The heat alone in Hà Nội, Việt Nam during my trip hasn’t been too much of an issue, but paired together with the insanely high humidity, going outside has been an uncomfortbale experience for me. Because of this, I’ve been trying to find tourist activities that involve staying indoors, preferably in areas with air conditioning.
One of the spots I found was the Vincom Mega Mall Royal City, an underground shopping and entertainment complex. I scouted out a few museums inside the complex that I wanted to visit ahead of time online, but while walking around, I came across Vườn thú Chú Voi Con, which translates to the Baby Elephant Animal Park. I peeked inside and saw a bunch of animals in the format of a petting zoo, so I figured I would make a spontaneous stop to check it out.
This was very fun. I had an opportunity to get closer to some of these animals than I have ever been before, and got to pet some of them for the first time, such as the alpaca and sheep.
With that being said, this is probably the most unethical zoo I have ever seen in my entire life. The two alpaca and the sheep were confined together as a group of three in a pen that seemed too small to even accommodate one of them. A lot of the animals looked malnourished. Some of them looked like they were infected with something, or at the very least, extremely unclean. There were no attendants carefully supervising the petting areas, so there were children in the animal park that had free reign to yank at animals’ limbs and otherwise inflict distress on them.
In a vacuum, I enjoyed my time here, and it was very amusing seeing a bunch of farm animals inside an underground shopping center. However, I cannot fully recommend visiting the Baby Elephant Animal Park. If you’re not too concerned about the morals and ethics aspect of zoo animals, that is fine, but it is personally conflicting having this fun activity in the Mega Mall but also not wanting to encourage supporting their business model of making profit at the expense of what seemed to me like animals that weren’t really having a nice life.
The animal park had glass that allowed passersby in the mall to look in, so that is one alternative if you want to check it out but don’t want to purchase an admission ticket.
Here are some photographs I took of the animals during my visit:
Visiting the Ba Đình District was one of the first tourist activites I did after arriving in Hà Nội, Việt Nam. It’s one of the most popular tourist areas in the city, and there was a lot to look at in a fairly condensed area, so I figured it would be a good place to start.
I already published a blog post a few days ago from seeing Bảo tàng Hồ Chí Minh, which translates to the Ho Chi Minh Museum, located inside the Ba Đình District. I gave that location a dedicated blog post because I had a lot of photographs from within the museum, but for everything else, I figured it would make the most sense doing a single Ba Đình round-up.
I believe this is Chùa Diên Hựu, which translates to the Dien Huu Temple.
On the opposite side of the walkway, there was this water featured labeled as đài phun nước, which translates to “fountain.” I’m not sure if it actually really is a fountain that was just turned off, or if it mislabeled, but it had an interesting rocky centerpiece to it.
This area had a little marketplace where people were selling apparel and other merchandise. I was getting thirsty, so I purchased a cold beverage from one of the stalls; I found it funny that they stocked Monster energy drinks there, so I got a Zero Sugar Ultra Paradise.
Afterwards, I looped around to Chùa Một Cột, which translates to the One Pillar Pagoda.
After enjoying looking at the temples, I came out into the sunlight and walked towards the gardens.
This is an interesting fountain I saw next to the offices of Ban Quản Lý Bảo Tàng Hồ Chí Minh, which translates to the Ho Chi Minh Museum Management Board.
Here is a photograph I took while standing on Hùng Vương Street facing south towards the intersection of Lê Hồng Phong Street.
The city was setting up for the 80th anniversary celebration of Cách mạng tháng Tám và Quốc khánh nước Cộng hòa Xã hội chủ nghĩa Việt Nam (which translates to The August Revolution and the National Day of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam). There were extra bleachers being set up and signage being installed in preparation for the events.
I was able to see Lăng Chủ tịch Hồ Chí Minh, which is Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum. Apparently Ho Chi Minh’s body is on display here, but they are only open for tourists during certain hours, and I was a bit too late that day to be able to go inside.
Once in a while, the guards in front of the mausoleum will be swapped out. I managed to catch two new guards in the distance headed towards the mausoleum to relieve the current guards and take their place.
