Stickyrice

Coffee then Tea

The coffee shops I frequent in Hanoi are mostly old-worldish. Stories have been told in these cafes, family skeletons unveiled, relationships rocked and broken, tears shed.

They have history.

And dust. Good dust. Dust which belongs. Dust which cannot be rubbed, even scoured away.

Stained teapots and little handle-less cups are proferred to the old-timers in a quaint custom following their morning coffee. The green tea cleanses the palate and legitimises a further half-hour of memoir and yarn. The Vietnamese love a chat.

And I really love watching them.

Lakeside Coffee

 

Yesterday afternoon's caffeine injection was taken lakeside. The gleaming sun on the water was supposed to infuse a sense of calm, to mentally regenerate the shattered lobes of a brain weakened by a longer than ordinary working week. I was looking for an hour or so of meditative zen-sipping - minus conversation, minus reading matter.

But I became distracted.

Firstly, across the road in the parkland adjoining the lake, a rag-tag group of adolescent shoe-shine boys were partaking in an over-zealous card game, each ace being flung down with more vigour and louder sound effects than the last. The crescendo of noise reached when the winning card was laid down would have flipped even the most concentrated yoga enthusiast out of their lotus position. My own state of coffee lull was shot to pieces. The card dealer's blue hair and exuberant magnetism made it too much to bear.

My people-watching addiction kicked in again.

Just in time for Grandma News to step up into the coffee shop with her cardboard folder of doom, gloom and superstition. Selling all kinds of front page news, she promoted her wares with wrinkles and a betel- stained smile revealing true life stories better than those in her print-stained hands.

She was a walking edition of the history of Vietnam.

And I drank her down.

In the cafe's retro glassware.

The Price of History

One cafe nau da (iced coffee with milk), one cacao da (iced chocolate) - 18,000VND (USD$1.05, AUD$1.55)

Cafe Quat
102 Tran Vu
Truc Bach
Hanoi

Hanoi History 101

I don't need salubrious surroundings and funky music in my cafes. Places to be seen are places to avoid. I don't have the right clothes, haircut or motorbike, anyway. There is a certain aesthetic that rates with me, though.

Clutter appeals. I hate cigarette smoke up my nose but kind of like the way it stains the walls. A street facing stool, a passing parade and a view of a temple scores points. Feeling a sense of days gone by is good in a cafe, too. History is palpable at this place in the old quarter. A permanent collection of black and white photographs depict Hanoians alighting from the old street cars that used to rattle around the city. Others have captured an eerie and unrestrained Hoan Kiem Lake, an old quarter street strangely unencumbered by motorbikes and wartime destruction of buildings that would have been standing right across from this very cafe.

A moment of reflection accompanied by a caffeine injection.

Cafe 61 Bat Su
Old Quarter
Hanoi

Coffee Strip

South of the old quarter in Hanoi, in Trieu Viet Vuong St, there must be coffee sluicing through the plumbing mains. This street is coffee shop central, with hardly another business breaking the pattern on either side of the strip. The footpaths have disappeared under a chaotic throng of motorscooters, plastic furniture, wayward banyan trees and squatting caffeine addicts.

Naming my poison is no problem. Scrounging a patch of pavement to wedge our plastic stools into, however, is a dilemma at Cafe Tho, a 23-year veteran of Trieu Viet Vuong's cafe scene and favourite of the god's 20-something mates, with whom I'm having my daily hit. It's French era atmosphere to the hilt with shuttered windows that haven't been dusted since they left. In fact there seems to be a caffeine and nicotine residue on every exposed surface, inside and out. Rustic is definitely the prevailing adjective for this one.

In between sips, the shoeshine boy takes me for a tourist, wanting the shirt off my back for his toil. Another drama plays out when Cafe Tho's resident fortune teller gives a theatrical wave, only to knock the waitress and half a black caffeine hit all over her clairvoyant self. A catty spat ensued about who was to blame. While the locals have an uncanny knack for ignoring such an episode, I find myself both not knowing where to look and perversely hoping that something solid gets thrown.

It doesn't. Instead it's all smouldering glares.

Then my black drug kicks in.

Score

Three cafe nau da (with condensed milk and ice), one cafe den da (black with sugar and ice) - 28,000VND (USD$1.74, AUD$1.85)

Cafe Tho
117 Trieu Viet Vuong
Hanoi

Cafe Nang Expands

Caffeine injections are a dong a dozen in Hanoi. Cafes abound in numbers that rival pho stalls and, while I've sipped on this black liquid drug in coffee dens all over town, I do eventually return to my favourite.

When I can get in!

Cafe Nang is a bit of an institution in the capital. These days, particularly on the weekend, a berth in this Hang Bac establishment is proving elusive, even upstairs deep in the back stalls where choking on second-hand Vinataba is part of the 'cultural experience'.

A granny with a face kind enough to melt the hardest heart runs the show, her fingers ingrained with more than 40 years of coffee handling. Unlike me, she absorbs her caffeine via the pores of her skin and the aroma in the air. It ain't doing her any harm. She's recently made a grab for a further slice of Trung Nguyen's pie.

Cafe Nang has expanded. A cool, airy cave within spitting distance of the Hang Da market houses granny's new venture. A flat screen TV adorns the back wall and a funky mezzanine runs along the right wall.

But the new Nang is not posh. The atmosphere is different - good different! I like less Vinataba in the air, slightly taller wooden stools and less coffee swillers per square metre. And while granny's kind dial doesn't greet me here, her fine coffee still does.

