HANOI: Surviving Vietnam's CAPITAL CITY (First impressions)

We're in Hanoi, Vietnam and out here it's the wild, wild east. The honking and yelling is on a whole other level. It feels a lot louder compared to like Thailand or Cambodia. See what I'm saying? Definitely a very different vibe from Saigon where we were last week. Everyone's hustling. Everyone's got their own food stands and food standards. You also gotta haul a lot of ram. People welding in the streets, burning ----. Are we in New Orleans? Smoking some weird pipes. Yeah! Doing their dishes. Selling all kinds of stuff off their backs or off their bikes. And construction can happen at all hours of the night. Literally right in front of our place. Forcing us to sleep in our damn kitchen. One thing's for sure, Hanoi's got soul. Locally it's known as the city of love. And I know the thing we're gonna love on most here is the food. The variety and depth of the street food here is extraordinary. This also happens to be the cultural capital with tons of interesting museums, historical sites, a large French influence, and lots of charming towns within a few hours of the city. Our schedule's packed. Let's go. What I love about Vietnam is they just do this. We're doing a scooter tour today. I got Ming here with me. Both of our drivers are named Ming so we got Ming 1 and Ming 2. But basically they're taking us around the city of Hanoi. We're getting to learn all about the history and the different landmarks. It's such a fun way to explore Vietnam. We did this in Saigon as well. And it was probably one of my top three things that we did. Alright, so we just made a quick stop here at this market. It's a little bit more full on than I expected. We're getting to see like everything that they cook and eat here. You know, it started normal. Like over here we got some pork. This lady, she's cutting up some pork which is really great. And then we got some fish and some mussels of some sort. And then we got the silkworms. And then these are eels. These are freaking eels, dude. Oh my god, they look so creepy. And then over here, chickens? Yeah, no they don't. We got pigeons. Literal pigeons because they eat pigeons. But you really get to see, you know, like I think in the United States, in Western culture, we don't really see that we're eating like a live animal. Here, you get to see it all. So this is the Buddhist illustrations for the law of karma. And some of these are absolutely hilarious. Being unfaithful brings a rebirth as a dog to learn faithfulness. My favorite one is the Producing pornography, books, and movies brings mental illness, misery, and a broken family. Hmm. This is made of bamboo pipe. So all we have to do is, you know, put the tobacco here and you burn it. There's like a little water system here to filter it. And you can breathe like a very long breath here. This belongs to the restaurant. The shop here. Everybody can do that. A lot of my friends live foreigners. They try that for the first time and they paint it. Because this one is a little bit strong. A bunch of bikers in Vietnam. Take it easy. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Be careful. I really do think that this is one of the best ways to see Vietnam because you get to be with a local. It lets you know, like, all the little things that you didn't know. Probably the best thing we've done here in Vietnam is getting on one of these tours in each city. First thing within the first three days that we're here. This is Long Bien Phrase. Wow. Just got to see B-52 Lake. And that's where the American B-52 plane was shot down. And they decided to leave it there. And it's right next to a school. So I think that's been probably one of the most insane and somber things about this country is just still seeing parts of the war that have been left there. So now we're going to the next place. Longest ceramic wall in all of Hanoi. Country. How long is it? Four kilometers. Three miles. Three miles long. The longest in the world, not in the country. In the world. The globe. Prestige worldwide. You can see a banana everywhere. Going to the farm to see how the farmers live and work. And wow. So we're scooting around a completely new area that I didn't even know existed. This tour has made me realize that Hanoi is so much bigger than I ever thought it was. There's so many different areas. The farm that we went to was just like five, ten minutes outside of the city. Now we're going through all these like back alleys. And we're on the lake. And there's people out exercising and having coffee. The city is so beautiful and very different from Saigon. Alright, we've made it here to the weekend night market. Christian Dior bag. That looks pretty good, actually. That looks legit, dude. I wonder what they sold. That purse was $6. I thought it was going to be like $20, but it was $6. And that was before negotiation. I've heard this is mainly for tourists. It looks like, to me, they're selling a lot of the same stuff you see at the more permanent fixtures here in the city. Some branded shoes that you know counterfeit. Some jackets. Some North Face Patagonian, just like this hat. $5. Yo. We got this down to $12. We just found the same Uniqlo jacket that I just looked at in Uniqlo around the corner. And in Uniqlo, it's $80. And here it is priced at $10. But it's really soft. It does say 90% down. It's a little bit more wrinkly, that material, though. I'm typically an extra small or a small in the United States. And