The Night Market, Phú Quốc | Vietnam

All tourist cities in Vietnam have night markets, and they become boring after a while. It’s typically sketchy merchandise, sketchy street food, really aggressive vendors, swarms of locals who don’t have the same cultural norms about personal space . . .

I’ve become so unimpressed by them that I considered skipping the Phú Quốc night market, and I am so happy I didn’t! It is small but excellent. Of course there is junk for sale and some seafood that looks more dead than alive, but the good stuff here is really really good.

I wouldn’t buy pearls here, but there are huge natural shells for just a few bucks, the type decorators pay $40+ each for in New York. There are also tons of seafood options, though scams are the norm (do NOT believe the 20k BBQ signs, your meals will magically come out to $10-$15 per person)! The atmosphere is obviously a loud open air party type atmosphere.

The market supposedly opens 4:00PM - 11:00PM daily; I think 4 is a bit early and it’s better to go for dinner or just after. Weekends are best if you really want to experience the scene.

On google maps you’ll see many locations listed as Chợ Đêm Phú Quốc, or “night market” in a couple other languages, and think, well which one is it? The answer is, all of them. The spots on google maps loosely mark the perimeter. I would say the main drag is along Đường Bạch Đằng, but it stretches down side streets and wraps around a few blocks, with the local restaurants in Dương Đông participating too. If you’re taking a cab and want to get as close as possible, ask the driver to take you to the Cao Đài Temple. That’s about one block away from the action, which you will be able to plainly see.

There’s also old info online and a google maps spot for the Dinh Cau night market. This is not what you want! That’s just a couple daytime fruit sellers and a taxi stand. Have fun!

Phú Quốc Specialties, Part 2: Honey, Pepper, Fish Sauce & Crocodiles | Vietnam

1. Honey

The Phú Quốc bee farm was fabulous! The employees there give incredibly detailed tours of the hives and gardens; I learned more about the life cycle and roles of honey bees than I ever knew. Like the dog kennels, the owner’s first attempt was apparently a homicidal failure, with the indigenous mountain wasps feasting on hundreds of thousands of imported honey bees. They also initially overstretched in their attempts to build large, diverse fruit and flower gardens; though there’s nothing alive in the greenhouse, they have managed to maintain durian, pineapple, coconut and banana trees here and there.

Their specialty is infused honeys; my favorite was cinnamon, but the durian, pepper, ginger, flowers, and turmeric were all absolutely delicious. All of the honey here is raw, which is to say straight out of the honeycomb. I hadn’t realized that I was accustomed to pasteurized and sweetened honeys; the taste of fresh raw honey really is superior. They have a small restaurant where you can order teas and cocktails built around the honeys, and I swear it was one of the best cocktails I’ve ever had! I can’t see myself bothering to head out that way again solo, but wouldn’t hesitate to revisit with a friend.

2. Pepper

Like honey, pepper is such an everyday food that I previously considered them more or less interchangeable. Not so! Again, this fresh pepper was by far the best I’ve ever tasted. Phú Quốc pepper is actually a huge export, famous for being the best in the world; apparently they have the same plants as in India but a superior climate.

All Anglo diaspora tables are set with white salt and black pepper; being partially Sicilian I’m also used to using white or red pepper in specific dishes. It’s something that’s always matched a certain way, like wine: arrabbiata only uses red pepper and besciamella only white; they simply aren’t made any other way.

Having never given this any thought, I was truly surprised to learn that the red pepper flakes I know are in fact dried chilis, and red peppercorn is a totally different flavor, ripened and sweet. It’s the rarest pepper because timing the picking has to be just right, and it’s harder to dry than black and white pepper. Green, black, white, and red pepper are all from the same plants, the difference in color and flavor is due to the method of drying:

• Green pepper is harvested and dried in the shade before ripening. It tastes tart, not fully peppery.

