Not Drunk Enough, I’m Afraid
On our first night in Hanoi, we visited Highway 4, a restaurant we happened to come across while wandering in the old quarter of the city. We first flipped through the drink menu and were happy to find some flights of locally distilled liquor for sampling, of which we ordered two. Most of them had interesting flavours like ginger or rose-apple but some were un-finishable, like the one with the name that translates as “one night, five times, give birth to four sons.”
However, so as not to completely pickle ourselves, we ordered some snacks off the tapas menu. We were not, however, nearly hammered enough to order any of the items on this page:
Otherwise, we had a fantastic meal at a French restaurant here called “Cafe des Arts”. It might sound silly to be eating Western food when we have so much good Eastern food to try but I am weak when it comes to foie gras and cheese platters. Thus, we have prune-stuffed filet mignon with foie gras sauce and – heaven! – mashed potatoes, followed by a tray of French cheeses. We ate there twice in three days.
Completely unrelated, here is a picture of Hanoi traffic from our hotel room.
Traffic is a neat mass of confusion. The only way to cross the street as a pedestrian, is to walk slowly across the road while scooters, trucks and cars weave around you. The key is not to stop!
If anybody is interested, I’ve made an attempt at loading video onto YouTube; see a street in Hanoi.