We descended into a misty dusk at Da Nang International Airport. After the Vietnamese border agents had scrutinized our visas and stamped our passports, we hopped in a cab for Hội An, where we’d be staying on the Thu Bồn River.

After gratefully accepting our hotel’s Happy Honeymoon welcome, we set out in search of food. I soon realized I’d need cash and quickly found an ATM. I’d thought the exchange rates in Cambodia were crazy, but Vietnam put that to shame; for just over $100 USD I extracted 3 million Vietnamese đồng.

I realize that saying our hotel was on the Thu Bồn River isn’t all that informative. I mean, just look at this map of the Thu Bồn River:

But specifically we were on the An Hội side of the river, from which – over the colorful lanterns and boats and bridges – we gazed over at the Old Town of Hội An.

I quickly located the street eats essentials, and no I don’t mean durian, which I’d wanted to try but never quite found the right time to. I mean a pork bánh mì washed down by the dueling beers of Hanoi and Saigon.

Ambient chatter and karaoke music filled the air. I completed my regional beer tour with a Larue, Corey had a sticky rice banana, and we enjoyed the sights and smells and sounds of this country that – to past generations of Americans – had a far more ominous association. Indeed I felt tranquil and given my limited experience, to truly grok this landscape as a scene of war would take an imagination far greater than mine.

Speaking of things I failed to grok – and I use this word only in the context originally intended by Robert Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land – I could not grok how the very streets we walked had, in my brother’s birth year of 1999, been up to my wife’s head in water. Neither could I grok why the bánh mì that I’d eaten was so much more delicious than any bánh mì I’ve had before or since. Of course the French deserve some credit for the bread, at least, but the biggest difference-maker had to have been the tenderness & seasoning of the pork.

Usually I don’t miss a morning coffee. Yet thanks to my Thai stomach bug, I’d gone four straight days of only tea. The timing felt too perfect once I learned about Vietnamese coffee. They use a different type of bean than all the coffee we generally consume in the West, the species Arabica. In my (to that point) 16 years of drinking coffee, I’d never heard of the bean Robusta, much less tasted it. So at our breakfast the next morning, was I excited for the dim sum? Yes. The beef pho? Absolutely. But the one thing I could not wait for, the thing I itched for, was a sip of Robusta coffee. And…

…it sucked.

Lounging around our hotel after breakfast

Yet I justified to myself: this is hotel coffee. Robusta can’t be judged in just one cup. Especially not when I walked around and saw the signs advertising all the different varieties: egg coffee, salt coffee, coconut coffee, … weasel [checks notes] coffee?

Yes, weasel coffee.

Well, I’d have to try that.

Besides, Robusta has twice the caffeine content of Arabica.

From our hotel we recreated our route of the prior night, but this time turned left to walk over the An Hội bridge into the old town. From that vista over the Thu Bồn we spied an even older bridge, the Chùa Cầu, constructed by Japanese merchants over 400 years ago.

Past Vietnamese merchants advertising old propaganda posters and under red flags featuring the yellow star of Vietnam side-by-side with a yellow hammer-and-sickle, we strolled until we arrived to Đường Phan Chu Trinh and the day’s main event for Corey.

We’d chosen Hội An in part because of its ubiquitous custom tailor shops. Upon entering one, we sat to discuss our options with three generations of women. First, Corey described what we wanted and they sketched it; next, they took our measurements; finally, we haggled over the price, which did not amuse the matriarch. It came out to the millions, which wasn’t exactly cheap even after converting to USD, despite being a deal compared to ordering custom clothes in the States.

Measurements done, we set out for my main event, which began at Lenco Cafe & Bar. There we joined a group of nine for a cocktail tour of the old town: two Brits about our age, a couple from Denver in their late-30s, two Atlantan girlfriends on sabbatical, older newlyweds from Scottsdale, and our guide – Tinh – purportedly both Vietnamese and Canadian.

Our first cocktail gave us “tastes of the jungle” according to Tinh, courtesy of the inedible purple bananas collected at the Laos-Vietnam border and distilled into a ‘rhum’ at that bar’s very own distillery. After being infused with rice wine and mixed with red dragonfruit, the drink was ready for the bar owner – an experienced mixologist from Da Nang’s restaurant scene – to present to us with a theatrical squeezing of Vietnamese orange into a flame.

“một hai ba dô!”

or rather: “moat hi bye yo!”

