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This was our first time in Hanoi, we were coming for a weekend break from Kuala Lumpur. After comparing several hotels reviews in this price range I decided to book me and my husband into the Lucky Hotel where I’d asked for a deluxe room with a balcony. We got picked up from the airport and taken to Lucky 1 where the receptionist seemed confused and moved us to Lucky 2 Hotel down the road instead. This made me a little worried because I had read in a few reviews that they sometimes give your room away if you arrive in the evening (not that this should matter since I had confirmed the arrival time with the hotel). This is exactly what happened, the people who had our deluxe room had decided to stay another night so we were placed in a cheaper room with no windows. I was not happy with the small room and asked the receptionist why they had given our room away when we had asked especially for a balcony, and so on. After a few minutes discussing they agreed on giving us a small discount on the small room and promised that in the morning we could move to a Deluxe room.
I thought the small room was a bit claustrophobic but everything was nice and clean, breakfast was also good. When we moved to our deluxe room we LOVED it, it was big and spacey with a great balcony with view over the city. I would definitely recommend to stay here in the Deluxe room, for USD 45 it was great value and the hotel location is fantastic. Could be worth calling up on the day to guarantee the room is still yours, though
From Maju (Kuala Lumpur)
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Lucky Hotel on Hang Trong (Hemp) Street, I settled happily into a large room with salmon pink walls, ornate black wood furniture in a décor best described as Victorian-Vietnamese, and on the other side of French doors, an outdoor balcony even larger than the room itself, all for $47 including breakfast.
I”d found the Lucky on an online site where it had received a few rave reviews from other travelers as a friendly place. I”m always skeptical of such information, but one morning around 10 a.m. I was out on my balcony, enjoying a cup of tea and the view of Hanoi rooftops when I was interrupted by an impatient shout from the balcony directly above. “Madame! Madame! Open door!”
Footsteps clattered, followed by a heavy knock at the door. I opened it. The Lucky’’s bellhop stood there holding a long-stemmed red rose in a vase:
“Madame, I bring flower to you.”
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Exiting the Lucky onto Hang Trong, I was happy to find that the hemp business of bygone days had been supplanted by fashion and home décor: silk, cotton and linen clothing and the occasional lacquerware shop. Tailor shops along Hang Trong and the adjacent street of Hang Gai offered made-to-measure dresses, along with ao dais (Vietnamese women’’s tunic-and-pants ensembles) and suits of fine Vietnamese silk in orange and electric greens.
I didn”t have time to order a suit or dress, but there was beautifully tailored ready-to-wear, too: cheongsam-style silk blouses and, at Marie-Linh Mode-Couture, chic handmade linen blouses ($28) in black and Chinese red, cleverly designed with a side zipper that allowed the blouse to conform to the curve of the waist.
I soon realized that my usual method for exploring a city - leisurely, on foot with a map and occasional taxi rides or public transport - wasn”t suited to the bustle and chaos of Hanoi. I thought about hiring a driver, but then, after stumbling on a little travel agency-cafe near my hotel called Kangaroo Café, decided to hire a guide instead, for $20 for a day
My guide, a young Hanoi native and university graduate with very good English, asked me to call him Dinh. He whisked me into a taxi, and led me expertly through crowds of mainland Chinese package tourists to the head of the line at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, one of Hanoi’’s principal attractions …
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Dinh asked me where I”d like to eat lunch. “Take me someplace that you would go to if I wasn”t here,” I answered. He nodded, but warned me we”d have to cross a wide, busy street .
At the curb, he gave me a little pep talk: “The most important thing is to go slow, go slow. Then the scooters and cars can see you, and they will go the other way. They know what to do, but you have to go slow when you cross the street in Vietnam.” I wasn”t convinced, but I followed him anyway, heart pounding.
Another fearful crossing later, and we were soon safely seated at a long, communal table, elbow to elbow with other patrons, at a small but busy pho shop called Mai Anh. Dinh ordered a big bowl of chicken soup with rice noodles and I asked for beef pho, which I eat all the time in New York. But when it came, the beef was thick, tough and rather flavorless. Not wanting to sound unappreciative, I mentioned to Dinh that in New York, beef pho came with razor-thin slices of meat. Was the thicker slice something special to Hanoi?
“It is buffalo meat,” he said with a laugh. But, I said, I ordered beef, didn”t I?
I had. “Beef” in Hanoi covers all cattle, and the most common in the area is the kind with big horns and a hump.
The next morning, at breakfast at the Lucky Hotel, I ordered chicken pho. (This was before the avian flu hit Vietnam. Right now, the Vietnam tourism board is advising tourists to avoid eating chicken.)
A lot of food is sold on the street in Hanoi, but since I was unfamiliar with the place, and not impressed with the general cleanliness of the streets, I hesitated to try it. But that morning at the hotel, I noticed something strange. After I ordered the soup, a young man came rushing out of the kitchen, past my table, and walked through the lobby doors and left the hotel
MY coffee then arrived, but not the pho. Ten minutes later, the fellow returned with a tray holding a large porcelain bowl covered with another dish, which he took back through the swinging doors of the kitchen. Then, after a very short interval, a waiter came out of the kitchen with the same bowl, now uncovered, and served it to me: steamy, tasty chicken pho. This happened the next morning, and the morning after that before the light bulb flashed on: I shouldn”t worry about eating from the street because, at least at breakfast, I already was.
My last morning in Hanoi I left the hotel before breakfast and went out to the street to buy the pho from its source.
Outside I sniffed the air. No pho. Then I walked down to the end of the block, and there she was: a woman with a ladle in her hand, surrounded by several low folding tables and early-rising diners squatting on small plastic footstools.
There was one problem, a big one. Between me and the pho seller was a road bustling with scooters, cars, bicycles. I took a deep breath, then slowly, slowly walked straight into the river of Hanoi traffic .
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