Loveletter: Hanoi, Vietnam

The art of traveling with a BFF

By Patrick janelle

For much of my life, I’ve been a solo traveler. Alone, I’ve traversed the continental United States numerous times and visited Europe, Asia, and Australia on multiple counts. Despite being an extrovert, I love those long stretches of being alone, and there’s a slight romance—a touch of melancholy—that comes from knowing that, without someone else to share the experience with you, the moment will only live inside your memory, and possibly fade altogether.

There’s also the fact that—let’s be honest—I love being the decision maker, and traveling alone means I don’t have to worry about what someone else wants. But as I grow older, I’m becoming more interested in traveling with friends. Whether it’s my annual trip to Provincetown for the Fourth of July with my New York friends, a Mediterranean getaway with my team, or a trip to Vietnam with one of my BFFs, Mallory, I’ve found myself saying yes to more group getaways.

...as thirty-something adults living thousands of miles apart, we’ve found the need to find ourselves, together, still reaching for dreams that we have not yet achieved.

Mallory and I met in LA in 2005, through a series of fateful moments, disguised as fortuitous coincidences. Our first overseas get-together was a 48-hour bender in Barcelona in 2009, when Mallory was just finishing grad school in Los Angeles and I had moved to Frankfurt, Germany to pursue love and domesticity. We moved to New York together in 2011, and while I stayed, Mallory later moved to San Francisco to build her career. Recently, as thirty-something adults living thousands of miles apart, we’ve found the need to find ourselves, together, still reaching for dreams that we have not yet achieved.

That’s the thing about best friend travel: I find that increasingly, as adults, some of my oldest and best friends have created lives for themselves which keep the day-to-day interaction just out of reach. So as we slowly build our bank accounts and settle into the routine of our grown-up lives, opportunities that once seemed like a pipe dream are suddenly feasible, and when we do take time off, it becomes important to spend that time together.

In April 2018, Mallory and I set out for Hanoi. Inspired by the late Anthony Bourdain’s travels to the cacophonous city, the fresh flavors of the street food, and the exotic locale, Mallory had been nudging me for over a year to commit. We finally found time in our busy schedules to book a week’s trip—a breezy getaway that still had to account for somewhat grueling 24-hour travel days. Based on timing, we decided we would keep the itinerary tight, visiting only two spots: the northern city of Hanoi and the otherworldly landscape in the country’s northeastern Ha Long Bay.

We booked a room at the Metropole Hotel, the one splurge in our otherwise wallet-friendly trip. With roots in the golden age of cinema (rumor has it Charlie Chaplin had his honeymoon there), the hotel is a respite in the dizzying city. Large, cool rooms surround a central courtyard and pool, where you can sip tropical-feeling cocktails with your toes in the water. We were thankful for the decadent breakfast buffets, where we could get our fill of pho (the morning meal of choice for many Vietnamese) or get some avocado and eggs if we were needing some Western breakfast comfort.

To get around the city, it was only fitting that I would rent a scooter, a throwback to our nights in LA, when we’d zip around town on my old Vespa. We were on the hunt for the food that we had seen from afar, and for the authentic version of the bun that we would get from the hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese joint down the street from Mallory’s LA apartment years ago. When we found our lunch spot on the first day, I watched as two local girls in slouchy sweaters and stilettos emerged from a Mercedes and made their way to a tiny street food stand next to us. In Hanoi, all of the street food vendors have short plastic stools and accompanying tables where their customers eat, so while dining, one is forced into a nearly squatting position. When I saw those fancy girls crouching down and ordering noodles at this spot, I decided: this is where we will eat, too.

We dined like queens on Bun and beer for a total of about three US dollars. The dishes came out with individual portions of pork, an overflowing basket of vermicelli noodles, a side of the ubiquitous Vietnamese fish dipping sauce, nước mắm chấm, and piles of fresh herbs: shiso, basil, mint, cilantro. During our quest for the holy grail of street food, we found our savior in Cha Ca, a wok-style dish in which chunks of snakehead fish are sauteed together, tableside, with fresh heaps of lemongrass, dill, and scallions. We dedicated ourselves with zeal to finding the best street food vendors, especially when we realized the food was so much better than at an established-looking restaurant.

It was warm and humid, with a habitual, misty layer of fog that surrounded us. In the mornings, we would wake up and have a fresh cup of Vietnamese coffee, watching the otherworldly landscape drift by.

The highlight of our trip was Ha Long Bay and Bai Tu Long Bay. We spent three days, two nights, sleeping on a boat that had about fifteen cabins: after the three hour bus ride from Hanoi, we boarded an old "junk" (a type of Chinese fishing vessel still in use for fishing and tourist recreation), run by the tour company Indochina Junk. Over the next two days, we wound in and out of ancient rock formations covered in a layer of thick jungle green. It was warm and humid, with a habitual, misty layer of fog that surrounded us. In the mornings, we would wake up and have a fresh cup of Vietnamese coffee, watching the otherworldly landscape drift by. During the afternoons, we would kayak through the rock outcroppings. And at night, we would stay up late on the top deck, drinking cocktails, socializing with other guests, and, on one occasion, listening to a new friend, who happened to be a famous Swiss yodeler, delight us with her vocal prowess.

As good friends, Mallory and I have gotten to know each other's quirks. Sure, traveling together is different than going out for a night in our own city, but over time we've developed a sort of shared understanding: for us it was OK to splurge on a luxury hotel (and save money by splitting the room and the bed), and we knew that we would each learn to appreciate the street food more than the restaurant offerings. We also were both ready when one of us needed to venture off the known path for a little adventure—like that time we stayed out extra late to dance to the club music and drink sticky cocktails with the locals. More than anything, we were adding to the lineage of our history, and the reason we are able to call each other "best friends".