Street Soup

We left our hostel, map in hand, bundled in our fleece sweaters against the cool air of a Hanoi evening in late December. In a show of bravado, we struck out across the street. We jumped back in a panic. We froze for a moment on the curb, watched the scooters whiz by us, the drivers nonchalantly navigating the narrow, congested streets.

Eventually, we made it across that street, then another. Our destination was on the next corner, which was fantastic because Hanoi's lightening fast ribbons of scooter traffic were quickly turning me into a nervous wreck. But we'd made it, and there she was.

Tasty soups at Pho 24 

Perched on a small plastic stool behind a long, low table on the street corner was a middle-aged woman, her graying hair held back in a checkered headscarf, deftly chopping a whole chicken into bite-sized pieces with a thick-bladed machete. The table was loaded with soup ingredients and condiments - chicken parts (yum, feet?), slabs of beef, onions, garlic, noodles, vegetables, herbs, countless unlabeled bottles of sauce - all marinating in the perpetual dust of Hanoi's streets.

We plunked ourselves down on stools, pointed to the beef and said, "two?" holding up the appropriate number of fingers and smiling hopefully. Success! She conferred with the soup tureen boiling away beside her stool, tossed in the meat and veggies, and grinning, handed us two bowls of steaming 'pho bo' - Vietnamese beef noodle soup, which we devoured immediately.

I love pho, and nowhere does it better than a street stall in Hanoi. (Although the Pho 24 chain does a good job too!) This is a city where daily life is out on the sidewalks. Street food is king, storefronts spill right out to the curb. My other favourite experience here was the 'bia hoi,' or fresh beer, stored without preservatives in big kegs and doled out in mugs on corners. The beer line isn't carbonated, like it would be in Canada, and so the tube coming from the bottom of the keg is plugged with a cork - or, when business is good, with the bartender's thumb. Like all other street-side businesses, patrons perch on tiny plastic stools at tiny plastic tables.

My Dad is so proud of me.

We spent five days in Hanoi, mostly eating and drinking (I literally had pho for every meal for about three days. I regret nothing.) but we managed some tourist attractions as well. The military museum has a big display of both Russian and American military equipment that you're allowed to climb on, as well as one-sided displays on both the French and American wars. It wasn't the one side that we're used to hearing about back home, so it was interesting to dig through the propaganda to find a Vietnamese perspective.

The mausoleum: you cannot get closer than this from the front.
Immediately after this was taken, the guards yelled at us to back away.

I also got to see my very first embalmed communist leader! The body of revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh, or 'Uncle Ho,' is preserved in an enormous mausoleum in Hanoi. To see him, you must walk a half kilometre around and behind the mausoleum itself - by no means can you approach from the front across the parade square. You check your purse at one kiosk and your camera and cell phone at another. Then you walk single file along a thin red carpet into the marble building, under intense scrutiny by Vietnam's tallest military guards, all in spotless white uniforms. You do not talk, or linger, or put your hands in your pockets. Pictures are right out, thus the mandatory camera handover. Everyone shuffles slowly past the pale, waxy-skinned, serene Uncle Ho (who, by the way, wanted specifically to be cremated rather than embalmed and preserved), observes respectfully and emerges from the chilly mausoleum back into the daylight.

Cool, if slightly creepy.

We also checked out a few of the historic temples, and strolled around Hoan Kiem Lake in the old quarter. And then we ate. And ate and ate and ate.

S.