooking class.
Despite only focusing on food stalls, there was still mountains of so many different kinds of food that we needed chef to explain. Red jellyfish, Buddha’s Fingers, every part of whichever animal they were butchering, and large jars of dried sand worms (which we actually ended up using in our cooking lesson) were just a tiny number of the things we saw. After a couple hours of shopping for ingredients, we stop for a beer and peanuts and learn how to cheers in Vietnamese. We head back with our newly acquired ingredients to start the cooking class.
The chef showed us cutting techniques, the importance of certain spices and how to use them, and more. We ended up making a Pho, Fried spring rolls, and lemongrass pork skewers in another broth.
It’s crazy how much of an impact certain ingredients had on things like the broth, making its taste deep and flavorful. It’s also cool being able to pick out the newly discovered flavours (such as the aforementioned sand worm) in the meal, and connecting the flavours to the ingredients.
After a very filling and delicious meal, we are given a dessert and a small gift bag of spices, which we bring with us back to the hotel. We decide to walk back to our hotel tk experience a bit more of the city and scout out any interesting spots we might want to visit. Cars, bikes, and people criss cross about as we dodge and maneuver our way through crowded streets.
Now, about Vietnamese driving culture, especially in Hanoi. It’s chaos.
There hardly any lights or signs, horns are honked regularly (as here honking your horn is just to let others know you are there), cars, bikes, and people weave between each other (somehow not crashing into each other), and rules seem to boil down to “Don’t hit someone”. Crossing the street is daunting at first, but I found I actually got used to it pretty quickly. Actually, despite the absolute chaos that is Hanoi, I found myself surprisingly calm and stress free while wandering and weaving around traffic and people as we navigated our way back to the hotel.
We get back and rest up for a minute before going to the rooftop bar at the hotel to have a drink and take a look at the skyline. Even though it’s dark and foggy, you can still get a sense of just how dense the city is, with building seemingly being built on top of others. I take some notes with my drink before heading back to the hotel room to crash.
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