Came across Vincom Mega Mall Royal City while reading the news so we decided to come here on our second last day to check this place out.
VMMRC is about 7km southwest of the Old Quarter. The taxi ride (booked via GrabTaxi) from our hotel to here cost 80,000 VND (SGD5).
Vincom Mega Mall Royal City
72a Nguyen Trai
Thanh Xuan, Hanoi
Vietnam
Opening hours: 9.30am – 10.00pm daily
Website: http://royalcity.com.vn
Royal City looked like a township, or rather, a specially-developed area with all amenities in one place. There are residences (several towers), huge atrium with European-style statues & fountain and a massive underground mall that houses 800 retail outlets, a hypermarket, cinema, bowling alley and a food street (with more than 200 international & local restaurants). It is also home to Vietnam’s largest indoor ice-skating rink and Southeast Asia’s biggest rainforest-themed water park.
Unfortunately many of these facilities were closed for maintenance work/renovation when we were there so we couldn’t get to explore and enjoy any of them.
Interestingly, the food options here were more Korean-centric. There were Korean bakeries & cafes and many Korean BBQ buffet restaurants too. Maybe because the Koreans made up the majority in the expat community here.
Let’s now take a look at the place.
Residence towers
Atrium space that looked like a beautiful park
Definitely didn’t feel like we were in Vietnam, lol
Primary school in the background – that was why I said this was like a township with all kinds of amenities for the residents here
The inside of the mall was super spacious
Families watching the koi
There was a huge VinMart hypermarket in the mall and of course, I wouldn’t miss checking it out. More interesting buys, woohoo.
Vietnamese coffee
Plenty of local coffee brands to choose from
Assorted Vietnamese biscuits and cookies
Something familiar 😉
Mung bean cakes – they seemed to be very popular here. A number of snack shops in the Old Quarter carried similar products too.
Imported mochi of all kinds of flavour. We bought the blue-coloured packaging Milk Mochi – it was soft, delicious & not too sweet. Nice!
Smoked cheese!
Just as when we were waiting to check out, we saw a booth selling these colourful kueh kueh. Hubby said he had tried them a long long time ago and they were not bad. Well, since I hadn’t, we decided to get 1 of each flavour to try. The lady at the booth was happily helping me with it to make sure I didn’t miss out any, lol.
The kueh kueh thing was the last item on this sign. Banh Dan Toc literally means ‘ethnic cakes’. Each cost 5,000 VND (SGD0.31) which wasn’t the cheapest we had seen but still affordable.
We got exactly 10 different flavours.
Top row, from left to right
1) Red one comes with mung bean paste inside.
2) Yellow white one tasted kinda eggy like kueh lapis cake but the flavour was more artificial.
3) Medium green one also had mung bean paste filling.
4) Dark green one tasted like kee chang (alkaline rice dumpling 碱水粽) with mung bean paste.
Middle row, from left to right
1) Green one with sesame seeds had a pumpkin seed flavour. Came with mung bean paste.
2) Orange one with mung bean paste tasted closest to our ang ku kueh.
3) Medium yellow one with sesame was of jackfruit flavour and it had some crunchy jackfruit bits in it too.
Last row, from left to right
1) Light yellow one with sesame seeds was plain with no flavour.
2) Yellowish white one was of coconut flavour with crunchy shredded coconut.
3) Purple one had no flavour. Came with mung bean paste.
Overall, these banh dan toc were like a more smooth and moist version of the ang ku kueh. The skin was a little bit chewy and stretchy. Not too sweet but too much artificial colourings and flavourings. Tried once and good enough.
If you’re the kueh kueh kind of person, do give these colourful snacks a try too.
We spent most of our time at Royal City here chilling out at my favourite Korean bakery cafe which I would blog about after this. Didn’t manage to do much here but it was still quite an interesting experience to explore Asia’s largest underground retail & entertainment complex. I think most of the renovation works have been completed by now so if you’re heading to Hanoi anytime soon, you might want to consider having a day out here just for activities if you’ve nothing else planned.
Return. Many, many American, American Pizza, Japanese, Thai food places everywhere.