I'm a large here in Asia. But I will say, it's really nice. To be honest, we don't expect a long lifespan on this jacket. It's just got to get us through a couple cold months. So let's walk around and see what we find. Chopsticks. Louis Vuitton jeans. Some Adidas slides. Those look pretty legit. Smells like real rubber. Carcinogenic slips. Versace wallet. We got ourselves some Air Jordan. Those look pretty good. They do. I mean, the quality, it feels pretty solid. This is one of the better qualities that I've felt so far in the city. Yeah. You got all kinds of shoes. We're getting a little ballsy actually touching some of their merch. Because as soon as we touch anything of theirs, they just like prance on us. They're like, you want to buy? You have questions? What's your size? I'll give you a good price. I will say, though, you can get some really good stuff in Southeast Asia. I mean, it's meant for that. I feel like if you want to buy pretty good quality things. I won't say incredible quality, but pretty good quality stuff at a very, very affordable price. In Thailand, I got a suit. I got a tux. Olivia just got a jacket, hat. I mean, we're buying things that we really need that aren't going to weigh us down when we travel. All right, so we've got a two birds, one stone situation here. We're doing two of my favorite things in one. Number one is watching traffic. Watching traffic in Vietnam is one of the best things to do because it's absolutely madness out there. And number two is enjoying the view from a second story cafe, which in Hanoi, you can pretty much find them everywhere. And they offer a great view of the traffic from above. So just to give you guys an example, that's a different coffee shop right over there. And they're just all chilling out, enjoying themselves, looking down at this four-way intersection here. 15, 20 minutes. This is going to fill up, and it's going to get absolutely crazy. Four-way traffic, no rules. Everyone's going when they want. There's no lights here, so it's just going to be mayhem. And another funny thing here is in the past, the Hanoians were taxed based on how wide their homes were. So that's why all these apartments and homes are so small and tiny and squished together. And I think that adds to the charm for sure. When you mix that in with the French influence, the city is unique. There's no place like it. Just walked through a... Is this for real? It looks like a construction site. Oh my god, this is giving me coochie tunnels, Nathan. No, shut up. We made it to Nang, dude. Nang Coffee. We're going to try their... They're famous for the egg coffee. That's what we're here for. That's what's famous in Northern Vietnam, especially in Hanoi. Hello. We got ourselves some egg coffee, which is basically whipped up egg yolk, sugar, condensed milk, and Robusta coffee, which is the uber-strong Vietnamese coffee. I feel like it's twice as strong as what we're used to back home. It gets you. Packs a punch. Yeah. Every place tends to do it a bit differently. They have different styles of making it. Just presentation alone, beautiful. We're getting three colors. Coffee, white, brown. Don't know what exactly is happening here. What I love is this surface texture here. Oh my god. It's like custardy, meringuey, velvety, silky, smooth. I love to just try it first by itself. Such a treat. It's dessert-y. Like, this is not something I would have first thing in the morning. Spike your insulin, you know what I mean? Give you diabetes. But now I freestyle and I mix it the way I like, which is just to give it a little bit of a stir. I don't like to over-stir it because I like to keep some of that creaminess on top. Outstanding. Alright, we're here at Hanoi Train Street, which is arguably the most touristy street in Hanoi. It's also considered the most dangerous, supposedly, because tourists have been actually hit by trains here. Not like killed or anything, but their arms have been tapped or whatever. And so they've had to shut this down from 2019 on during the day. So before COVID, this one was open for everyone. But unfortunately, somehow, some one or two people, they got hit over here by the train before. Not in the front, but like, you know, on the side. After COVID, it was reopened again. But you know, some people, they did not really listen. Nice. 8pm rolls around, the cops leave, people can come in at their leisure. Usually you have to be invited by one of these many restaurant owners here to have a spot at their cafe or restaurant. But one thing that's kind of funny is that these restaurant owners will invite you in with very little certainty of whether the train's actually going to come. So you sit down, you know, you're paying for overpriced like food and drinks. And the train might not even come for like two or three hours. That actually happened to us a few days ago. What they can guarantee here is that usually around 9.15 or 9.20, there's always a train that comes. And that's when we're here this time around. Is the train, it goes this way? So essentially, this is our ticket to this seat. They're about a dollar each drink. Train comes? Yes, train coming. Okay. It's getting to me, okay? I'm really excited right now. Let me get in position to get the shot. They got this whole operation down. Make sure everyone's off the track. Here we go. I hear it. It's coming. Dude, it got so much closer than I thought. She was yelling at Nathan like, get inside, get inside, get inside. I swear to God, it