The food tour started at 11:30, our guide, Ha (no clue if that's how you really spell it), came to pick us up at our hotel to bring us to their office and the start of the tour. Right when we got to the office he offered us shots of different rice wine that had been mixed with various things. There were three other people that joined our tour, all of them were from Australia but one of them had lived in Hanoi for about two years and was bringing her friends on the tour. The tour was a walking tour around the old quarter of the city stopping at various small restaurants and street stalls.
The food was amazing! And there was tons of it! The first thing we tried was pho ga tran, which was basically chicken noodle soup without the soup part. Also at the same restaurant we had bun cha, spring rolls and sticky rice.
It's amazing to see everywhere you turn street stalls with very fresh food. Many people will actually sit on the street in little chairs to cook and eat their food.
To get to the next restaurant we went through lots of narrow winding alleyways that connected to people's houses. This next restaurant was much larger than the first. The first thing we tried here was thit cho aka dog meat!! It was very interesting it tasted like chicken but stronger and much more chewy. Dog meat is a very common food for locals here and is supposed to give you good luck and virility.
A few more foods we tried were banana flower salad, pumpkin leaves, spinach, and tofu in tomato sauce. I had never tried anything like these before and everything was delicious!
On the way to our next restaurant we made a stop for some coffee. Now I'm not much of a coffee drinker but, as I mentioned in the title this, wasn't normal coffee it was cafe chon, also know as weasel poop coffee! The beans are actually gathered from the fecees of a weasel. Supposedly the weasels select the best coffee beans to eat and their digestive systems acid and enzymes add to the flavor of the coffee! It was delicious! And very strong!
It is interesting to note that in Hanoi all their are streets for specific things for example we went to the coffee street where almost every shop on the street sells only coffee. This occurs for many other items as well, we walked past the street for baby items, street for door knobs, street for silver jewelry, and a street for herbs. It's really interesting how it's set up, it's very similar to Peru.
We made one final stop at another small restaurant where we tried even more awesome food! My favorite by far was the deep fried shrimp with coconut! But we also had stir fried chicken, grilled fish Hanoi style (catfish), and mixed fruits.
After the tour we made it back to our hotel for a little rest before going to a water puppet show at 8pm. It was pretty cool, however we didn't have any idea what was going on because it was narrated in Vietnamese! It was basically a puppet show on a big pool of water.
After the show we made our way back to the hotel to hopefully get some sleep. Tomorrow we leave for Cat Ba island in Ha Long Bay at 730am it's about a 4 hour total journey on bus then boat.
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