Hanoi looked like the city of Medan or Surabaya 20 years ago to me. The town has a lot of uniqueness. It is an old city with many developments are going on with the hectic of motor biker on the town road as well as the traffic, the places for walking like some lakes inside the town are quite refreshing for people coming from the bigger city like us. In the month like January, Hanoi's weather is quite cold but nice and it was getting colder in the night time. The temperatur was about 10-15 degrees C.
The people are nice and friendly.The food was awesome in both taste and price. When we went to the old city area called Hagai, we found the best creme caramel ever that I never had in my culinary experiences as hotelier and food explorer and dont forget the Vietnamese ice coffee, although if I took it too much, it could trouble my gastric. And of course it is the best place to eat the famous Pho beef noodle!
We also had a great time at Bobby Chinn's restaurant that located at West Lake of Hanoi. With the some food pictures below, I can tell you it was worth one and half hour to go there by driving at the town's peak hour on Friday night with that chaotic hectic evening traffic.
The souvenirs like silk, the paintings, the shawls, the wooden home decorations are fantastic. We also found a small exhibition of the embroidery painting! It was so amazing me because all the embroidery are handmade. Each paintings are used to be done by 2-3 young girls in period 3-9 months. I cant attach the paintings here due to some art ethics and the copy right.
We stayed in Sofitel Metropole Hotel. It is an inspiring hotel with a good quality of hospitality and service especially for the ones who spending their time there for writing and photography.
It is a 1901 French Colonial building that has been renovated interiorly to for becoming a five star hotel.
The center of the beauty of the hotel is the glass house coffee shop between the small corridor garden and the swimming pool. With a lot of light decoration in the evening time is like reminding us of Paris in the night time.The hotel has the unique and classic style of shopping arcade, the spa and some kind of Asian and European menus. They also have the classic corner of shoe shine that brought us to the memory of European colonial style. The warm welcome lobby with the big white flowers in the midst of it that has made every ladies heart-melt at the first sight we arrived there.
It was such refreshing get away to Hanoi and we plan to comeback there for further exploration of the town and around.