In-between sips we got to know our fellow travelers better. “I knew you were from Essex!” Corey exclaimed to Callum & Kayleigh, excited to meet IRL representatives of the pop culture icon.

The Coloradans Mason & Paige recounted their decision not to have kids: “honestly it was such a relief; we have so much time for ourselves and that’s what we really want.”

Linda told of her and Mark’s relationship history: “we’d dated for a long time but only recently got married… between us we have 5 kids.”

Corey had the most fun gabbing with Simone & Jahzara, one one ‘sabbatical’ from her corporate job while waiting to hear from law schools and the other on her way to med school to be a doctor.

Having finished up our mini-cakes of rice, egg, shrimp, papaya, and fish sauce, we took a short walk around the block to a small alleyway, past peering cats and into a courtyard where a man made lanterns in front of the tea house La.Kao.

There they welcomed us with cold classes of white tea, which Tinh characterized as “the Ferrari of tea,” as compared to the “Toyota of tea,” green tea.

Fear not, to mix with Evan Williams for our cocktails they used a “Lexus” level of green tea, which had been plucked from a tree even older than the Chùa Cầu bridge and on its 30th generation of caretakers.

Red and black tea, on the other hand, Tinh considers analogous to motorbikes. And why are motorbikes so ubiquitous throughout Vietnam? Because when the country had been poorer, people got around almost exclusively on bicycles. Now a bit richer, the people have upgraded to motorbikes, though that doesn’t stop them from riding as if they’re regular bicycles, weaving through pedestrians on the sidewalk as indiscriminately as they would cars on the street.

*With over 100 million people within an area of just 128k square miles, Vietnam is 8x more densely-populated than the United States.*

Done now with our buffalo jerky, sweet & sour apricots, & monk beans, we stepped out into the night. The sun had set, and now lanterns illuminated the streets.

Our next stop didn’t look like much: a small gate next to a taqueria. We walked through it into the dark and up some stairs to a Mexican-themed speakeasy above the restaurant. It had been founded by a former Mexican resident who’d been traveling with her Scottish husband to Hội An, which they’d loved so much that they stayed.

Our whole group loved this bar and its drink — las piernas — perhaps because of its Western theme. The cocktail itself fused Mexico (tequila & chili) with Vietnam (star anise).

For our final stop of the night — the Market Terrace — we were done with half-measures, going full-blown Vietnam with BYO pho cocktails, adding 4 herbs to the gin that had been infused with 7 spices. To my surprise, it did actually taste like the soup yet without being unpleasantly soupy.

After we’d made our own bánh tráng cuốn thịt nướng – placing wet rice paper on top of dry rice paper, adding herbs, and rolling it around a pork skewer and banana leaf to dip in peanut sauce – Tinh dove into what began as a history of Ho Chi Minh and the creation of modern Vietnam but got increasingly personal as he went on.

Tinh had been born in Saigon – a name that lives on if not on maps then through the mouths of locals – and after the war, due to the victorious communists’ suspicion of the southern locals’ Western sympathies, the ruling party put his dad, like many other southern Vietnamese men of his generation, in jail for “re-education.”

Every year of the twelve that Tinh’s father spent in prison, he got 1 day to visit his wife and family. In the fifth year, his wife got pregnant and gave birth to Tinh.

By that point, Tinh’s older brother had already left, fleeing Vietnam as one of the “boat people,” and despite the long odds he survived, making it to Malaysia where he lived in a refugee camp until Canada agreed to grant him asylum. Over a decade later, once it was finally safe for him to return to Vietnam, he returned to find his parents in the very same countryside house in which he’d grown up. And then Tinh’s brother brought the whole family to Canada, where the government granted them all residency and ultimately citizenship.

Tinh’s story felt like a part of The Sympathizer, a book I’d read a few months prior, come to life. Only, unlike Viet Thanh Nguyen, Tinh had returned to live in his birth country.

Corey & I capped the night at Miss Ly, where I’d been dying to try white rose dumplings, which I wolfed down along with fried wontons and vegetarian cao lầu.

The next morning we woke up early and with a guide and just one other tourist hopped on bicycles and rode into the countryside, past large water buffalo and through lush green fields of rice. Only up close could we see the small pink snail eggs that clung to some of the plants.

Across the Cầu Cẩm Kim, we found ourselves in the village of Kim Bồng, where we stopped for a lesson in making rice paper. They made virtually full utilization of their resources, using the rice husks as the fuel for the fire and then the ashes for fertilizer.

