Travelogue: How I long for VietNam’s “Cà Phê Trứng”
Hanoi
My journal entry for the morning of September, 7th 2019 reads as follows:
“Here I am in Vietnam, drinking Vietnamese coffee at an old terraced shop, listening to the traffic noise. Thousands of motorcycles snake through the streets of Hanoi coming from every direction. I might be walking on the most dangerous streets in the world. The trip from Athens took a day and a half. It was quite exhausting. I barely slept two hours, hardly able to turn my neck one way or another without agonising pain. I must have pulled a muscle. But what a reward it is then, to be in Hanoi, sip on a strong coffee mixed with egg yolk and condensed milk, and simply write.”
Cà Phê Trứng was the name of this sweet, frothy and creamy coffee sitting beside me as I wrote those words.
As I mention in my journal, my journey from Athens to Hanoi had been quite the ordeal. I do not recommend eleven hours on a low-cost airline without entertainment while the Bay of Bengal rocks you to sleep with turbulence. Nor do I recommend trying to doze off on a very hard floor, in a very deserted and very closed terminal at Singapore Changi Airport during a six-hour layover before the next flight to Hanoi.
Though, it did provide me with the opportunity to buy the craft notebook I wrote that entry into.
By the time I sat down with that coffee, I’d spent three days in Hanoi. Mostly, I had been trying to recover from jet lag, but also from a neck injury that I believe happened during that long and uncomfortable journey. On my first day in Vietnam, I could not move my head even the tiniest millimetre. A pain like none I had experienced before gripped the left side of my neck and forced me to hold myself completely still or be prepared to breathe through it.
Painkillers did nothing. It was just a matter of letting time heal.
In any other place, this injury would have been inconvenient but manageable. In Hanoi’s French quarters with its narrow roads, not being able to move my neck left or right was truly a humbling experience. The city has no less than 5 million motorbikes moving through it every day. They seem to come from everywhere: waves upon waves of motorbikes that I had to dodge or walk around. Crossing the street required being very fast or very lucky in my situation.
The many motorbikes soaring through the city.
I felt deeply frustrated and quite frankly upset. Tears welled in my eyes as no one would stop to let me get across the road (what a naive young person I was indeed). Arriving in a new country can be thrilling, but it can also wear you down. By then, I should have been used to it. I had been moving from country to country for months. Still, the constant need to adapt — to new streets, new languages, new smells, new rules, new rhythms — is not always easy. It depends on your health, your tiredness, your state of mind. Vietnam was such a stark change from Greece. All my senses were on high alert, and yet I felt partly blind to it all because my neck would not turn.
And so I decided to take a risk after 15 minutes of trying to get across. I could not stay there and not move for the rest of the day. And locals started looking at me with intense curiosity. Bear in mind that each time I wanted to check left or right, I had to move my entire body and not my neck. I went for it, finally. Though I found that even if I could not predict the way motorbikes would come, once upon me, they dodged my person fairly easily. The secret to crossing the streets of Hanoi is to have complete faith in the fact that the riders will dodge you no matter what. A theory I tested and found to be accurate most of the time.
After my trial by fire — or should I say fuel — I decided it was time for me to sit down, breathe and get my caffeine intake of the day. I walked for a couple of minutes and stumbled upon the most unassuming coffee shop. Its maroon front read No. 1 Coffee. I walked in to find an old woman, from whom I asked for an egg coffee. Why did I want to get an egg coffee on my fourth day in Hanoi? Had I not been adventurous enough crossing the road? I thought if a raw egg could cure a hangover, egg and coffee would cure my lack of sleep from the past three nights. This is probably not a thought doctors would agree with, but at the time, it seemed right to me. I paid the appropriate number of Vietnamese dong, a lot of banknotes worth a very small amount, as £1 was around VND 35,400.
Several minutes later, the old lady came to me with a giant smile and my drink, both of which I was very grateful for in a country where I felt very lonely at that time. I took a sip of the hot drink and was hit by two things.
How on earth does coffee taste this good?
This was the best thing I had had in a very long time.
The best things in travelling generally lie in the most simple. This small cup of coffee mixed with frothed condensed milk and egg yolk was pure joy. It gave me warmth, comfort and more pain relief than any paracetamol could. My senses were no longer on high alert but triggered: visually, the frothy cream looked like molten gold. It smelled like rich cream and strong black coffee. It warmly touched my lips voluptuously, leaving a soft moustache. It tasted like a creamy tiramisu, and I could have sworn that if I had leaned my ear close to the foam, I could hear the small air bubbles popping on its surface.
All my prior worries left me. Gone were the noises from the street, the fear of novelty and traffic. That moment gave me a respite and allowed me to feel good for the first time in days.
I tried other Vietnamese coffee drinks in my time there. But nothing came close to that of the egg coffee, or Cà Phê Trứng. I did not get any other egg coffee before I left Vietnam. Not that I did not want to, but I wanted to cherish the memory I had of it and was scared that it would go if I got one in Ho Chi Minh.
Several years later, I still remember the moment I sat in the coffee shop and experienced such a privileged and peaceful moment in the chaos of Hanoi. Now in London, I know where I could get egg coffee — Brick Lane, from what I heard. And even though I long to taste it again and be nostalgic at the memory, I have not yet been able to bring myself to go, scared that it would wipe away all that was good about that egg coffee. The moment it cured my homesickness, but also gave me the strength to carry on my journey through Vietnam.
The next day, I had slept, and my stiff neck was better.
No.1 Coffee 20 P. Hàng Giầy, Hanoi, Ha Noi
Egg coffee is about VDN 35,000 (£0.99 / $1.33 / €1.15)