After finishing my exploring, I headed back towards the entrance/exit. On the way there, I saw the outside of Phê La Ngọc Hà, a coffee shop.
For my meal in the neighborhood, I had bún chả ăn kèm với rau sống, which was a highly-recommended famous dish in Vietnam. To my understanding, this roughly translates to “white rice vermicelli noodles and seasoned minced pork patties served with fresh herbs.”
And no, I do not know why my noodles look so radioactive in the picture…
Here are some more photographs I took around the neighborhood right outside the fenced tourism area:
This is probably very unsurprising to hear from someone who lives in Las Vegas, a city located in the Mojave Desert, but it is excruciatingly humid in Hanoi. My hotel feels fine when the air conditioning and dehumidifier are both running at full power, but stepping outside feels like it requires more effort even just to breathe because of how much moisture there is in the air.
One of the concerns I had prior to arriving in Vietnam was the pedestrian crosswalk situation, i.e., how vehicles don’t really stop for people and just drive around you. I might have just been lucky so far in only having needed to cross streets that aren’t too busy, but it’s been a lot easier than I expected. As long as you telegraph your movements clearly, remain at a consistent pace, and opt to use marked crosswalks where possible so that your motion is predictable, it seems like Vietnam’s traffic system sort of has it figured out.
In general, sightseeing has been very interesting so far. I’ve never seen temples like this before in-person, so it was nice being able to go inside one and experience it first-hand.
I already mentioned this in my blog post reviewing my flights on EVA Air from Los Angeles to Hanoi, but one of the major reasons I decided to travel to Hà Nội, Việt Nam was because my company Tempo’s game The Bazaar was having its very first community-run in-person esports event at PK Gaming Ngoại Giao Đoàn. This event happened earlier today (or yesterday, if you convert Hà Nội’s local time zone to my home time zone in Las Vegas).
As you probably expected, while I was in attendance, I took a lot of photographs.
The entryway to the gaming café had a banner advertising the tournament, which invited competitors to wander the bazaar in a paid event with a total cash prize pool of US$750.00.
The interior also had a banner, this one being significantly taller and larger.
Tempo’s Lead of People and Culture was also in attendance, and he was responsible for bringing over a bunch of prizes for the competitors.
There were some embroidered hoodies…
… some specially-branded mousepads in partnership with PK Gaming…
… and the grand prize trophy, a Founder’s Edition collectible statue of Dooley, one of the characters from The Bazaar.
I showed up pretty early, so while the venue was still almost empty, I had an opportunity to walk around and explore the rest of the gaming café.
As the players started trickling in, some of them got set up on the computers in the competition area and started warming up.
After everyone found their way to the café, the tournament started with a small opening ceremony by the casters.
Once all the rules were explained, the players took their positions and started playing.
The event was live streamed on Tempo’s Twitch channel from the “Alaska Zone” streaming booths.
This is a shot I got of the person who eventually went on to win the entire tournament.
As a reminder, I work solely on the corporate side of Tempo and have no involvement in game design or game development pretty much whatsoever, to the extent that I have literally never even played a single game of The Bazaar. It was an amusing experience going around and looking at people’s screens, only to be completely clueless as to what’s actually happening in the game.
The main stage of the gaming café was used to play the live stream for in-person spectators.
One of the spectators, of course, was the Dooley statue.
Once in a while, players would be brought into the casting booth after finishing a round so that they could get interviewed about their most recent game.
The tournament was going on for longer than I expected, so I decided to order some food from the on-site kitchen.
Their menu was in Vietnamese, and I couldn’t understand what their entrée options were, so I just went with the recommendation of one of the staff members at the gaming café. I ended up with some grilled chicken, vegetables, and white rice. This actually ended up being pretty unexpectedly delicious.
A handful of hours into the tournament, we were approaching the end, with only a couple players left needing to finish their final run.
I believe some people left early, but those who wanted to stick around gathered around the stage area to watch the final moments of gameplay.
Upon the conclusion of the tournament, the winner was crowned, and he received his limited edition Dooley statue.
In addition to the trophy, both the first place winner and the runner-ups received an envelope containing their cash prizes, and pretty much all participants got some form of consolation prize, be it a set of earbuds, a desk mat, or apparel.