We tasted our creations along with some Indian bean tea, and then hopped back on our bikes, passing a group of schoolchildren who shouted “hello” in heavily-accented English; one even said to Corey “you’re so beautiful” as we slowed down to stop at Cafe Google.

Don’t be fooled by the name; they didn’t even have an English menu, and here my wait to understand Vietnamese coffee came to fruition with their Salt Coffee, a delicious creamy treat that put the hotel’s Robusta to shame.

*The most delicious coffee of our honeymoon*

Our countryside tour continued with witnessing aged artisans making bamboo mat beds, a trade they’d been doing all their lives and wouldn’t be passing down to their children, who’d moved to the cities in search of modern employment.

Down by the riverside, we arrived at a rice “wine” distillery. I say wine in quotes because this vintage was 40% alcohol. And if you didn’t think that that makes it unique, perhaps you’ll appreciate that it’s infused with animals.

And plants too. It would be fun enough just to taste them, but lucky me! — I not only got to taste them but had to guess which one I’d just tasted. I could usually get whether it was animal or plant, but don’t think I got any fully correct. I tried as many of the 21 as I could stomach: ginseng, forest berry, mulberry, cobra, scorpion, hibiscus, sticky rice, and their traditional sans flavor adds.

Back on our bikes we passed fish farms and a bar full of war vets singing karaoke. It felt so relaxed out here, the people just going about their daily lives. Unlike other countries I’d visited, Vietnam’s economy isn’t very reliant on tourism; rather it’s supported by its exports of tea, coffee, and rice.

By ferry we crossed the river again to get back to old town, where we dropped our bikes and walked to Madam Khanh: the Banh Mi Queen.

This edition of my new favorite sandwich featured elaborate fixings: veggies, pork, bbq pork, chicken, ham, eggs, pate, egg sauce, papaya, cucumber. Tasty as it was, something about the plain pork sandwich I’d had on our first night still stood out to me as – maybe not technically the best – but by far the most satisfying. A year later I still think about that sandwich, which inspired me to try to make banh mi at home; I did not succeed, but will try again, next time with pork belly.

We wrapped up our time in Hội An with massages, tailoring our custom clothes, and more eating & drinking. At Morning Glory I gorged on bánh cuốn & mì quảng with Huda beer.

Our final morning I tried Weasel Coffee; if you’re really curious you can look up how it’s made. Or just use your imagination. If I’m being honest, it didn’t hold a candle to Salt Coffee. And then we were off, back to the airport, for the final leg of our honeymoon journey.

We landed into a foggy twilight at the Hà Nội airport. That night we stayed in at our hotel, venturing onto thin walkways out into the West Lake for drinks at its Sunset Bar. An IHG sizzle reel played on repeat in the bar; it clearly featured worldwide destinations, but a mysterious old stone structure sitting in the middle of a lake captivated me. I wondered where in Asia it could be.

The next morning, after a bus picked us up, it made stops in the city center of Hanoi, and there my curiosity was sated as out my left window lay that very same stone structure: Turtle Tower, originally an emperor’s fishing site.

I’d gotten a black coffee from the Intercontinental’s cafe before we left, and after sipping it had to take off the lid to check they’d given me the correct order. My eyes belied my tongue: while the coffee was indeed black, it tasted milky. Now I understood why Westerners prefer the smooth taste of Arabica to Robusta.

From downtown Hanoi we crossed over the Red River and into the countryside. Two hours later, approaching the shore, we could see the limestone towers of Hạ Long Bay.

From the dock, we hopped into a ferry which took us between karst towers to the ship on which we’d spend the night. There we received the final romantic welcome of our honeymoon, not to be outdone by all the rest.

We settled in on our patio, where we curiously observed the approach of a small raft. As it got close, we could see the wares of beer and other refreshments that they offered at about a third of the price as our boat and conveyed to the deck via a small net. They and the other rafts got plenty of business.

In the afternoon we explored the dark & bright caves by kayak. While we didn’t see any of the endangered Cat Ba Langur monkeys that live around there, we did get to see plenty of stalagtites and nearly got lost in the maze of hidden lagoons.

February in the north of Vietnam isn’t quite as warm as February in Cambodia or Thailand or Singapore. Back on the ship, when our guide announced it was time for swimming, he got only two takers: myself and a Slovak dude who claimed it’s practically balmy compared to where he grew up. He lived up to his word, staying in far longer than I did.

We got to know him and his two travel companions better at the happy hour. They all grew up together in Slovakia but now live in London.

