(Hanoi, Vietnam)
She couldn't have been more than five years old. She'd already said bye-bye once and run back to her parents, and I'd assumed that was the end of it. But she came back, holding out her half-drunk bottle of water because she'd noticed I didn't have any. I said thank you more times than I could count. She ran off again. A few minutes later she was back, this time with a full, unopened bottle her parents had clearly bought and sent over with her. She handed it to me and bolted before I could even get the words out.
I was alone in Hanoi, in a country where I didn't speak the language, forty-eight hours in, eating a bowl of bun cha at a small restaurant in the Old Quarter. And a five-year-old just made me feel completely at home.
I'll be honest: Hanoi wasn't the reason I came to Vietnam. I was on my way to Ha Giang for a motorbike loop through the north, and Hanoi was the entry point. Two days felt like enough. I didn't have strong feelings about it either way.
I also wasn't expecting much from the food. Vietnamese cuisine leans heavily on cilantro and raw onion, two things I can't eat, and I'd mentally prepared myself to navigate around them. I figured I'd find a few things, eat well enough, and move on.
I could not have been more wrong.
I'd rented an apartment in the Old Quarter, tucked away from the busiest streets, which turned out to be exactly the right call. The neighborhood has a particular kind of energy: chaotic on the surface but deeply livable once you find your rhythm. My rhythm, dictated almost entirely by a heat wave that pushed temperatures to around 115 degrees, went like this: out the door by 7am for food missions while the city was still bearable, back inside by 11am, horizontal until the sun started to drop, then back out again as the evening air softened everything.
Those morning hours were everything. Bun ca, bun cha, banh mi pate, grilled pork banh mi, cha ca, bun rieu, salted coffee, egg coffee, pho bo. I ordered pho ga once thinking it was the safe option and somehow ended up with the special, which included every organ the chicken had ever owned. I ate most of it. At 7am in Hanoi, in that heat, surrounded by locals eating at tiny plastic tables on the sidewalk, everything tasted correct in a way that's hard to explain. Even the things I'd mentally flagged as problems, I found workarounds, asked questions, pointed at things and waited to see what arrived. The food here is so specific and so confident in itself that I just stopped second-guessing and started eating.
The bun cha was where it all crystallized. I sat down next to a young family, a couple with two small daughters, at one of those restaurants where the tables are close enough that you're essentially eating together whether you planned to or not. The mom immediately pushed a plate of spring rolls toward me. I said no thank you, because I'm Korean and that's what we do, a reflex I've regretted many times. The language barrier meant conversation wasn't really possible, but I kept glancing over at their bowls and trying to figure out if I was eating my bun cha correctly. Every time I looked over, someone nodded or smiled. When they got up to leave, the littlest one turned around and said bye-bye. Then she came back with the water.
That moment, more than any meal or street or building, is what Hanoi means to me.
By the end of my forty-eight hours I didn't want to leave. I actually looked into extending my stay, but my apartment wasn't available and Ha Giang was already booked. I'm relieved now, because Ha Giang turned out to be one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life and I'll write about it separately. But in that moment, leaving Hanoi felt like a real loss. That doesn't happen to me often with cities I wasn't expecting to feel anything about.
Forty-eight hours is not enough. But it's enough to know you have to go back.
A few notes if you're going: Stay in the Old Quarter, but look for something on a quieter side street rather than the main drag. Go out early, before 9am if you can, and again after 5pm. The middle of the day in summer is genuinely brutal. Eat everything. If you can't do cilantro or raw onion, say so when you order and most places will work with you. And if a little kid offers you something, just take it.
Where I ate and drank:
Bún Riêu Cô Hoàn Hàng Lược Crab noodle soup with mantis shrimp. Get there early, they sell out.
