Greencaviar Travel

As I mentioned in my first post in this series, I asked our guide where I could find  Bánh cuốn  (a dish that a friend said the best meal he had in Vietnam), our guide replied, “Not in Saigon…wait ‘til Hanoi”. Based on his answer, I made a presumption that to have an authentic foodie experience in Vietnam, one had to travel throughout Vietnam to try the local specialty or regional food. That’s why I predicated my previous posts about Vietnamese food with “where I had been and where I was going”. After a short flight from Hue, I finally reached Hanoi and I could not be more excited. We arrived in Hanoi late in the afternoon, so the first order of business was to find a place for dinner. Our guide mentioned a list of recommended restaurants that offered only one item on the menu, including Cha Ca Anh Vue (a seafood restaurant where they cook the fish in front of you) and Bun Cha. I opted for Bun Cha, an unassuming restaurant popular with tourists because it w...

From Hoi An, we traveled by bus to Hue, stopping in Da Nang only to take pictures of the Dragon Bridge. I'd been on six flights since leaving my home city, so the long bus ride to Hue was a welcome break from checking-in and out of  the airport routine. I was wrong in my assumption that the roads in Vietnam were in bad shape. The road to Hue was quite amazing. Heading over a giant mountain pass and before the   Hải Vân Tunnel  (the longest tunnel in Southeast Asia), we had a great view of the city of Da Nang and the South China sea.  A few hours later, we were driving along a narrow stretch of land, an aisle through the rice paddies on the small patch of land between the mountain and the sea. I really enjoyed the lovely scenery. The Imperial City. Hue was a lovely city set on the Perfume River.  Once the capital of pre-French Vietnam, Hue has a few historical and tourist sites like the citadel, and two imperial tombs.  We first visited the citad...