Hanoi and Cat Ba Island, Vietnam, 12 days of eating, drinking and fun travel records

My gay friend is going to take the IELTS test in Vietnam, and I will go there 4 nights before her. The original plan was that I would hang out in Hanoi for a few days and wait for her to come over. After the exam, I would go to Cat Ba Island to stay for a few nights and then return home. Because we didn’t have enough time, we didn’t want to spend too much time on transportation, so we chose to explore Hanoi and its surroundings slowly and in depth.
  
In order to save money, I started surfing on a sofa that I had not used for a long time, and found two sofa owners one after another. Unexpectedly, because of this, I gained the most unforgettable memory of my Trip. grateful. These moments of connecting with people while Traveling will never be forgotten.
  
It rained heavily on the first night after arriving in Hanoi. Then my Vietnamese couch host Zim told me that Hanoi has been super boring recently and it finally rained tonight! I laughed at myself, I must have brought the rain in Guilin. I secretly hope that it won’t rain again. Guilin people need sunshine to replenish vitamin D.
  

Hanoi greeted me with heavy rain

The next day was my time to wander around, and I had already decided where to go and what to eat. In the past few days, I basically just wake up, slowly tidy up, go out, have brunch, walk around, go to a coffee shop to drink coffee and read a book, walk around again, have dinner, and go home.
  
My trip is basically done by walking. Walking is the best way for me to get to know a city. Even under the scorching sun in Hanoi, my daily walking time should be three hours, which is very tiring.
  
Too much nonsense. The following are small shops I have visited and tasted. The quality of the pictures varies. Please forgive me.


❤️Hanoi |🍲Food

1. Giang Cafe

Price: 💰💰
Recommendation: 😋😋😋
How can you live in Vietnam without drinking coffee. There is a special kind of coffee in Vietnam called egg coffee. It's just finely beaten raw eggs and coffee. Giang Cafe is said to be the first coffee shop to invent this drinking method. As for the taste, some people like it and some people hate it.
  

For me, I haven’t eaten eggs for a long time, especially raw eggs. The smell of eggs is too strong and I can’t accept it. But the environment of this cafe is very good. You have to walk through a narrow alley to enter the store. The seats on the second floor have a unique flavor, and there is an endless stream of people coming. If you want to try something new, it is highly recommended.
  
2. Manzi

Price: 💰💰
Recommendation: 😋😋😋😋😋
Knowing this cafe is completely guided by personal interests. Because every time I go to a city, I like to check out the local exhibitions and bookstores, and I found this cafe by accident.
The environment in Manzi is also very good, suitable for sitting there and reading in a daze. When I went there around 4pm, there were not many people. The second floor is a small exhibition hall with many paintings by local independent artists, as well as posters promoting some events and performances. Photography is not allowed in the exhibition hall on the second floor, so I didn’t leave too many photos.
  

A corner of the small balcony on the second floor of Manzi


Out the window



3. Jalus Vegan Kitchen

Price: 💰💰💰
Recommendation: 😋😋😋😋
I want to say that Vegan restaurants in Hanoi are always full of European and American people. Every time I go in I feel out of place.
The facade of this restaurant is also very inconspicuous. Like Giang Cafe, you have to walk through an alley and enter the second floor to find a better place.
There were many people when I went that day, and even though the weather was very hot, I could only sit outside on the terrace. But I don't mind, the scenery outside is very interesting.
  


I ordered a mushroom sandwich and a berry smoothie. The sandwich bread is very generous, and the toppings are naturally not as generous as the ones I made myself. Hahaha. The bread should be made by yourself. It has a lot of whole grains and is rich in flavor, but it falls apart too easily. Side dishes include grilled sweet potato fries, lettuce and some tomato.
  
You can taste the ingredients as they are very authentic, without too many seasonings and oils. It is more healthy, which I like. But it's a bit dry overall, especially in summer, and it's very throaty. It took me a long time to eat this portion. The restaurant was full of people when I came in, and by the end of the meal I was the only one sitting on the terrace, and even the waiter was nowhere to be seen.
  



4. The Veg

Price: 💰💰💰
Recommendation: 😋 😋😋
This restaurant was a complete accidental discovery while looking for another vegetarian restaurant, and it was also my first meal in Hanoi.
I wasn’t very impressed, maybe I didn’t order the right food. I ordered a Buddha bowl and could choose eight side dishes I wanted. I chose quinoa, cucumber, tomato, carrot, black beans, peas, tofu, avocado, and you can also choose your own sauce.
  
