Mayochup

We originally booked a hotel to stay on Halong Bay but having taken advice from the hotel in Hanoi, we altered our plans and stayed on a junk boat for one night. And what a great suggestion it was too!

We booked it through the hotel and we were with LaFairy Sails marshaled by Tony who, we found later, could do anything. The group we were with were great apart from two from the UK (putting us Brits to shame!) who refused to join in and socialize. At the end, none of the group even knew their names. Even cracking a smile was hard for them!

There were activities from kayaking (Mrs Mayochup loved it even though she didn't row for half of it), visiting the pearl farm which was interesting, visiting some of the islands and caves and relaxing on the top deck of the boat. All these activities were superbly lead by Tony who told us stories and jokes along the way. We also had a French group with us and it turned out Tony could speak French too.

The only activity they mentioned which was laughable was squid fishing. I thought it was going on a little boat to a spot and seeing what we could catch but no, their version was a putting a multiple hook on the end of a bamboo stick and dangling it from the lower deck of the main boat. After a while of nothing and our group making jokes about the spectacle, we gave up.



Dinner was an array of fresh fish and shellfish with noodles and fresh vegetables. Simple but effective. Afterwards, we were surprised to find out the crew at LaFairy Sails produced a cake for us to celebrate our honeymoon and Tony mustered up a song "happy honey moon moon to you" to the tune of "happy birthday". Inspired.


We also did Tai Chi with him the following morning. As you do.

The next night was spent at the hotel in Halong Bay and it was unremarkable to say the least. Once piece of advice that I can give you is that visit Halong Bay and stay on a boat as that will give you the greatest experience you could ever wish for. There are many companies which offer pretty much the same thing with varying reviews but LaFairy Sails we very competent and enthusiastic. The boat was comfortable and clean.

The other hotels are too far away and the town is too commercialised to really enjoy. As for dinner, there were a couple of confusing restaurants which price their menu by weight rather than the item so you have no idea what you are spending. This coupled with the awkward currency conversion made it impossible to calculate so we walked out and went elsewhere. Another restaurant was serving shark fin soup which I am wholeheartedly against so we didn't eat there either. In the end, we opted for a simpler one and bedded down for the night. The next day was travelling to Ninh Binh which is another story.

We arrived at our hotel very early in the morning and crashed after our long journey. The favourite part is the breakfast and La Siesta Trendy did not disappoint.

A mixture of meats, pastries, eggs, fruit and juices were on offer but the specialty here is the egg coffee. This is amazing. It is coffee with whipped up egg yolk which is sweetened topped off with chocolate sprinkles. It shouldn't sound nice but it is simply fantastic. And this is coming from someone who rarely drinks coffee. 

The morning was spent wandering around the city before we head back to the hotel for our cookery class.

It was just the two of us booked in so we had an exclusive tour of the market from one of the senior chefs where we bought ingredients for what we were about to cook later. The market was huge however, you could barely move as it was busy and the walkways extremely narrow. And motorbikes everywhere. Things are done differently when it comes to selecting fish. At home, we are used to seeing the fish laying on a bed of ice and you ask for what you want over the counter. Over here, the fish are alive in a bowl, picked up and beheaded before our eyes. No nonsense.

Back at the hotel it was cooking time! Our demonstration chef was this tiny lady but she clearly has a passion for her job. We were told she arrives for work at 5am and leaves at 7pm which shows true dedication. We were shown knife skills as ours were severely lacking however, we managed to prepare some truly awesome food as you can see.

After our big meal, we went down to the bar where we had cocktails. Two were free courtesy of the hotel as part of our Honeymoon gift. The Vietnamese, unlike the British, do not seem to care for measures so our cocktails were very very strong!



The next part of our trip is to Halong Bay which will be covered in the next chapter.

In an effort to get to know our new area, we took a walk to Laleham and upon Mrs Mayochup’s recommendation, found the Three Horseshoes pub. I say pub but it’s firmly in the gastropub bracket.

Upon reading fantastic reviews found on Tripadvisor, we knew we stumbled upon the right place and although not cheap, nor expensive either, we were looking forward to some great food. Of course, there are a couple of dud ones but they are from a few years ago and one is from a vegetarian so that doesn’t count. I honestly think vegetarians cannot really critique or rate any form of restaurant/pub as they limit themselves to 20% of the menu at best and then there are vegetarians who don’t even like vegetarian food. Go figure.

Whilst we were looking at the not so expansive menu, we ordered some drinks. I chose a lager I have never heard of called Veltins and Mrs Mayochup went for a Rioja rose. In order to compensate for the limited menu, the specials change on a daily basis so there is variety and there’s no chance that you would exhaust what they have to offer should you become a regular.

Speaking of the special menu, today’s looked very enticing and went for the salmon and duck respectively. The salmon came with french beans, a sunblush tomatoes with black olives, potatoes, poached egg and hollandaise sauce.

The duck came with broccoli, mashed potatoes with spring onion, slow roasted tomatoes in a bean jus.

The food tasted just as good as the pictures look, this was special. The duck was tender and cooked to perfection and the salmon just crumbled at any sort of pressure applied on it. This was food at it’s finest.

We just about had enough room for desert and the two chosen were the Sticky Toffee Pudding and the Raspberry Creme Brulé.

Of course, I suffered the ‘eyes to big for my belly’ syndrome and couldn’t finish the Sticky Toffee Pudding but it was everything you would expect. The Creme Brulé however, was lovely and I’m not even a fan of it. Creme Brulé can easily go wrong so hats off to the chef on that one.

Just one last word on the service, it was OK. The chap didn’t really engage with us much but he did his job nonetheless and I can’t really comment much more on that.

I would definitely go back and planning to bring others. This is definitely a venue for sharing.