Bia Phượng (2RPX+62H, Hàng Đồng, Hàng Bồ, Hoàn Kiếm, Hà Nội, Vietnam)

I heard tell of the freshly brewed, daily beer of Hanoi. Brewed fresh each day, anything unsold by close is no longer good and is thrown out (a sin, unforgivable, I must prevent this crime). Cheap, plentiful, the wise choice, considering I was recently fleeced once again, £6 equivalent for a La Trappe. I sure know how to pick ’em…

After a long walk, semi-aimless, around the monumental area (quite literally)…

… I stumbled upon this chaotic corner.

Life flies by at a mile per second so I decided to help slow things down with a cool refreshing glass of cool refreshment. As beers go it’s entirely inoffensive. Cool, refreshing (- edit this, repetition, Ed.), lacking any real flavour but the perfect tincture on a balmy evening. Served via hose by a sullen young man, you can basically drink as much as you like without fear of ever getting really smashed.

I had three and then spied a fellow Westerner, so I did as all intrepid adventurers must and foist myself upon him.

I checked with him that he was okay to use his real name (his real name is Lenny) and we sat and shot the shit for a good while. He was in crisis, but a ‘fun-time happy’ crisis, having just quit his teaching job because he was hungover after a birthday celebration. A good guy, we discussed the nightmare that is England and the opportunities available here. He drank a few too many and became animated. He gave at least three renditions of Sweet Caroline (Brits abroad!) and demonstrated in very clear international terms his desire to hang Liz Truss from a nearby branch.

A really nice guy though, one of those lucky few that fall into the catchment of free Glastonbury tickets, he’s a singer songwriter and has been in numerous metal bands (Hidden Enemy, I haven’t checked them out so can’t vouch for them) and he used to rehearse in a studio in Brighton next to Sikth (I have checked them out and can vouch for them, they’re fantastic) which is pretty close to as cool as it gets, nerd-wise.

Then we met a lovely Polish gent, umm… let’s call him Tim.

Lenny immediately dived into a discussion about Russian aggression and the incumbent right wing Polish government, in quite combative, intense terms, but Tim took it with good humour and charm. A fellow wastrel, he was only two hours into Hanoi and was already smitten, as am I.

Lenny left us to it and I miss him, his rampant enthusiasm for debate and his good time humour. Tim and I continued the shit-shooting and the afternoon became the evening. In total we had far too many bia hois and a single plate of delectable fried tofu and it came to 200k dong, about eight English pounds.

At this point, I was keen to continue lively discussion with fellow English speakers so I jumped in a cab and hot-footed it to Ha Dong, a district to the West that is a very, very long way off the tourist trail. The journey was almost beyond belief, tens of thousands of bikes, the main roads here feel more like rivers, the flow of bikes and cars and buses weaving in and out, ever forward, in a way that, when you get your head around it, makes complete sense. It’s a fascinating study in fluid dynamics, if there’s a space that space gets filled.

There I met Jim, a friend of many, many years, who was sitting and playing low stakes card games with Mr Chi, a charming Vietnamese gentleman, two Russians, Alex and Nadine, and two Belarusians, Igor and Natalia. They were amazing people with a keen, disgraceful sense of humour.

We sat and talked and had delicious deep fried rat penis (it was pork but Alex is a funny guy) and I lost every game. Inverse relationship of gambling ability to drink in its clearest form.

Eventually they called it a night but I was not done so I hopped in a cab and drove to ‘The Warehouse’ for some dance music.

It cost a bomb to get in, it was full of eager tourists and it demonstrated clearly why I absolutely detest almost all clubs. Terrible music, utter dogshit. Well, not banging techno so… Slow house, do one mate. What’s wrong with people? The sound system was great and the lighting was cool, I’d imagine there are good nights there, I was just unlucky.

I left after one hideously overpriced and undersized beer in protest and went off to enjoy the dawn. I sat outside a Circle K at five am watching the world go by.

For ‘ the world’, read ‘an endless stream of youths on motorbikes’. 5am and the place was ‘popping’, as the youths tend to say.

This is more like a list of rather bland events so I’ll keep the rest brief.

• Morning yoga in the park (I need to do more yoga, it felt good and everything hurts now)
• Dancing to traditional ballads with a huge group of older folks (they were in hysterics at my inability to coordinate even the most basic of movement)
• A sleep, deep, restful, interrupted by a very helpful but entirely unwelcome member of hotel staff.

Now I’m sat at a locals bar, supping a Saigon and feeling fresh as a kicked apart melon in the sun

One more thing, they’ve closed off massive sections of road and put out tons of remote control / driveable mini cars for the kids to goof around in and it just drove the point home even more that Vietnamese babies are the most stinking cute babies ever. My womb is fit to burst.

travel