Traveling in Vietnam: Chopsticks, Fish Noodle Soup, and Coffee
Việt Nam Travels: Chopsticks, Bún Chả Cá, and Cà Phê
Dear Reader,
I hope you are doing well and feeling good.
My letter is reaching you after four long weeks. I should have updated here that I am heading to Việt Nam (Vietnam), a country I visited six years ago. Though the last time I had traveled in Vietnam for only twelve days, this time I was not going to leave Vietnam before a month (that’s the duration the visa allows).
But on this trip I came across a different Vietnam from what I remembered it to be. Cities such as Hanoi and Hội An and Saigon overspilled Indian travelers unlike on my previous visit on which I hadn’t met any Indian. Vendors quoted ridiculous prices only to reduce them when the customer started to walk away — we had to haggle even for water and ice cream. Bridges and streets and river banks were louder and brighter. Areas that were once remote were now brimming with foreign and local tourists. Everything was at least twenty percent more expensive — as a Vietnamese friend Thu said.
“Change is the only constant,” Thu reminded me while we circled the old Hoàn Kiếm lake — the center of activities of the Old Quarters of Hanoi. Old Quarters is the collection of 36 streets each of which once specialized in trading and selling one item. So streets for chicken, bamboo, bucket, quicklime, fabrics, fish sauce, salt, combs, hats, and so on complete Old Quarters.
A bridge at the Hoan Kiem lake.
When rain poured down, we stood outside closed shops along with the women we had seen exercise, dance, and do Tai Chi on the banks of the lake. Thu said those women were at least 60-70 years old. Standing five feet away from them, seeing light reflect from their shining wrinkle-free skin, and watching them squat on the road I couldn’t believe that they were 60 or above. My partner and I might have seen the same women dance and move in perfect synchronization while strolling around the lake in the morning because the retired women were exercising more than once in a day, Thu stated.
at a building opposite Hoan Kiem Lake
a closer look
After the downpour, we walked to a juice shop where I had hot cocoa and Thu had a mango smoothie. She showed me pictures of clients who wanted her to get them visa for Vietnam but didn’t care enough to put on a shirt or were probably clicking pictures naked in the bathroom to send her the passport size photo for the visa. At the visa issuing agency in Hanoi where she works, Thu often has to wake up at night to arrange visas for travelers who didn’t realize they needed one until they showed up for the flight in their home country.
Looking at the pictures, we giggled and walked to a street restaurant where I could probably find food without meat or eggs. When the server said he would remove meat from the soup to serve me, I ordered seafood noodles from the adjacent shop. My partner came to us from the hotel, and two more friends, a father and daughter, we had met at a village homestay in Mekong Delta at the beginning of our trip joined us too. The father had left Vietnam at some point during the war and he had traveled from France to show his daughter the country that had been his home. The daughter was on an internship in Vietnam.
waiting to take the ferry to our village homestay in Mekong
Sharing noodles, drinking beer, and talking about the country that had put us all together an hour or two went by. With the promises to see each other again, we said goodbyes. Thu walked with us to our hotel to stay overnight as she didn’t want to drive back home at night and disturb her parents and two younger siblings with whom she has been living in Hanoi.
2016
I may have met Thu in Hanoi in 2016. I had quit my job and was backpacking in Southeast Asia before traveling to Chile to teach English. On my last day in Vietnam - that was also the end of my 1.5-month solo trip - I had visited a temple that had a pond full of turtles: considered sacred in Vietnam. Afterward I had drank strong Vietnamese coffee melting with condensed milk, hung out with a couple from the US, and rode the bus back to the Old Quarters with them.
After a quick dinner with the couple, I had walked back toward my hostel. But as I passed through a crowded junction where hundreds of people were seated on tiny plastic chairs enjoying beer and food, I stopped too. And where did I find myself? On the popular Beer Street — a large intersection of multiple streets — amongst a village of locals and travelers. So scooters and police and cyclists and pedestrians have to squeeze through that bustling street party every night.
Beer Street, Hanoi
It is there, on those plastic tables, I imagine my Vietnamese friend sitting next to me with her friends. Gulping beer, laughing, she chatted with me late into the night and added me on Facebook before leaving.
That same night, or really early morning, I flew from Hanoi to Saigon and from Saigon to Bangalore.
2022
And then I forgot about Thu. Until recently when Thu liked my Facebook post celebrating five years of On My Canvas. I was about to fly to Saigon and I knew I had a Vietnamese Facebook friend and so I messaged Thu. She said she didn’t remember me but my name sounded so familiar. She had always lived in Hanoi, she told me, so I painted her in that night frame next to me. But Thu couldn’t vouch for my memory because she said she didn’t remember much after covid.
The idea that covid might have impaired her memory saddened me. But she was healthy and fit so I hoped that she had forgotten me much before covid and the deadly disease hadn’t taken anything away from her.
On our first day in Hanoi, I went to the Temple of Literature (dedicated to Confucius), walked around, wrote, skipped dinner, and slept off. The next morning my partner and I walked out at 5 am and circled the lake admiring Hanoi women move in perfect synchronization to music being played on big and small stereos and stumbled into a seafood soup street stall where we each had a bowl of steaming delicious soup.
Phở hải sản, seafood soup
Then we looked at old human bones and teeth and fish sauce jars in the Museum of Ancient History. By the time we checked into a new hotel after shuffling between 2-3 places hoping to find a decent room, it was 2:30 pm. Searching for information on Cat Ba island and Halong Bay (our next stop) and writing and watching the rain fall over old compact Hanoi homes I could only message Thu at 6:30 in the evening. Within half an hour, she drove to my hotel to see me.
fish sauce jars
We sat in the hotel lobby and tried to remember each other. She couldn’t recall me and I hoped she was that friendly girl whose cheerful smile has been peeking at me from all those years ago.
