Asia
Vietnam was not what I expected, which is the best thing you can say about a country.
I went south to north. Ho Chi Minh City first, which is loud and fast and completely indifferent to you in the way that only very large cities can be. From there, the Mekong Delta flat, green, cut through by water in every direction. I spent a morning on a boat going nowhere in particular, watching the delta do what it has done for thousands of years, and felt something I couldn’t quite name.
Hoi An was the middle of the trip and the part I’d go back to. The old town is small enough to walk entirely, yellow enough to photograph from any angle and calm enough in the mornings, before the tour groups arrive, that you can actually hear yourself think. The lanterns at night are exactly as beautiful as every photograph you’ve ever seen.
Da Nang was a stopping point between Hoi An and the north. A beach city that is growing very fast and hasn’t quite decided what it wants to be yet. Worth a night. Not worth more.
Ha Long Bay is one of those places where the cliché has done the landscape a disservice. The limestone karsts rising from the water don’t look like photographs. They look like something from a time before photographs, before language, before any of the things we use to make sense of the world. I spent two days on a boat and they were two of the best days of the trip.
Hanoi at the end. The train street is real and extraordinary. The old quarter rewards walking without a plan. The coffee culture is the thing that surprised me most Vietnam has one of the most developed coffee cultures I’ve encountered anywhere, which I hadn’t expected and hadn’t read about. Egg coffee, cà phê sữa đá over ice, tiny plastic stools on the pavement at six in the morning. It is its own thing entirely.
On the food: I’ll be honest. Vietnamese food didn’t work for me the way it seems to work for everyone else. The banh mi is the exception. At a street stall at dinner time it is one of the best things you can eat anywhere.