• Black pepper is harvested when green peppercorns are just beginning to ripen and turn red. After 3 days of drying in the sun, the peppercorns turn black. This is baseline pepper flavor.

• White pepper is black pepper with the blackened skin removed. It tastes more mild than black pepper. The difference between black and white pepper is the difference between red and white wine.

• Red pepper is the rarest and most expensive, it is left to become fully red and ripe before being dried in the shade.

There are many pepper farms on Phú Quốc, but the Phú Quốc Countryside pepper farm has a wonderful English speaking owner and a little restaurant where you can order a pepper tea, their totally modern concoction. I actually really enjoyed it, it is perfect for gently clearing the sinuses if you are sick, or closing the appetite after a meal! They also sell pepper salt, each of the different types of pepper, jars of mixed peppercorns, and a pepper sauce that mixes pepper salt and fish sauce and is great for marinating BBQ or dipping fruit (for a more local flavor).

3. Fish Sauce

Fish sauce is another iconic export of Phú Quốc; it is ubiquitous in Vietnamese households and the most desirable types are exported all around the world. It is Vietnam’s first export to achieve EU PDO (product of designated origin) status. So, just as Champagne is strictly made from 6 types of grape grown and bottled within 100 miles of the Champagne region outside Paris (everything else is crémant), Phú Quốc fish sauce is made strictly from a rare species of anchovy (called Rice Fish) indigenous to the 22 island Phú Quốc archipelago, and bottled on the island (everything else is just fish sauce).

There’s not much to see at the fish sauce factory; gigantic vats of anchovies are pumped with brine and left to ferment. The brine recipe is 1 part salt, 2 parts water. After the first week, the fermented liquid is drained from the vats and then recirculated into them daily, to create consistency in the sauce. The vats are loosely covered with tarps; the lack of an airtight environment means that local weather affects the quality of the sauce. The rattan vats also impart a certain flavor; like whisky barrels, ancient vats are prized, and some are 200 years old.

Generally speaking, the longer the fish ferments, the more nitrogen rich it becomes, the less “fishy” it tastes, and the more expensive the sauce. However, according to the owner I spoke with, even with the same fermentation time and vat position, sauces from different years will have different amounts of nitrogen due to unpredictable weather; therefore some vintages are unexpectedly better than others and you just never know! Lastly, the local anchovies are becoming endangered due to overfishing and damage to their habitats, so great vintages are becoming rarer and more exclusive.

There is a grading system; the first extraction is the best, and subsequent extractions are diluted with salt water. So, the best you can buy is a bottle of the first extraction of a great vintage straight from the factory; the worst you could encounter would be last extraction, much diluted with seawater, blended with sauce made from other fish, and diluted again in a restaurant. In other words, the difference between a great vintage of Champagne and a minimart white wine spritzer. As with olive oil, the highest quality is typically reserved for dipping and used in luxury cooking, and the least expensive is consumed by the barrel in cheap restaurant kitchens.

4. Crocodiles

The last local industry I had to witness was the crocodile farm! Crocodile skin goods are a luxury product everywhere, but more accessible in Vietnam due to the farms being local. Don’t misunderstand; a small handbag will still cost you $700 here, just not $7000 like in Italy or Hong Kong, or $30,000+ like at Gucci, Chanel and Hermès. I am not morally against consuming animals, but I don’t want the animals I consume to live in misery, die in fear or experience torturous pain. So, I was very curious to see what was happening here.

Hundreds of crocodiles live here, with perhaps 20 to 40 grouped together in a pen. Their holds have a large concrete area for sunning and a large pool for swimming; they are drained and refilled on a schedule, and the crocs are fed on a schedule. In my opinion the pools should be drained and cleaned more frequently because they smelled bad (that’s clearly where the crocs defecate) but I just don’t know enough about it. The owner didn’t speak English so I couldn’t ask any questions.

