We are planning to extend our trip to Halong Bay and spend a few extra days chilling on Cat Ba island, so we spend a lazy morning researching places to stay. Then we take a short walk to the Dong Xuan Market. It absolutely pours with rain on the way so we invest in a couple of supposedly light-weight ponchos that should pack down small for carrying around town, but turn out to be a bit more substantial than expected and not very robust. But they do the job for now at least. We lunch at Ladybird Restaurant in an old Vietnamese house on Pho Hang Buom – not bad food but the portions are a bit small. We then spend what is left of the afternoon finishing the walking tour of the Old Quarter that we started two days ago. In the evening we go to Minh’s Jazz Club which is a short walk from the hotel on Pho Luong Van Can. Great jazz! The keyboard player was particularly good and the whole evening only costs us £7.50.
After four days in Hanoi we are feeling a little more at home with the traffic and crossing the road doesn’t seem quite so daunting. The trick apparently is to walk into the traffic very slowly whilst the traffic drives round you. That’s the theory at least. Still nerve-racking nonetheless.
Dong Xuan market is one of the most important in the city. It is spread over three floors of a huge building in an area just north of our hotel. Each floor is absolutely packed to the gunnels with all manner of merchandise – dried fish, herbs and spices, ready made-clothes, roll upon roll of fabric, household goods, you name it and it’s probably here somewhere – and all crowded in so tightly that the aisles between the sellers are only just wide enough to pass through in single file.
On the way back to the hotel we stop at the local Bia Hoi establishment. These are nothing fancy – a few low level plastic tables of the stacking variety out on the pavement with the tiniest of plastic seats to squat on. This is where the locals drink and with good reason the beer is excellent. Brewed daily and delivered around the city, it is very more-ish. As we sip our beer seated on the corner of a busy crossroads, we marvel at how everyone can drive straight through junctions unscathed and watch in admiration as our waiter saunters nonchalantly back and forth across the road carrying beer orders from the Bia Hoi place opposite, seemingly oblivious to the traffic all around.