Swill Bill

One iced black coffee, one fresh passionfruit juice - 13,000VND (USD80c, AUD85c)

Cafe Nang
22 Duong Thanh
Old Quarter
(other branches located at 6 Hang Bac, 47 Tran Hung Dao and 129 Trieu Viet Vuong)

That was the Life

It's 30 degrees (86F). Blue skies. Turquoise sea. Coconut palms sway. I don't lie under them. Occasionally, a nut drops. Across the road in the cafe, coffee drips. The jasmine tea chaser is working up some condensation. The novel is reaching a zenith.

It's drizzling in Hanoi. I am at the beach. It's holidays!

That was two weeks ago. That was the life!

Coffee Under the Banyan

Nearby the eastern banks of Truc Bach Lake, little sister to the vast West Lake, on a sleepy corner, there is a tree on the pavement. In the shadow it casts, there's a cafe where I've been throwing back caffiene hits for a few years. Not sure why I haven't posted about it before. I think somewhere in the grey matter, there is a twisted knot holding onto some of Hanoi's gems.

The tree is a gnarly old banyan, slowly strangling itself and all of its surroundings. The gutter, drainage and footpath at its roots have had havoc wreaked upon them. Watch your step, here. Above, the power lines themselves are a scary snarl of voltage even without the added entanglement of the banyan.

The proprietors have taken their revenge, however. An altar is wedged high in the trunk of the tree, adorned with pink roses and an incense urn. The tree is connected to the electricity supply, somehow, with a power socket to recharge your mobile perhaps, and two fans attached to take the edge off the heat in summer. Higher, where the branches of the tree marry with the power lines, the laundry is hung out to dry from the second story window.

Fruit juice, tea, coffee and cigarettes are on offer here. A few quiet moments to contemplate, also.

Nameless Cafe
Cnr. Cau Bac & Pham Hong Thai

Saturday: 4.10pm

On Saturday, it rained at lunch time. It wasn't a sudden stormy downpour which floods the roads and is gone, leaving little evidence of its existence a mere 30 minutes later. It was steady and I was forced inside without having had my coffee.

I slept. A headache ensued.

Later, from the wrong side of the bed, the situation outside the window had improved. An abating spit accompanied me to one of Hanoi's cafe strips in Trieu Viet Vuong, south of the old quarter. Here, neon-lit, television punctuated, ostentatiously decked out coffee shop monstrosities are side by side with the classic Hanoi style cafe. I zipped up and down, checking ambience, weighing up my options.

It was too much. There are too many.

I shot around the block into Bui Thi Xuan, which runs parallel. A place I'd spied on previous ride-bys beckoned. On past occasions, when not one stool was vacant, I'd cursed and pressed on to old favourites. This day, post rain, I was in luck. One group of forty-something blokes were puffing and sipping. At another table, a father and his young son shared the caffeine addiction, one with coffee, the other with coca-cola. But for them, it was me and my brew.

The fans whirred. The rain had stopped. All was well.

Moka Cafe
45a Bui Thi Xuan
Hanoi

Hairdresser's Doorstep

If I'm dying of thirst or in need of a hit in Hanoi, and I'm in a hurry and I'm far from my regular haunts, I just stop the motorbike. Nine times out of ten, there's a liquid refreshment at arm's reach. At any hour of any day, a million cups of tra da (iced green tea) are being nursed kerbside, Hanoi. For 3000VND, you can have the cap ripped off the top of a bottle of soft drink and have it poured over ice. A cheap beer can be guzzled, too.

Parched this morning between errands, I found myself perched on a hairdresser's doorstep, sharing a moment with half a dozen 15 year old boys pulling on Pall Mall strongs. Silly buggers, I wanted to tell them, except I'm a remedial Vietnamese user and I didn't want to seem like an old bugger. I intermittently puffed on darts myself for a good whack of my youth.

Instead of a fag, I stared down the barrel of a cafe den da.

Coffee - 5000VND (USD31c, AUD41c)

31 Ly Quoc Su
Old Quarter (opposite Yamaha Music)

The Wall

I did a spot of time-travelling yesterday morning. Back to a sleepy, antique Hanoi of coffees sipped under the banyan tree, an ochre wall dappled by the midday rays coming through lush leafery, a newspaper seller in an army green pith helmet not really caring if he sold one or not. It was period drama, Merchant-Ivory Hanoi.

Except for the dull roar of Hanoi's constant 100cc motorcycle Grand Prix. I concentrate hard to edit the engines and horns out.

Cafe Lung is no glitzy, glassy air-conditioned glamour-puss, the likes of which are cropping up all over the capital. It's a wall on a footpath overlooking the summer shimmer of Thien Quang Lake, patronised by blokes with smokes reading the daily news, couples, groups of students - no specific demographic in particular. The jovial proprietor makes everyone feel welcome, his harsh-faced other half is wisely positioned at the drinks station, magnificently attired in yellow pyjamas, churning out the caffeine hits, spooning pulp out of passionfruit and doling out the ba so nam cigarettes.

My daily cafe den da (iced black coffee) comes in retro glassware, the heat melting the ice so quickly that the risk of overflow and a pissweak hit is nigh. If coffee dehydrates, then drinking it this way can't be half bad.

Under the shade of the banyan, there's a bamboo chair, a hand fan and a single coconut. In a Merchant-Ivory Hanoi, Helen Bonham-Carter, demure with parasol and bustle, is just out of shot.

Bill

One iced black coffee, one passionfruit juice - 12,000VND (USD75c, AUD$1.00)

Cafe Lung
70 Nguyen Du Street
Hanoi