Egg Beer ??

Day 1. This was both an awesome as well as a shitty day. Excited to be in Vietnam I started exploring buzzing Hanoi, wandering around the famous Old Quarter.

With some friends I made at the hostel we visited the St. Joseph Cathedral, strolled around Hoan Kiem Lake and – to my urgent request – went to one of the most famous cafes in Hanoi that served Egg Coffee. I had read about it before, it’s something that was invented here. As far as I knew they separate the egg’s white from the yolk, mix the white with some condensed milk and put the yolk back in. The creamy base then gets topped with a fresh coffee. It tastes a bit like a dessert, slightly sweet but not too much.

We also discovered that they serve something a lot more uncommon we absolutely had to try: Egg Beer. It’s basically the same, except you get a can of beer as a side to the creamy egg base. ?

Enjoying an Egg beer with my friend Henri from Finland.

I wouldn’t say it was the best thing I’ve ever tasted but it’s definitely worth a try. In retrospect I’d rather have a fried egg and a cold beer afterwards.

Satisfied we continued to visit some more sights, later going for lunch in one of the best rated restaurants in the area: Green Farm.

Terribly sick

I ordered a traditional fish dish that came in a pan and was freshly cooked in front of me. Overwhelmed by the amount of plates they put on my table (some rice paper, lots of veggies and a few sauces) I stared at them asking what I should do with all of this. Obviously I was a newbie to this, so they quickly jumped to my table and showed me how to make use of all of the tables.

It was basically nothing fancy, just cooking the stuff in the pan with fresh herbs, putting that into the rice paper and rolling it with some veggies. Yep you guessed it, it was “fresh spring rolls” that then got dipped into the sauce. They were delicious, though it took me forever to make all the rolls haha.

Stuffed, we went back to our beds for some relaxation. Slowly I began to feel really really bad and I just wanted to sleep, but my body screamed for a bathroom. What a nice first day in Vietnam. ?

I’m not sure if it was the raw eggs or the fish (that probably was not fully cooked as they were in a rush to show me how it worked), but one thing is for sure: no more raw or half cooked food for me from now on! ??