The sauce is not very amazing, most of it is just the taste of the ingredients themselves, a mediocre meal. But the other food ordered by others looks delicious.
  


5. The Hanoi Social Club

Price: 💰💰💰💰
Recommendation: 😋😋😋😋 😋
The atmosphere and environment of the restaurant are great, and it is full of European and American people. The price of this restaurant is slightly more expensive than the previous ones.
The restaurant has three or four floors. The top floor is a small garden with many plants, which is particularly beautiful.
  


I ordered a dish that I forgot its name hahahaha, but it felt like a Mexican flavor, with black beans, onions, avocado, brown rice and some vegetarian sour cream (?), with Pumpkin seeds and cilantro give it a light garnish.
  
This small plate looks simple, but it has rich levels of taste. It’s not like what I had at The Veg before, where beans are just beans and melons are just melons, with a single taste.
I was chatting with others at the time, and I didn’t read the menu choices very carefully. It was a semi-blind spot. I probably bought the avocado as soon as I saw it.
  


6. Hanoi Taco Bar - West Lake

Price: 💰💰💰💰
Recommendation: 😋😋😋😋
I seem to have a habit. Because of my obsession with Mexican food, every time I go to a new place, I will search for Mexican restaurants there. This time I found several restaurants in Hanoi, and my friends and I chose this restaurant located by the West Lake.
  
Btw, West Lake is really big and beautiful. In the evening, there will be many couples falling in love by the lake, and many people will even stop their cars and stay by the lake for a short while.
  
I often feel that they are better at living than we are. In the evening, many locals will buy some drinks and a plate of peanuts at the small stalls by the lake, sit on small chairs and chat, enjoying the temperature that has finally cooled down.
  


This restaurant has vegetarian options, but only one. The taco crust is gluten-free, and the vegetarian taco is stuffed with quinoa, some vegetables, vegetarian cheese and salsa. My friend said that the shrimp she ordered was delicious, but I didn’t think it was that good. It was just average, with nothing to like about it.
  

Vegetarian Taco



7. Minh Chay Vegan Restaurant

Price: 💰💰💰💰
Recommendation: 😋😋😋😋😋
After eating too much Western food, I started to miss some soup and water. I started to crave noodles and something salty and soy sauce-flavored.
  
This is a vegetarian restaurant that serves Vietnamese cuisine. The environment is also very good, with green plants at the door. The colors in the store are simple, giving people a quiet feeling.
  
We went in and ordered vermicelli without hesitation, my friend ordered Vietnamese pho, I ordered something like dried vermicelli, and then we both ordered spring rolls together.
  




Before I was worried about whether I could still eat Pho this time when I came to Vietnam, although Pho You can find them all over the streets and alleys, but not many vegetarian ones. Furthermore, as a Guangxi native, my love for fans is not two or three points. The rice noodles taste very good, on the light side, and the soup is particularly delicious. My rice noodle has plenty of ingredients and tastes heavier than the rice noodle. It is sour and salty, and it is also very appetizing.
  
When eating noodle dishes in Vietnam, you always have a small plate of cut red peppers and some lime. I never thought that adding a few pieces of chili pepper to the rice noodles would give it a spiciness. It’s amazing.
  
8. Lifted Coffee & Brunch

Price: 💰💰💰💰
Recommendation: 😋😋😋😋
This shop is very popular , can be said to be an instagram celebrity store. The store serves brunch all day long, and the menu is so rich that it’s so confusing that you don’t know what to order. There are vegetarian options.
  
The store also has several floors. The second floor we went to was full of people, so we had no choice but to go to the small balcony outside.
  
My friend ordered a piece of bread with butter and jam, I ordered an egg pancake with mushrooms and guacamole, and a donut. The three meals are full of American style, high in calories and greasy. I ate both until the very end, I was so tired that I couldn’t eat anymore hahaha. The guy next to me ordered a very good looking Eggs Benedict. It must have been served with maple syrup and bacon, and he ate it with gusto.
  
The most satisfying thing is the smoothies here, no extra sugar is added.
  

Dragon Fruit Smoothie





Notable The best thing is that the straws used in the restaurants I have been to are all recyclable, both bamboo and steel. Even if some are disposable, they are made of biodegradable materials like wheat straw. I don’t know if these restaurants are trying to cater to the “fashion” of Europeans and Americans, but it’s really good to have such awareness and actions.
  
9. Banh Mi Hoi An

Price: 💰💰
Recommendation: 😋😋😋😋😋
Banh Mi is Vietnamese baguette the meaning of. Every city and even every household has a different flavor of Vietnamese baguette. The best baguette I ever had was in Dalat. It was so amazing that even now, three years later, it still has a shadow in my mind.
  