After all the prizes were distributed, the casters gave their closing speech.
The tournament organizers hired an actual, professional photographer to take pictures throughout the event. I’m not sure what his name is so I can’t give proper credit at the moment, but I found these on PK Gaming Ngoại Giao Đoàn’s Facebook page in the Cộng Đồng The Bazaar group.
He captured this shot of me helping set some of the technical specifications of the live stream software to ensure a smooth broadcast…
… as well as this shot of me joining the casting booth for a little bit while the Vietnamese caster was busy helping tally up the final results.
Here’s a screenshot taken of the live broadcast from the short period during which I was filling in for one of the casters.
It is very amusing (and quite difficult) trying to be a commentator for a game that you’ve literally never personally played before and hardly even know the mechanics for. The other caster next to me hard carried both the play-by-play and color commentary, while I mainly contributed by telling stories of Tempo’s past and how The Bazaar came to become what it is today.
Before parting ways, we took a group photograph with everyone who stayed until the end of the event.
During my time at Tempo, I’ve been a member of the production teams behind a decent number of live events, so this one wasn’t particularly special for me. However, I could tell that everyone else in attendance was very excited for it, which was nice.
I went into this thinking the turnout would be in the low multi-hundreds. I didn’t know how or from where I established that expectation, but as you can see from the photographs, there were nowhere near even a single hundred competitors. With that being said, I might just be used to running events taking place in larger cities for more well-known games, and it’s possible that the turnout for “Catch the Cash” was still considered a success given the circumstances.
I thought the gaming café was decent and comparable in quality to some of the smaller and lower-budget gaming cafés you might find scattered throughout less populus areas of the United States. The food, though, was incredible. I found the chef and the literal full-blown kitchen to be amazing and comparable in quality to a very good street food vendor or a small family-owned restaurant that focuses on replicating authentic flavors derived from their local cuisines. I had two meals there—one on tournament day and one on the day prior during a walk-through preview—and both entrées were delicious.
With that being said, I had a persistent headache and an overall miserable time being in PK Gaming’s facility due to the smoking room.
Cigarette smoking is far more common in Việt Nam than it is in the United States. It is also far more socially and culturally accepted, so this gaming café had a designated smoking room indoors, directly in the center of the café. The smoking room had a door, but every time someone opened the door to go in or out, waves of cigarette smoke would escape and spread throughout the rest of the building.
As long as there’s good ventilation, it’s fine, right? Well, from what I could tell, it felt like they had no ventilation. They had fans running everywhere, so the cigarette smoke would expeditiously get blown around into all corners of the building to make sure everyone would smell it, while none of it got sucked up into the vents to be exchanged with fresh outdoor air.
Marinating in cigarette smoke for about 7 hours was horrific, and that alone was single-handedly enough to make me hate the entire thing. It is insane to me that everyone who showed up to compete had to be subjected to degrading their health from fairly dense second-hand smoke because some people were too lazy to spend one extra minute walking outdoors before smoking.
After landing in Hà Nội, Việt Nam and spending half a day to rest up, I headed over to the Ba Đình District southeast of Hồ Tây to squeeze in a few tourist activities prior to Tempo’s The Bazaar event coming up on Saturday.
One of the spots I checked out was Bảo tàng Hồ Chí Minh, which translates to the Ho Chi Minh Museum. Not everything had English translations so there was a lot of information I couldn’t understand, but all the exhibits on display were still nice to look at and were fairly unique and different from what I’m used to seeing in museums in the United States.
Here is a collection of photographs I took of the building, exhibits, and gift shops:
I mentioned this a few times in previous blog posts, but the reason I was still around Los Angeles County, even though I hate it and avoid it as much as I can, is because I had an international flight scheduled out of Los Angeles International Airport. My home airport of Harry Reid International Airport in the Las Vegas Valley has great coverage for many destinations, but for the particular route I was flying, LAX worked a bit better.
