Ten Years!

At the beginning of December, Ashley and I flew down to Hanoi for a weekend to celebrate our tenth anniversary (!). It was our first time traveling without the kids so we chose a place that a) was close to Hong Kong, b) had multiple direct flight options, and c) we’d been to already so there’d be no pressure to fill up our short time there with sightseeing. Hanoi checked all the boxes, with the added bonus of being an absolute banger of a street food destination.

Our plan was to take an early flight out on Friday morning, then head back to Hong Kong on Sunday morning, giving us about 48 hours in the northern Vietnamese metropolis. Our schedule was simple – eat, coffee, shop, repeat, with more upscale dining experiences reserved for both evening meals. We stayed at the AIRA Boutique Hanoi Hotel & Spa, putting us about 10-15 minutes walk from most of the street food places we had marked out in the Old Quarter.

We grabbed a very filling lunch at Bun Cha Dac Kim, and then, since it ended up raining for most of the afternoon, we holed up in a couple of coffee shops and did something we used to do all the time together – read in silence. When Ashley and I were dating/married without kids, one of our favourite weekend date activities was coffee time, aka find a nice cafe with comfy seating and read while the day passed us by. It’s not something we do very much of anymore now that we’ve got two kids and other priorities, so it was really nice to be able to have nothing on our plates except a hot coffee and a good book. For reference, the two coffee shops we went to that day were The Note Coffee (great view of Hoan Kiem Lake) and Tranquil Books & Coffee (very cozy vibes).

T.U.N.G. Dining

On our first night in town, we had dinner at T.U.N.G. Dining, a quirky/upscale restaurant in the Old Quarter with an aim to reimagine Vietnamese cuisine. All I can say is that the tasting menu was top notch and the service was incredible. All the dishes were made with such care, and the staff were very knowledgeable about the food they were serving us. They were also quite eager to chat and ask for feedback, and it felt like they had a hunger to reach the next level. Ashley and I don’t often eat in fancy places but we’re lucky in Hong Kong to have access to a range of Michelin star restaurants, and I’d put T.U.N.G. Dining up there with the best of them.

Day Two

We hit up some more of the street food classics on day two – banh cuon at Bánh Cuốn Gia Truyền Thanh Vân, iced coconut coffee at Kong Caphe, pho at Pho Thin Bo Ho, egg coffee from Cafe Dinh, and a takeout banh mi from Bánh mì Trâm. What ended up unexpectedly taking a lot of our time and energy that day was shopping, however. Vietnam is a major manufacturing hub with a good number of textile and apparel companies having factories or hiring factory complexes to produce their merchandise – and not a small amount of that ends up in countless discount storefronts in Hanoi. In between our meals and coffees we roamed the streets of the Old Quarter back and forth, hunting for the best deals and deliberating on whether or not we should purchase that item or not. By the end of the day we had a bag full of discounted shoes, shirts, jackets, and backpacks – and a little bit of regret that we didn’t pull the trigger on more stuff.

Gia

Dinner on the last night of our stay was at a one Michelin star restaurant called Gia. It had a similar sort of concept as T.U.N.G. Dining, but it had a more serious vibe than the former – perhaps not a surprise considering it has the star that the other likely covets. The food here was also good, but somehow Ashley and I both agreed we liked T.U.N.G. Dining a little bit better. There were more “wow” dishes at T.U.N.G. Dining, and we liked the more personable and friendly style of service there. Not to say Gia isn’t worth a visit, but there just seemed to be a little more creativity at the place without the Michelin star.

Final thoughts

So that was that – before we knew it our short little anniversary weekend had come to an end. We ate lots, spent some much-needed quality time together, and even got in some unexpected shopping. We flew back to Hong Kong the next morning to be reunited with the kids (somehow the weekend feeling both longer and shorter than reality), and to get through the last few weeks of work before the Christmas holidays. But before that, we had one last holiday planned for the year with the whole family, and we were heading back to familiar shores – Japan.