The Banh Mi store I went to this time is right on the roadside, and it seems to do more takeout orders. There is only one vegetarian option, with eggs. The baguette usually contains some pickled radish sour, as well as coriander and some sauce. The texture of this egg is very strange. It is not soft and smooth like eggs, but has the solid texture of meat, which surprised me a little.
  
Baguettes are still my favorite. They are crispy on the outside, high in bread moisture, and light and chewy on the inside.
  


10. Banh Mi 25 -Work & Chill

Price: 💰💰💰
Recommendation : 😋😋😋😋😋
This is a small shop that I visited twice. One because they have coconut coffee, and two because they have delicious vegetarian baguettes. All in all, the food here is delicious and very cost-effective.
  
Dine on the second floor of the store. There is a small attic on the second floor. The store has warm colors and a good atmosphere. There are also some handicrafts for sale.
  
You can also DIY the baguette. You can choose what you want to add. I ordered the king oyster mushroom and avocado baguette and added a portion of tofu.
  
It seems that the store has just started selling homemade popsicles. I ordered an avocado-coconut milk-flavored popsicle, which was very refreshing and delicious!
  


A glimpse of the terrace

What I like very much about Vietnam is that almost every restaurant has a small terrace. It is not big, but it allows you to Above you can see Tourists walking downstairs, aunties selling cigarettes and other strange little shops.
  

Juicy King Oyster Mushroom and Tofu Banh Mi



Coconut Coffee

11. La Studio


Price: 💰💰💰
Recommendation: 😋😋😋😋😋
This is a brunch restaurant that I particularly like and visited twice.

This store is located in a small alley by the West Lake, not very eye-catching. The first time I found it, I even walked past it before I discovered it.

The food in the store is all vegan, including toast and bagels, smoothies and smoothie bowls, and even vegan cakes.

The bagel sandwiches I ordered twice were delicious, and the smoothies were also good. The second time we wanted to try cakes, but the store only accepted cash and there was not enough money hahaha, so we had to return one juice and one cake.


smoothie bowl


tempeh sandwich

12. 4P's pizza

Price: 💰💰💰💰
Recommendation: 😋😋😋😋😋
This pizza shop has several branches and is very busy, so it is best to book a table in advance.

4P's means for peace. All the pizzas here are freshly baked, the dining experience is good, the service is attentive, and there are many choices, and you can even make pizzas together. Sitting on the second floor, you can also see the busy employees downstairs making pizza in neat divisions.


Good pizza is baked in a stone kiln

The vegetarian options at this restaurant include Margherita and five cheese pizzas. I have always loved Margherita when eating pizza, and I have never thought about what other pizza tastes like. It just feels good simply. As a result, after eating five kinds of cheese and then eating margarita this time, the margarita seemed very boring! The textures of the five cheeses are so good, especially the addition of blue cheese, which refreshed my understanding of "pizza without even tomato sauce". This pizza shop even makes their own cheese, which is highly recommended. You can eat the whole pizza without feeling heavy on your stomach.



five cheese pizza

13. Veggie Castle

Price: 💰💰
Recommendation: 😋😋😋😋😋
This should be my favorite vegetarian buffet restaurant in Hanoi. There are many kinds of vegetarian food, and there are different dishes every day, and the price is very cost-effective, 80k per person. The restaurant has a good environment and a large space, and there are many seats on the second floor.

There are generally eight kinds of dishes, some cold foods and desserts, two kinds of soup, and self-service ice tea. The main dishes include white rice and brown rice. I have been there several times and have never had the same dishes, but the commonly used ingredients include tofu, king oyster mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, green leafy vegetables, etc., as well as Vietnamese special spring rolls and fried bananas. Vegetarian friends must give it a try.

Many times I have a plan to go to a restaurant, but there are too many moments that tell me that I accidentally step into a restaurant Small shops always impress me more. Not just because the food was delicious, but also because it was a beautiful surprise. For example, the Taco shop I passed by in Shanghai and Xiaoliang, or the breakfast shop where I hurriedly packed a bowl of noodles on the side of the road while catching the bus on my last day in Hanoi.

❤️Cat Ba Island

Cat Ba Island is in Haiphong City. It is more than four kilometers away from Hanoi by car and then by ferry. About hours. This is also the main reason why we chose to go to Cat Ba Island - to save time.
Before going, my friend Faraz had just returned from the island. He said there weren’t many people on the island and it was really beautiful there.