Yes, that does indeed sound like a pretty random place, especially for someone like me who generally stays within the United States and doesn’t travel internationally much, but there is a reason for going to Hà Nội in particular—my company Tempo’s video game The Bazaar is having its very first community-run in-person esports event at PK Gaming’s facility in the Ngoại Giao Đoàn neighborhood.
However, I’m not going for work, per se. Even though it’s my company’s game, I’m basically attending the event as a tourist (and then also being a tourist in other areas of Hà Nội while I’m there). I work on the corporate side of Tempo and pretty much never directly touch the development of The Bazaar itself, and have gone as far as to have never even played a single round of The Bazaar before, so I am quite literally just going into this as simply a spectator.
With that being said, coordinating this trip to overlap with an event for The Bazaar made the trip feel more meaningful, as opposed to arbitrarily picking a completely random city and country in Asia to visit for no underlying reason. Thus, late last night, I made my way over to LAX for my very long travel day.
(As you will immediately notice, yes, I did indeed fly business class for these flights. However, to be clear, I paid out-of-pocket for my business class ticket. Before anyone asks, no, I am not going on luxury trips and expensing it to Tempo. The company’s revenue is being reinvested back into further development of The Bazaar and is not being used to sponsor my premium travel itineraries.)
My night started at the Tom Bradley International Terminal with a smooth and uneventful check-in process due to having no checked baggage and being an enrollee of TSA PreCheck. After making my way airside, I navigated my way to the Star Alliance Lounge, the designated lounge for EVA Air due to EVA not having a dedicated lounge at LAX.
This lounge had an outdoor area with fire pits and a nice view of the tarmac. As far as I can recall, I think this is the one and only lounge I’ve ever been in that had an outdoor portion where you could get some fresh outside air.
The lounge also had a balcony area that overlooked the rest of the TBIT. This basically captures my favorite part about this lounge—it had so many different kinds of environments (even including a dim theater room) that pretty much anyone could have a comfortable time at the lounge, no matter what their preferences are.
I opted to relax in the balcony area while eating some food and people-watching.
The convenient thing about being in a Star Alliance lounge while flying on a Star Alliance airline was that they did announcements for Star Alliance flights, including one for mine. Once boarding time was imminent, they notified the lounge-goers that it was now time to start heading to the boarding gate.
After getting my travel visa verified and embarking the Boeing 777-300ER, I walked over to my seat, 11K. I picked this seat because it’s the last seat in the corner of the business class cabin, and there is usually a curtain that separates the business class and premium economy cabins, so seats 11A and 11K end up being the most private seats on the aircraft.
To make things even more private for me on this flight, I got lucky enough that all three seats adjacent to mine were empty.
While the flight attendants were preparing passenger meals, we were given a hot towel, beverage, and snack to keep us occupied while we wait. For my drink, I asked for a Coca-Cola Zero Sugar.
My flight attendant, whose name is Josie, came back with a can from the “Share a Coke with” series that had “Josie 麻吉麻” printed on the front. I’m not sure if this was a remarkable coincidence or not, but if it was intentionally arranged so that your Coca-Cola can has the name of your flight attendant on it, that’s some pretty impressive attention to detail.
For my appetizer, I received a lobster salad. The lobster was fresh, there was a satisfying ratio of seafood to vegetables, and everything was covered in a delicious sauce that had a perfect balance of spiciness and sweetness.
My main entrée was Chilean sea bass covered in a butter sauce and with a side of truffle gnocchi, asparagus, and tomatoes. The fish was extremely tender and flaky, and was comparable to something I’d find at a high-end seafood restaurant.
As a refresher, I got a small fruit plate containing cantaloupe, orange, and grapes.
Dessert was a lemon tart atop a berry sauce. This was the least remarkable part of the meal, as it just tasted like a generic pastry, but I still enjoyed it.
Shortly after meal service was over, they cleared everyone’s tables and dimmed the lights so we could go to sleep. The ceiling was illuminated with small lights resembling a starry night sky, which was a nice touch.
The lie-flat seat wasn’t the most comfortable I’ve ever felt, but they offered a mattress pad which was very helpful, and was still more than enough for a good night’s rest. I actually managed to get a nearly full eight hours of sleep, which I wasn’t expecting.
