Info on Hoi An 2
There are great restaurants in Hoi An, where you can eat fancy food for reasonable!
- Cargo, delicious breakfast, Western and Vietnamese food in a trendy surrounding for the same price as other restaurants. They also have a large selection of pastries and home-made ice-cream!!! (I’ll never forget their caramel ice cream!)
- Hoa Vang, one of the best for Vietnamese food, you can tell by the freshness of their spring rolls (featured in our cooking class video).
The nightlife isn’t amazing but there is a few places to enjoy a night out.
- Before and Now, good music, but no dancing.
- King Kong, kind of a depressing little place, but at least people dance (on the pool table)
- We really liked Seamile Club, it’s a bar on the beach, you have to take a cab or their shuttle to get there but during the weekend it is totally worth it! There is also a swimming pool.
We went to Family Tailor, not far from the hotel. The service is good. The prices aren’t low but it seems the best you can get. An average of 200.000 VND for a dress like the one I had made in the video.
BONUS - Two delicious recipes!!!
Please Note: I did not get an exact recipe for these dishes from the Hoa Vang restaurant (I doubt they have ever used an exact recipe) so frankly, I guessed how much of each ingredient was used. If you watch the video - Hoi An Cooking Class - you can see for yourself how much of each ingredient was used and go from there.
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Fresh Spring Rolls
- 8 shrimp - shelled
- 8 pieces thin sliced pork
- 4 rice paper spring roll wraps
- 2 cup mix of shredded carrots and shredded cabbage
vinegar
- 6 to 8 large leafs of leafy lettuce (e.g. romaine lettuce)
- mint
Prepare the salad. Chop lettuce into small strips. Mix in mint - approx. 10% of total salad mixture should be mint.
Shred cabbage and carrot. Mix together. Add vinegar to make the mixture completely damp or to taste.
Boil the shrimp and pork for 3 minutes in a frying pan filled with water. Remove meat from water and strain.
Dip each spring roll wrap in water - avoid breaking and getting wrap stuck to itself.
Lay out wrap on a plate. Add two pieces of pork. If the wrap was a happy face - the pork would be the mouth. Put 1/4 of cabbage-carrot mixture on top of pork.
Put salad mixture on top of pork and cabbage. Add plenty to give the spring roll volume and crunchiness.
Put two shrimp on the wrap where the happy face eyes would be.
Roll wrap from sides across other ingredients, then roll wrap from bottom over salad-cabbage-pork, and finally across shrimp. Roll wrap tightly. Finished spring roll should be about the size of a toilet paper tube.
Makes 4 spring rolls. Serve with Vietnamese fish sauce or with Thai Chili sauce.
Fresh and delicious!
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Mi Quang
- 200g rice noodles cooked
- bean sprouts
- 6 large leafs of leafy lettuce (e.g. romaine lettuce)
- mint
- 2 large shrimp - heads removed
- 1 large thin slice of pork
- 1 to 1 1/2 tbsp oil
- 1/2 small finely chopped red onion
- 2 tbsp chopped white onion
- 2 tbsp chopped tomato
- 2 tbsp chopped pineapple
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tbsp dried chicken stock
- 2 tbsp chicken stock with water
- 1 egg white
- 1 tbsp chopped green onion
- 1 tsp chopped peanuts
- dash pepper
Prepare the salad. Chop lettuce into small strips. Mix in mint - approx. 10% of total salad mixture should be mint. Place in a bowl.
Boil noodles and bean sprouts for 2 mins. Strain and put in bowl with salad.
Heat oil in frying pan. Grill red onions until slightly brown. Grill shrimp and pork. Add white onion, tomato and pineapple, followed by salt, sugar, dried chicken stock, chicken stock w/water, egg white, and green onions. When mixture is thoroughly cooked, put on top of noodle-salad combo.
Sprinkly a dash of pepper and chopped peanuts on the top. Serve. Ingredients should be mixed together before eating.
Makes one large bowl (one serving).
And enjoy the taste of Vietnam!!!
Info on Hoi An
Best to buy gas at a official looking gas station, the small pumps may rip you off.
Be careful not to buy too much gas, (My Son requires half a tank and the beach less than a quarter) motorbike tanks are emptied everyday, and you won't get your refund.
Info on Huê
Tu Duc's Tomb is a pretty place surrounded by high pines a bit like the french Landes, quite unique in Vietnam.
We hired a dragon boat to get there 50.000 VND/hour, we didn't bargain. We were with the family of the owner of the boat, the boat is their house.
Info on Huê and the DMZ tour
Food wise, we highly recommend Hot Tuna. Don't be alarmed by its pub-ish look, the cuisine is very refined.
Also recommend Ushi. The lady who owns the place is very nice and modern.
The DMZ tour (100,000 VND) itself is not very interesting. It requires spending 12 hours on an old crappy bus for an about an hour of sightseeing. If you are interested in the subject it might be worth your time, but most people on our bus appeared bored by the experience.
Huê is a very hot and sunny city, so if it gets unbearable you can go to the Saigon Morin Hotel and use the fancy swimming pool for $5.
Info on Hai Phong and Ninh Binh
We loved Tam Coc, where we were rowed for 2 hours and enjoyed the Karst mountains in rice fields (similar to Halong Bay) and pass through 3 caves.
Cuc Phong National Park is nice with its Endangered Primates Rescue Center. The primate center is really for the monkeys and not a zoo, so don't expect to get up close and personal with the monkeys.
Hoa Lu temple is not very interesting, but the motorbike trip through the countryside to get there is very nice. The villages have a lot of charm.
Nihn Bihn was our cheapest stop so far. We stayed in a nice clean room for $12 at the Thanh Thuy hotel. We were sceptical of the hotel since we were taken there by our bus driver - but it really was the nicest option.
There is really nothing to do at night - not even eating out, so most people eat at the hotel where the food is acceptable and cheap.
Info on Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island
- Not staying in Halong City - it is not an interesting town. We wish we had gone directly to Cat Ba Island and took the Halong Bay cruise from there.
- Taking the official tour even if it is less convenient. We booked with a tout and basically got a ferry to Cat Ba with only a few stops in the bay.
- Definitely NOT the 2 or 3 days cruise on the boat. We had reports that the food is bad, the boat is dull after sundown and when at Cat Ba, they were booked in a very bad hotel far from the city center.
- Cat Ba's Bamboo Cafe. It is a bit of the same food everywhere, but Bamboo Cafe was the best from afar and the staff was very nice.
- Cat Co 2 is a nicer beach than Cat Co 1 and less busy, but once there it's pretty obvious.
- We stayed at the Noble House, it was a cute place, with Wifi in the rooms, but perhaps a bit pricey $20/night. They have a climbing, trekking club. We were interested by going rock climbing, but the owners of the climbing operation didn't really sell us on it, so we didn't go. Perhaps you will have a different experience.
Info on Hanoi
We recommend:
- Little Hanoi (old quarter)
- Koto (by the temple of literature), the staff is made of former street kids who are learning hospitality.
- Everything Bun (by the lake), it's not so cheap but I liked it.
We don't recommend:
- Bobby Chinn!!! With so many good cheap restaurants in Hanoi, there is no need to spend so much in such a place.
- 69 bar-restaurant. The food is just not good.
Info on Nan Ning
Soft sleepers around 700 RMB/per person*.
Night train from Nan Ning to Hanoi with border crossing costs around 300RMB/per person*, but it is not available on the weekend.
Day bus from Nan Ning to Hanoi costs around 150 RMB/per person*.
*Sorry for approximate prices, we weren't keeping track at this point.