That we didn’t remember each other precisely didn’t stop us from having that night rendezvous — the walk, giggling over juices, sharing noodles — in Hanoi. My partner and I climbed up to our room while Thu left on her scooter to find another hotel where she could get a room as ours was already full.
Early next morning we took a bus to Cat Ba island and went on a day and a night cruise through Lang Ha and Halong Bay.
The entire month in Vietnam was a series of buses, minivans, ferry, boats, private taxis, bike taxis, bikes, and cruises that took us from the South to the North covering about 3,100 kilometers, at least.
And I shouldn’t forget that there was the flight from Kolkata to Saigon too.
And apart from making it from one place to another, I cruised two Bays, kayaked, wrote a little bit, strolled around lakes and rivers, stayed at home stays, drank beer and rice liquor, biked, hiked, got soaked in rain multiple times, wrote and composed songs that only my partner and the Vietnamese forests and gibbons could hear, got some clothes stitched, saw traditional dance performances, visited floating markets, took long boat rides, climbed mountains, drove a bike over rugged North Vietnam mountains, and ate tonnes of fish noodle soup (though finding food without meat and egg was challenging in Vietnam but more on that later).
I have much to process, understand, write, and share. Slowly everything will come out but for now I can tell you that Vietnam is a country I feel I would never fully understand.
I met some kind souls there and many people who lied right to my face. Or who said a number first and then one hour later said another number. But I also met people who told me they love India, families who emptied their rice liquor bottles for us, and children who sat with me using Google Translate and just talked about weather when it was hard to find other topics.
Like every place, Vietnam also has its features and bugs. But this long piece of land has a unique (and sometimes painful) history. People of Vietnam are fighters. I saw the vendors working from 6 am until 1 in the night. Big cities are busy, street lanterns come alive as soon as the sun sets down, all the rivers and deltas are cruised by boats, scooters go through narrow gaps, fish is found and cultivated in most homes, and every place in Vietnam is more interesting than the previous one.
I am still overwhelmed by whatever I have seen. But I will put together the pictures, my travel notes, and the smaller shares I have done on social media throughout the journey and we will see from there.
I have had a lot of fun in Vietnam. I have learned a lot from the country and its people. And I look forward to returning to its mountains again, some day.
Also even though I know Vietnam is becoming crowded — some say it is the new Thailand — and prices are more and more volatile every day, who is to be blamed? People want to go out to see a new place. Locals need to earn to feed and educate their families. Governments want to strengthen their economy through tourism. But in all of this everyone forgets how to be careful, respectful, and sustainable and before we know things are out of our hands.
Like the Train Street in Hanoi. A train track passes through the train street. The track is flanked by homes on both sides. The lane became a tourist attraction when the travelers saw how families quickly moved away from the tracks to let a train go. One of those families opened up a cafe on the street. Other families followed en suite and before anyone could realize what was happening the train street was buzzing with cafes. Soon those cafes were filled with tourists all of whom were mesmerized to see how the owners had to move their chairs and tables and tourists and coffee mugs and soups as soon as a train honked at the other end. So more tourists arrived.
One day judging the complexity and the risk of the situation the local government shut the train street. Now I saw police and barricades on both sides of the street, all the cafes are ordered to shut, and travelers cannot go past the barricades.
The whole thing is debated here Hanoi Train Street Debate and you can read more on the matter. But all I want to say is that we don’t have to wait until things get out of hand. We should take decisions, plan infrastructure and modes of travels and construction of hotels and waste disposal and all of it when we either start something or we see things pick up. And then none of us would have to worry about over tourism, blocked streets, and cultures that don’t know what to do with a high influx of outsiders. But is it that easy?
Train Street, Hanoi. This is also an interesting account of a local working in the first cafe on the Hanoi Train Street.
Do you think Vietnam would be an interesting place to visit?
For this week’s letter,
quotes I love,
things to read,
and
things to watch.
Quotes I Love
“When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.”
― Margaret Atwood
“I’ve never cared for humming verse
But what to do inside a jail?
I’ll hum some verse to pass long days
I’ll hum and wait till freedom comes.”
― Hồ Chí Minh, Poems from the Prison Diary of Ho Chi Minh
“My friends aren’t those who agree with me all the time. My friends are those who have the courage and belief to tell me when they feel I am wrong. ” — Yours Truly
What I’ve Been Reading
I’ve not read as much as I usually do during my travels but here are two pieces relevant to Vietnam that I found interesting. I will share some books on Vietnam I have been reading in the next letter.
Beautiful reads from the week,
Hanoi Street Vendors from a Bygone Era — Hanoi street vendors that cannot be seen now.
Cranes, birds scared for Việt Nam, don't visit the Mekong Delta anymore. They visited in thousands every year. The war, climate change, burning of wetlands, rice cultivation, change in the habitat are reasons why they avoid the Mekong. Sad and avoidable!
What I’ve Been Watching/Listening
that’s worth mentioning
On the bus from Hoi An to Ninh Binh I watched the Delhi Crime series on Netflix and enjoyed it even though some parts of the show were heart-wrenching. I recommend this series to all those who love to watch crime dramas.
I also listened to the podcast episode of Tom Ferris with Jerry Seinfeld and got a lot of writing tips from Jerry. I would go as far as to say all those people who want to focus on a creative art or business or some other passion should listen to the show.
And for all my Wanderlusters.
I have shared many stories, thoughts, and pictures above. So closing in with just two more pictures.
the ubiquitous Vietnamese coffee
local women in the mountains in North Vietnam. Very close to the China border.
Thank you for reading.
I hope you have a great week ahead. Take plenty care of yourselves :)
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Yours,
Priyanka
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