The boat staff, seeing we were getting along with the Slovaks, sat us all together for the dinner, where we downed numerous local beers and I learned about their jobs in Amazon logistics and their views on British immigration.

As a postgame we hung out with them and an older British couple, chatting away the hours as we attempted to catch squid, but only succeeded once with a very tiny guy.

At the crack of dawn, we woke to our guide Tom’s voice ringing out over the intercom. He could barely finish a sentence without trying to make a joke, and his periodic ship-wide announcements recalled Woody Harrelson’s drunken late night conversation with Dmitry in Triangle of Sadness.

That intercom reveille had been for those wanting to head ashore to explore Cat Ba island. Corey decided to keep sleeping the night off, so I went myself with the group onto the tender boat which took us ashore and then into a bus which drove us to Trung Trang cave in the middle of the island. I had to bend down to dodge the rocks hanging down from the ceiling.

We slept most of the way back to Hanoi, upon arrival to which we went straight to the Old Quarter for a meal at Hong Hoai’s: beef pho and bò cuốn lá lốt. Good as pho is, it didn’t beat that beef rolled in wild betel leaf and the build-your-own lettuce-and-rice-noodle wraps & fish sauce it came with.

Corey had an appointment at the beauty salon, so I walked off my meal by exploring the Old Quarter, taking a lap around the Hoàn Kiếm Lake and trying to get the perfect picture of the Turtle Tower, which I did not succeed in doing.

From my experience, you really can’t walk around Vietnam without encountering the hammer and sickle. Like in the small villages surrounding Hội An, those red flags – alternated with the Vietnamese national flag – hung over many sidewalks. It made me wonder what America would feature on a capitalist flag, if we had one. A fat cat holding a bitcoin?

My visit to Southeast Asia – and especially Vietnam – would not have been complete without riding on a motorcycle, so I pulled up Grab (their Uber) and hailed a ride. My driver arrived forthwith and I hopped on the back as we joined the swarms of motorbikes streaming through the city.

We hadn’t done any planning for Hanoi, but our Slovak friends had mentioned they were going to Train Street, which sounded interesting, so we headed in that direction. Walking on the tracks perhaps 20 minutes before the train would arrive, someone said hi to us from one of the bars. We turned and it wasn’t the Slovaks but rather someone else from our cruise — a gay couple we hadn’t talked to while on the boat.

We made up for it by talking quite a bit on Train Street. They invited us to sit with them, so we obliged and I ordered an egg beer, the flavors of which surprised me in how well they went together — the cream a nice textural contrast but not too sweet.

They both live in the Netherlands, one born Dutch and the other originally from Moldova. They confided that they’d sat right behind us at dinner on the boat and overheard much of our conversation with the Slovaks; while their curiosity hadn’t gotten the better of them on the boat, it did on train street, and we debriefed.

Corey and the younger guy got along especially well – bonding over their deep collective knowledge of pop music – so after the train had passed through and the tracks filled back up with pedestrians, we got drinks together at a speakeasy through which we had to pull on a fake book to enter.

After a few old fashioneds, we bid farewell, and they returned to their hotel to get some rest before flying to Hong Kong, from which they’d visit China proper. We wouldn’t be returning home either, despite this being the last night of our honeymoon.

We woke to a rainy final morning and took a short walk to the closest restaurant, where they made me an egg coffee (worth the wait) and a bánh xèo tôm bò, the perfect breakfast food: a savory rice crepe filled with vegetables and, in this case, shrimp. It’s hard to say what my favorite food was in Vietnam; there’s too many options: bánh mì, bánh cuốn, bò cuốn lá lốt. But this bánh xèo was certainly up there.

We relaxed in the hotel, too tired to do more exploring in the rain, until our time in the country was up. Back at the Hanoi airport, we waited for our flight to Bangkok that would connect us to an overnight flight to Istanbul, where we’d be living for the next three weeks. After eating a final bánh mì in the terminal, I reflected on the past three weeks: over the snowy mountains of Alaska to the futuristic supertrees of Singapore, through the waves of the Gulf of Thailand to the temples of Chiang Mai, into an ancient Khmer jungle and out of the swarms of Vietnamese motorbikes. On we’d go to the other side of the world’s largest continent, to the crossroads that separate East from West.

Thank you for reading! That brings a conclusion to our honeymoon in Southeast Asia. The blog will continue with the final two countries in which we lived during our 10 months abroad: Türkiye and Italy.

Sips from Saigon

Stones of Siem