Commissioner Ly tour

Do you like reading detective stories? Would you like to immerse yourself in the "Hanoi underworld"? Then join us on a journey to the Hanoi of Inspector Ly.

The investigator in Nora Luttmer's crime novels lives in a house on Phu Doan, the street of the mechanics. That's where we start. On foot, we walk through the old town and along the railroad tracks that run through the middle of the rows of houses here. There, close to the rails, is also the house where Inspector Ly discovers a frozen, illegally traded tiger. Just a few minutes from here: Lang Ong, the pharmacist's street, where Ly always seeks advice from a healer. And his coffee shop, where we also have a coffee. "... A Buon Me Thuot coffee, an in-house coffee from the central Vietnamese highlands."

A cab takes us down to the river. "Although this district was only minutes from the Old City, it seemed strangely isolated. The district was little more than an alluvial sandbar. It lay outside the levee wall on the banks of the Red River." Then, under the Chuong Duong Bridge, the dim billiard hall: "Hardly any daylight reached under the line, only a few flickering neon tubes provided light. In one corner, several old men sat and looked like they were drinking beer there from dawn to dusk..."

From there we pass flying merchants, street markets, and tattooed guys spinning glasses filled with water in their hands until the little fighting fish inside get all dizzy. Bets are made, bills change hands. There is shouting, laughing and arguing. Limousines are parked in front of the "Sailor Club", music is blaring. We walk up to the "Phuc Tan Bar", which was once called "Barakuda". "Ly had to look for a while before he found the Barakuda Bar. He hadn't been there for a long time. It was hidden in a side alley in Phuc Tan."

Then it's on down to the river with a view of Long Bien Bridge, the "tipped-over Eiffel Tower." "Ly followed a trail through tall riparian grass to the river. (...). Chickens poked through the silt in search of food. (...) A push boat roared. Off the big sandbar in the middle of the river, a rowboat swayed on the waves."

Along the bridge, next to the wholesale market, we go out of this very own world again, to the other side of the street, across the dike road to the Dong Xuan market, through the small food alley to the corner of Lan Ong/Cha Ca, where we have either a Pho Ga or a Bun Moc to finish the tour. There it would also taste Commissioner Ly.