Tag Archives: hanoi

Back to Vietnam

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Life happened, and I realized it’s been over a year since I last updated the blog. That’s especially egregious because I still have a few photos from Asia to share. After leaving Cambodia Sam and I embarked on what was probably the highlight of the trip: a motorbike adventure through northern Vietnam. This was one of our boldest moves – neither of us were comfortable on the bikes and we rode to places much less developed than where we spent most of the trip – but we were rewarded with truly breathtaking scenery. Photos can’t do it justice, but I’ll try anyways.

Thanks so much to Tom at Vietnam Coracle for the route – this never would have happened without him.

As a bonus, here are a few photos from our last days in Hanoi, where we ate more bun cha and took in some traditional Vietnamese music (by which I mean Japanese punk).

You know the chao ga (chicken porridge) will be good when the ground looks like this.
The bun cha at Bun Cha 34 – maybe one of the single best dishes on the planet.

Breakfast in Hanoi

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In the summer of 2012, I spent two weeks traveling through Vietnam with a group of Indiana University telecom students. The focus of the trip was filmmaking, but I tried to write as much as I could. I recently polished up an excerpt to use as a writing sample and liked it enough to share.

It’s just past 6am, and I’m enjoying my first morning in Hanoi. I’ve already been up for four hours filming a night market and it’s time for breakfast. I head back to the heart of the city and come across a small collection of chairs along the side of a busy road, where an older woman sits with several pots and thermoses of tea and coffee. Sipping strong green tea and looking out at Hoan Kiem Lake, I try to take in everything I’ve experienced in my first few hours in the city.

As I finish the tea and begin to walk back to my hotel, I remember hearing about a small market nearby. I veer off to search for it and come across another woman with another roadside collection of chairs. She’s selling pho, one of my favorite dishes in the world, and I decide to stop. Taking a seat on a plastic chair maybe eight inches off the ground, I order a bowl and prepare to eat.

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