With just a couple hours left in the flight, the flight attendants started breakfast service. Josie brought me a cup of coffee with brown sugar to try and help me wake up (even though caffeine doesn’t affect me) (but I did not tell her that and just enjoyed the caffè latte).
For breakfast, I had Chinese plain congee with a side of cold delicatessens, black beans, pan-fried egg with shrimp, and braised pork ribs.
This was probably my all-time favorite airline meal. It wasn’t as delicious as the Chilean sea bass from earlier, but for some reason, this congee tasted very nostalgic, which is really funny, because I never had Chinese-style congee as a kid (my parents are Korean, not Chinese). This was an incredibly cozy-feeling meal, and it made me feel warm inside, not just from the warmth of the congee, but also from the sense of comfort that this flavor profile mysteriously brought to me.
For dessert, I received another fruit plate, this time with a bit more artistic presentation.
We soon flew over Taipei and approached the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
After deplaning, I made my way over to the Oriental Club Lounge to wait out my layover until the second leg of my trip.
I wanted to be very cautious and not accidentally leave airside so I wouldn’t have to go through security again, and in my diligence, I happened to inadvertently avoid the area I needed to traverse through to get to the lounge. It was fine though; I walked two big circles around the airport for no reason, but at least I got my exercise in after the nearly 13-hour flight from Los Angeles.
The Oriental Club Lounge is apparently an award-winning lounge. It wasn’t the most impressive lounge I’ve ever seen, but it was definitely much better than average. I was very full by this point (and knew I had another in-flight meal coming up), so I opted not to get any food; instead, I just sipped on some Coca-Cola Zero throughout my stay in order to maintain my hydration.
With about 40 minutes to go until departure, I made my way to gate B7 to board my connecting flight. Unfortunately, there was a bit of a boarding delay, so I had to stand there for about half an hour in the unusually high heat and humidity.
Eventually, we made it on the plane, which was another Boeing 777-300ER. We had a different painting hung up at the front of the business class cabin on this aircraft, which made me curious how many people there are out there who travel on EVA Air so frequently that they keep track of which paintings they’ve seen and collect photographs of them as if they’re trading cards.
Here’s a view of TPE out my window. My plane didn’t have any special livery, but the plane parked at the neighboring gate had some Sanrio characters on it.
Not long after take-off, meal service began. As our appetizer, we received a shrimp cocktail.
For my main entrée, I picked Chef Huang Ching-Biao’s steamed pork ribs with chestnuts and vegetables atop fried Cantonese noodles. On the side, I had a piece of garlic bread. The pork ribs were unbelievably tender and took “melt in your mouth” and “fall right off the bone” to a whole new level.
This was just as delicious as the Chilean sea bass, and the three meals that I had on EVA Air landed squarely as the top three best in-flight meals I’ve ever had.
For dessert, I got another lemon tart, but this one was slightly different. Again, this tasted pretty close to a generic well-made pastry.
For my beverage, I ordered a non-alcoholic drink from their “mocktail” menu—a pineapple, cranberry, and ginger ale cocktail.
After finishing all my food, I reclined back, put in my earbuds, listened to music, and relaxed for the remainder of the flight.
After a little over three hours on board, we touched down at Nội Bài International Airport. Upon landing and deplaning, I stood in line to get through immigrations, which was smooth and uneventful. When passing through customs, I stood in the “goods to declare” line so that I could disclose the vitamins and supplements I had brought with me, but after sending my backpack and luggage through an x-ray machine, the customs officer waved me through without further questioning.
I am now at my hotel and concluded the longest travel day I’ve ever had in my life. If you include the time I spent ridesharing to LAX, waiting in the lounge, flying to TPE, waiting in the lounge some more, flying to HAN, standing in line, and ridesharing to my hotel, my overall total travel time clocked in at right around 26 hours.
That sounds like an excruciatingly long time, and I probably normally would have been completely exhausted, but upgrading myself to business class was absolutely worth it and made the day much easier. Thanks to the nice lounges and immaculate in-flight service on EVA Air, everything was made far more comfortable, and I feel well enough that I don’t think I will even need a rest and recovery day before getting started with my Hà Nội adventures.