None were displaying aggression; none had obvious health problems; all seemed well fed. When I walked by the first time, they all jumped in the water; after that they ignored me. Crocs are silent, they open their mouths to regulate their body temperature. They are fast runners as well as fast swimmers, and, I was surprised to see, cuddlers! They like to drape themselves on top of one another even when there is open space available.

A little research tells me lifespan on a farm is typically a year or two, and in the PETA videos of other Vietnamese farms, they are first electrocuted and then their throats are slit. According to reptile experts, it takes approximately an hour for a reptile to die with this method, so skinning them during this time is very cruel. It seems the current goal is to incapacitate them enough that they don’t hurt the workers while being slaughtered; for me it is an ethical imperative to render them unconscious prior to slaughter.

That said, I believe methods could easily be updated to a humane standard (like the one maintained by Cape Croco in South Africa) without any reduction in profit. I also think the banning of exotic skins by luxury houses panders to a naïve customer base that can’t afford them anyway. Do people honestly think the chickens and cows they eat lived marvelous lives? Brands will bring exotics back when designers or trends change. The current moratorium is just an excuse to cut a far less profitable, older segment of clientele, and perhaps gain some social currency to boot.

Phú Quốc Specialties, Part 1: Pearls, Dogs & Wine | Vietnam

Phú Quốc is a dreamy holiday island; its primary pleasures are warm shallow waters, lavender and cantaloupe sunsets, and fresh shellfish. However, there are also several unique island exports I found interesting! In fact, there are enough to warrant more than one post, so today I’ll focus on the three most expensive specialties: pearls, dogs, and wine.

1. Pearls

Called “the pearl island,” pearl farming is big business here. Any of the really large pearl jewelry shops have an extensive educational tour about types of pearls, culturing pearls, and timelines to grow different pearls. Unfortunately, it’s all part of a medium/high pressure sales pitch for their incredibly overpriced merchandise! And I don’t say that thinking everything should be cheaper just because I’m in Vietnam. On the contrary, at home in New York City I can buy the same type, color and diameter pearls, of equal or better quality, with14k or 18k settings (as opposed to sterling silver), for one third to one half the price.

That’s right, on this little island in Vietnam they are charging double or triple what I would pay at an auction house, estate jeweler, or local jeweler at home in Manhattan. If you only know the latest retail prices at Cartier or Tiffany, local prices ~might~ seem fair, but the designs are generic and inferior enough to void any value comparison. Perhaps perceived value is different for tourists from other places; I have no idea what pearls go for in Japan or Russia, for example. Maybe there’s a cultural difference I’m unaware of . . . do they expect people to offer half the ticket price and bargain from there? For anyone from the Americas or Western Europe, buying here would just be silly, so window shopping is an interesting afternoon activity at the price of feeling guilty for not purchasing.

2. Dogs

Another Phú Quốc specialty that I just don’t comprehend is the breeding and sale of indigenous ridgeback dogs. There are only three ridgeback breeds (Rhodesian, Thai, and Phú Quốc) and Phú Quốc’s is the most recently appreciated and rarest. In Hanoi and Saigon, specialty breeders and trainers pay $5000- $15,000 for the finest specimens, so I expected the home of the breed to have some specialized facilities for them.

I was unfortunately terribly mistaken. The lead breeder of the dogs seems to make his money off of $2 entrance fees charged to tourists, and locals betting on weekly races around a sort of obstacle course. I don’t know if dogs are routinely purchased here or if it’s more of a rescue/adoption type facility, but there didn’t seem to be high conformation standards. Also, while the obstacle course isn’t a harsh racetrack (it’s more of an agility course) the dogs I saw were not maintained well. They were all living outdoors, flea ridden, and I saw two with serious untreated conditions that I didn’t photograph for fear of getting kicked out (one with very advanced mange covering its entire body; the other limping with what seemed to be a broken lower leg bone).