was probably less than a foot to touching us. And had you stayed out, you would have touched it. Dang, I almost lost my arm, dude. My God, it barely fits. Well, this is the most bizarre thing we've ever done in an Airbnb. It is 4.30 in the morning. They've been doing this since 10 p.m. There's still construction going on out there. So we're going to be sleeping in the living room. How's the setup? Holy sleep. It's not ideal, but... Damn, that sucked. But if you've been watching our videos for a while now, you probably know what's coming next. We want to thank today's sponsor, Brooklyn Bedding, a company that has been supporting our channel for the last three years now. And we love them because we are firm believers in the value of sleep, but also we think they have the best mattresses. Brooklyn Bedding offers a wide selection of sizes and firmness levels to best suit you. And they own their own factory in the U.S., which allows them to offer super high-quality mattresses without the luxury price tag. They offer a 120-night sleep trial, free shipping, and a 10-year warranty. So if you're in the market for a new mattress or you're wanting to upgrade your mattress, head on over to brooklynbedding.com slash onworldtravel and use our code onworldtravel to get 25% off. Yeah! All right, we've got a Hanoi classic here. This is Bun Cha. Arguably, it's a top three most popular dishes here in Hanoi. This is with grilled fatty pork in this broth with garlic and onion and some vermicelli noodles, some white noodles. Fresh greens as always, which I love. Kumquats, I think these are kumquats for like the citrus element. A little bit of chili. A little more garlic. I love garlic. Probably the funnest thing with Vietnamese food is how customizable it always is. Oh yeah. It's sweet, it's sour. I will be honest. I'm not a very sweet and sour person. I prefer salty, savory. But I can see why a lot of people love this and I can see especially why Westerners like this dish. I feel like this caters a little bit more to their taste buds. Dude, the visuals on this dish right now. Look at the presentation. That's a lot of meat, dude. They specialize in sticky rice bowls. We got a medley of meats and proteins here. We got a fried boiled egg, some Chinese sausage, some pate. This, I'm not too sure what it is. I think it's a pork sausage. And over here we've got some boiled chicken and some shredded pork floss. Basically dried pork. All on a bed of turmeric sticky rice. Dude. Wow. What an easy meal. I believe this is about $2. It's $2 for these two here. Definitely hitting my protein on this one. Alright, we just sat down to try this dish called pho quang. It's basically these silky white sheets of pho, which pho is uncut noodles in Vietnamese. And they use it to wrap fried beef, lettuce, coriander. And then you dip that into like a fish sauce that has papaya slices, white vinegar. I love this dish. What I like about it is it's very light, very clean. It feels kind of healthy. You need a lot of it. Lean meat, veggies, fresh herbs. Basically like a little protein torpedo. Alright, so we're sitting down and we are having cha kha. This is a very special dish to Hanoi. It's a fish dish. River catfish. River catfish and fish stomach. Yeah, it is. Fish stomach. And essentially, it's really cool. They're making it right in front of us. Wow. We got green onions, dill. The smell of dill is like the main thing that's standing out. We're a little bold on this one, so we ordered some fish stomach, which you can see right here. They just mixed it. Let me just do some of this. This is my textural dream. Look at this. Are you serious? This is something that you can find in Vietnam and a lot of parts of Asia. It's like they like mixing fruit and jellies and sometimes coconut milk or condensed milk and ice for like a really sweet, refreshing dessert. So we just got the caramel bowl. Condensed milk, caramel flan, tapioca, pandan jelly, beetroot jelly, blueberry pot balls, and basil seeds. All right, let's give it a go. Oh, oh, oh. This is so my jam. What I love about Vietnam is they just give you so many fresh herbs here with every dish. That just balances out the dish. Like if there's a fatty pork inside, you definitely want something lighter to counteract it, you know? And you just grab whatever you want. Like literally, cilantro, fresh mint. And the flavor profile when you do that with the fish sauce and the hint of spice and the crispy shallots, literally you're covering all your bases. That is umami. There's no better way to describe umami than that. I mean, look at that bite. That's healthy. Another pho, dude. This would be so f***ing good. I saw them dipping it in their soup a little bit. All right, we have made it to the Temple of Literature, which is a temple that's almost 1,000 years old, dedicated to Confucius. It also hosted the Imperial Academy, which was Vietnam's first ever university and has gone through many different reconstructions over the years throughout all the dynasties. But I think what really makes this place special and just beautiful is that they've done a wonderful job at preserving those ancient architectural styles from way back when, you know, during the Taoist times, the times of Confucius. And it is a place of learning and education, and you definitely feel that walking around here, like the greenery, the space in between every building. It's very peaceful. Now, granted, a lot of tourists nowadays are here, so there's a lot of