At what point does something become a tradition?
It's the third time I'm writing from Hanoi in December. The first two times were during short trips to drink warm drinks in cold weather over Christmas. Vacations where I did nothing more than sit in cafes and walk around.
The nature of this stay is a little different. I've had the absolute honor of getting to work on the first year of a new program for American students learning Vietnamese. It's a dream job for me to get to work on these language immersion programs, to see how they work behind the scenes. I’m not going to talk specifics, as I tend to avoid writing about work on here, but it’s been a really rewarding semester for me.
I spent a lot of the last few months alone. Even more than normal for me. I went to work during the day and at night I went home and wrote my thesis. Or tried to write. Some days I would stare at my computer, get up, collapse onto my bed and zone out on my phone for a few minutes before getting up to stare at my computer again.
I call this state of writing being unproductively productive. Focusing too much on the project is overwhelming and upsetting, but if I have a word document open with say Grey's Anatomy playing in the background and I happen to write sentence or two before taking a break and then write another sentence or two, eventually a lot of sentences accidently accumulate, and sooner or later that 80 page requirement seems attainable.
But forcing myself to stay at home and just be there in front of my computer is sometimes the only way I can get things done.
All this is to say, the last few months have mainly consisted of me working and writing and very little else.
It's been a different Hanoi experience than I expected. Initially I had thought I would visit every museum I could in the city. I’d make new friends. I’d forge new community here. I’d spend my few free weekends walking around new neighborhoods. I did my fair amount of exploring, but it was mostly to go to a new coffee shop, to get caffeinated, to seek that high I rely on to produce.
Tamai was a regular. Easily my favorite cafe in Hanoi. Whoever picks their music has the same taste as me, and it’s one of the few cafes I sit in without headphones. I love it, in part for its coziness, in part for the cat. In part to sit in this beautiful room with curved walls and windows open to a city in fall.
Hanoi in fall is something to experience, something everyone should enjoy at least once in their lives. The fall wind rustling through the city. The taste, finally, of tolerable temperatures after summer’s unrelenting heat. There’s a buzz in the city, an excitement over better weather, bluer skies, and the golden light of a fall afternoon.
Tamai is just one of many fantastic cafes I visited in the city. I have been saying for years now that cafe culture is just better in Hanoi. I get this feeling that in HCMC, cafes are eager to embrace sleek, modern design. There are exceptions, of course, like Slow Cafe, but the vast majority of cafes in HCMC are uninteresting to me because of how similar they look and how without soul their interior feels.
In Hanoi, it feels like coziness comes first, like there’s real thought put into how to make a space feel warm. This contrast is emblematic of my sense for these two cities, after now having spent time in each. Not trying to strike up regional fights here, but my lukewarm take is --
Hanoi is the cooler older sibling, confident in herself. She knows how to cook better, drink better, and dress better. She knows she’s cool, can sit firmly on that knowledge without needing to tell a single soul about it. Ho Chi Minh City is the younger sibling who wants to be as cool as Hanoi but overcompensates with flashy jewelry and trendy clothing, the kind you see insufferable people wear to art gallery openings. Ho Chi Minh City screams cool to anyone who will listen. Hanoi doesn’t even think about how cool she is. In Ho Chi Minh City, coolness is a lifestyle. In Ha Noi, coolness is a way of being. I love them both dearly, of course.
But that coolness as a way of being really spreads into coffee shop culture, where there feels like there’s so little pretention to coffee here. The drinks are just good. They’re meant to be enjoyed, slowly, in the coffee shop, rather than as takeout on the way to work.
I spend A LOT of time thinking about coffee shop menus. It’s a big part of my thesis, and I feel a certain fatigue looking at them. They’re mostly predictable now that I know the patterns, but there’s one cafe here I visited that got me excited. As someone who literally researches cafe menus, it takes a lot to get me excited.
Cafe Tòte has two locations, but I much prefer the one on Vạn Phúc for how spacious it is compared to the Hoàn Kiếm one. The menu is so kind and gentle. It’s divided into three sections (levels) for what type of coffee people like – coffee beginners, coffee flavor lovers, and lovers of bitter, strong coffee. This type of gentle hand-holding on a menu for a specialty coffee place is so wonderful, because specialty coffee can be so intimidating if you don’t drink it a lot.
Just down the street from Cafe Tòte is Phiêng, which manages to be industrial and warm. It may have something to do with the size (it’s very small), or the use of wood on concrete, but there’s something cozy about it that kept me going back. Living in walking distance of both these shops was such a joy.
My neighborhood had so many cozy places. In Ho Chi Minh City, I was living in a Japanese area close to the zoo at number 76 Ngô Tất Tố. When I was house hunting in Hanoi, the first place I toured was in a Japanese area, by the zoo, and was number 76 Linh Lang. It felt resonant, like a projection of my life in HCMC onto HN, so that’s the apartment I ended up staying in.
It was dangerously close to Fujiro, where I went more times than I’d like to admit for katsu and curry. And it was also close to one of the best Chinese restaurants I’ve eaten at in Vietnam. The workers recognized me and memorized my regular order of guo bao rou with a side of rice to go.
Around the corner was Về Nhà Coffee, which, as the name implies, felt like a home. Warm interior. Good drinks. A sofa. I kept going back. Jazzy, too, became a regular spot, not for the drinks but for the view. And Labonte, where I kept going for shakshuka, especially as the weather got colder.
It’s been a really nice few months. Challenging in a lot of ways, unexpected ways, but good. There were so many days when I just felt so full of gratitude – that there was this opportunity for me to get to live in Hanoi. I didn’t see nearly as much of the city as I planned to, but I feel good about the time I’ve spent here.
My next few months are going to be spent in a bit of disarray, where I’ll be moving around a lot. Visiting people. Trying to finish my thesis. There’s a level of uncertainty in my life that’s making me anxious but not so anxious I feel the need to do anything to make it more certain. I’m hoping for more good coffee, more good food, and a future where I get to spend more time in Hanoi and steep in its understated coolness.