Faraz is a friend of my second couch host. He is an Indian and calls himself a "pretended extrovert." He is very nice and humorous. Maybe it's because of our similar personalities that we get along very well.

But when we went there, the beaches on the island were crowded with people. It was the time when Vietnamese people were on summer vacation, and there were crowds of people everywhere.




We stayed on the island for three nights in total. Because of the funny accidents we made, we spent the three nights in different inns hahahaha.

Because it was already around 6 pm on the day we arrived, we just walked around the island in the evening, ate some food, and went back early to pack up and go to bed.

The next day, we booked accommodation in a village called Viet Hai. You need to take a ferry from Cat Ba Island. There are only two ferries going back and forth every day, at 11 am and 4:30 pm respectively. The price is 50k VND and it takes about an hour to ride.




On the boat
On the boat in the past, it started to rain. The scene in the sky over there suddenly made the entire sea and mountains look like a painting, so beautiful.





Viet Hai is a very small village, with one road in and out, and about 300 villagers. The village is mostly self-sufficient, with vegetables and other items having to be transported from Cat Ba town. On the afternoon we first arrived, we rode our bicycles around and found that there were dead ends everywhere, and the only accessible path was a small road connecting the village and the port.




Viet Hai is a very quiet small village, surrounded by green. You can hear the chirping of birds, see goats defecating on the roadside, and they will be blown away from time to time. Small bugs on the body.





The things in the village are not cheap, a bottle of water and a portion of cooked instant noodles cost about the same. The water on the island is filtered by seawater and always has a salty taste. Our hair never feels sticky.

The B&B we stayed in provided free breakfast and paid dinner. The dinner was local side dishes, with a total of five dishes, fried fish nuggets, omelets, fried sweet potato balls, wild vegetable soup and fried cabbage. Tired of eating all kinds of bread, these simple stir-fries captured my heart.




The wild vegetable soup is especially delicious!
We returned to Jiba Town on the third day. The weather was very good on the way back. It actually gave me the feeling of going home - we seemed to be swimming on the Li River.




Back to Cat Ba Town, we rented a small motorcycle and drove to Cat Ba National Forest Park to explore it. After all, Faraz said it was beautiful to climb to the top of the mountain, and he wanted to sit there quietly for a few hours.

The scenery on the drive is very nice and the Journey is not very far. The mountain scenery here is really similar to Guilin, hahaha.




You need to buy a ticket to go to Forest Park, 80k per person. The climbing is not particularly difficult, it is similar to Xingping Laozhai Mountain. The conductor said that it will take about an hour or two to reach the top of the mountain. Thanks to the shade of trees along the way, the sun wasn't too strong, but there were a lot of mosquitoes.




What awaited me when I reached the top of the mountain was a stretch of green mountains. Perhaps my expectations were too high, so I didn’t have much impression of this scene. At that time, I thought, when I return to Hanoi, I must persuade Faraz to go to Guilin and let him experience the beauty of Guilin’s landscape.




We did not find any hidden beaches on Cat Ba Island. There are three main beaches: Cat Co 1, 2, & 3. After climbing the mountain, I wanted to go to the beach to play in the water. Cat Co 2 was building roads at the time and it seemed that it was impossible to drive there, and the other two beaches were crowded with people. After many twists and turns, we finally returned to Cat Co 1 and chased the waves, which was quite enjoyable.



On Cat Ba Island we ate noodles for three days in a row, and of course there were some breads for brunch. There are many vegetarian restaurants here, and the prices are very cost-effective. For Guangxi people, it is a blessing to have a bowl of noodles when they wake up in the morning.


Vegan Pho at YummyRestaurant


Tom Yum Noodles at Yummy Restaurant


Sandwiches at Secret Garden


Secret Garden


Secret Garden

Cat Ba Island is generally very good. The island is not small. You can rent a motorbike to get around. If you want to swim, you can go to the sea. If you want to climb, there are mountains. You can also go hiking, kayaking, and visiting caves. There are many activities.

Although I have been to Vietnam three times including this time, the total time in Hanoi for the first two times was less than three days. The first time I stayed in Hanoi for two days, and the second time I went directly to Dalat and rode a motorcycle from Dalat all the way south to Ho Chi Minh.
Every trip is to go in the direction you want more, slowly wandering around the city, avoiding tourist attractions, making friends with local people, and understanding their daily life.
Thanks to everyone I met on the road this time, as well as my friends who trusted me throughout the journey without any regrets, hahahaha. Goodbye.