people. But I could just imagine it back in the day as a relaxing, tranquil place to reflect and learn and introspect and grow and practice Confucianism, which I just learned, by the way. I thought it was kind of a religion, but here they consider it more of, like, a social philosophy more so than, like, a general religion. So it's different in that regard. Still learning, still reading as we walk around. You can either go with the audio-guided tour or you can go and freestyle it independently on your own and just read, and that's the way Olivia and I went. We're just reading, going at our own pace. So definitely something I would recommend fitting in in your time here in Hanoi. Very interesting and just aesthetically beautiful. Oh, and one interesting thing. The Temple of Literature can actually be found on the 100,000 Vietnamese Dong banknote. Pretty cool, dude. All right, we're about to head into Don Juan Market. Don Juan. I had no confidence on that one. So I believe this is the largest indoor market in Hanoi. There's lots of wholesale traders here with counterfeit, you know... You can find it all here. A lot of fake luxury brands. Quality is questionable. They do their best. I like how, at least this one, they have everything wrapped individually. Like all these watches have an individual wrapper. It's all about presentation. All right, I think I'm done here. So let's go. Remember those as a kid, the plastic snakes? Yeah. The problem is they become whipping weapons with your siblings. Oh my God, I did that with my brother so many times. Amazing. Hey, you worked really hard. Quick coffee at our go-to place here in Hanoi. Blackbird Coffee. For a really good espresso. This is our order that we love to get, which is a latte with a double shot. It's the closest thing I'd say to a flat white, but they make it really good here. We're doing another double decker. Double decker. We're doing another double decker bus tour. Nathan's over there. I'm chilling over here. We're getting it at both angles, you know? This is a great way to see the city, and it's just six US dollars per person. So nice to just be up top, have your little headphones in and look around. But we just got here yesterday, so it's our first impressions. We actually did this in Hong Kong, and again in Saigon. So it seems to be like a popular thing that the red bus is doing. Six bucks, one hour. Great way to see the city. We've got some goats over here getting into the garbage. We're on another tour, dude. This time to Ninh Binh, Vietnam. Vietnam's old capital city. This place is known for its scenery, how beautiful it is. We currently have some overcast weather, but I think it's supposed to get sunny a little bit later. And we are going to be biking it, boating it. We're going to get ourselves in on some buffet action. And I think we're going into some caves. Okay. Wow, we got an animal over here on our right eating some sugar cane. A lot of tourists here. Wow. Oh my god, dude. It's beautiful. This bike ride alone is epic. Like just being able to go around and see all of these, I don't know if they're technically mountains, but there's just layers and layers of them. And this fog humidity mix is just like so majestic. The ground is paved, which is really nice. Oh, we're off-roading over here. Ah, my boots. Yeah, we're going through these little villages. There's just like people out doing their dishes, cutting fruit. One lady was passing out bananas to the tourists. It was pretty funny. Wow. I will say though, it's definitely like a very touristy experience. Like there's hundreds of tourists kind of doing the same experience. Hey, we're lucky. It looks like we're going to be the only ones on the water. And you got to wear those life jackets too. This is a whole touristy bit. We're going into Hang Vang Vang cave. 250 meter long cave we just went through. Are you serious? So we're basically going underneath these big mountainous rock looking things. And we're going along the water and we just get to a new big mountain and we go underneath it. And they did say caves were part of it. I thought we'd go through like one or something, but it's like, no, this is our third cave. And I think we're just going to keep making our way on the water and going underneath into these caves. All right, we're hiking up the 500 steps of Lion Dragon Mountain. Hopefully at the top, we'll get a good view of Tam Coc. That's the town down there. But already we see a bunch of rice fields. It's a bit hazy, but it's still beautiful. And yeah, it's a little bit of a cardio session. This is the steep bit right here. It's so steep. We made it to the top. And it is beautiful. Wow. Honestly, this whole landscape looks like made up fairy tales. It doesn't look real. It's cool, you can kind of see the boats that we were just on making their way through there. I'm really curious to know how much was groomed for tourists versus what was natural. You know what I mean? Like what was already here 50 years ago or 100 years ago and what has been like dolled up to present a different package experience for the foreigners. Yeah, yeah. But either way, I mean, the hike up here, the temples, the pagodas, we've seen a lot of temples today. Yeah. And it's beautiful, it's just stunning. Those are goats on the side, do you see? Yeah. Go over there. You're not going to be able to see it on the GoPro, but... Goats are the true daredevils, you know what I'm saying? They're the real Red Bull athletes. No, shut up.