When I did a bit more research on the owner, I found that his first attempt at a kennel ended in literally all of his dogs dying, which he attributed to his ignorance of how to maintain their health in a forest facility. Needless to say, he isn’t well respected. The dogs seem well fed and genuinely loved, and I do appreciate that just a generation ago many of them might have been a birthday dinner, so they’re doing relatively well . . . but it was still tough to witness. They really need a vet.

3. Wine

The last luxury specialty I want to mention today is wine. At the Simson factory, you can visit the gardens and see how sim, noni, myrtle, and seahorse wines are made. Before visiting I didn’t even know what sim and noni fruits were, I had never seen either before. And of course I know what a seahorse is, but never dreamed people would make wine with them. It’s all impossibly exotic! Their “wine” is what we would consider liquor (with 30%+ alcohol content), but they also sell nonalcoholic syrups; you can also buy sim and noni slushies, ice cream, and candies.

As for taste, it’s all sort of a lark over ice cream or frozen yogurt or mixed with tonic water. They tasted fine but I wouldn’t seek them out for repurchase. Though I didn’t fall in love with anything, I can understand how a local would nostalgically relish them; they certainly taste as good as Campari or Pastis.

Cội Nguồn Museum, Phú Quốc | Vietnam

There are few places I enjoy more than a musty dusty old museum! One of the joys of Vietnam is that every reasonably sized city seems to have one. They invariably feature prehistoric artifacts, local fauna preserved in formaldehyde, antique porcelain, some wartime paraphernalia, a gallery of portraits of the local Communist Party chairmen over the past 20+ years, and a display on local industries.

Phú Quốc’s “local museum” seems to be owned/run by the owner of the hotel next door, and has obviously been invested with so much care from the community. It is incredibly thorough, with jars of sand from every beach on the island, slices of wood from every type of tree in the forest, skeletons and skulls of rare and extinct local species, etc.

The artful displays and layouts wind you upstairs chronologically, from the natural history and wonders of Phú Quốc on the first floor, to Stone Age tools and artifacts, a thousand years of ceramic examples, and the history of local rule and religion during the various dynasties on the second floor, to community displays on locally prominent families, current commercial specialties and government leadership on the third floor. Tucked away in a corner case are the traditional procession costumes used for the holidays.

The big, airy, quiet building provides respite from the heat and sun; the entry ticket is less than $1. There’s also an extensive gift shop of handmade local products. It’s a wonderful place to spend an hour or so!

Coconut Prison, Phú Quốc| Vietnam

Some places make you want to scream and cry, and the “Coconut Prison” is one of them. As an American, my concept of serving time is: of course you better watch your mouth and watch your back, and you may endure abuse anyway; but you are assured of medical care, a roof over your head, a pillow, clean clothes, two meals a day, a flushing toilet, a regular shower, visiting days, perhaps even a library or cable TV. It’s a lot more than free, poor, non-criminal Americans get treated to by our government.

Coconut Prison, built by the French halfway into the first Indochina War, was purportedly a POW camp run by a signatory of very recently updated Geneva Conventions. In other words, conditions here should have been equal to or better than those in present day America. In fact, this place can only be described as a torture camp, where every prisoner was horrifically and systematically abused in body and mind, with the explicit goal of preventing their ever again serving as an enemy combatant. Both incidental and prescribed deaths were common; out of over 40,000 prisoners, approximately 10% died here.

After the French left, the prison was run by ARVN and US troops until Vietnamese reunification was achieved in 1975. I was aware that POWs and political dissidents were tortured by both sides, but not even my visit to the Hỏa Lò Prison in Hanoi prepared me to learn about the heinous tortures used here. They have displays on: electrocution; clubbing out teeth and breaking jaws; nailing limbs and hacking off limbs; tiger cages; katso boxes (which I’d never heard before; “hot box” was the WW2 term my grandfather used); boiling and roasting prisoners; an awful torture involving somersaulting on a jagged metal plate . . . there were undoubtedly more that I didn’t notice or don’t recall; one can only process so much. Of course, this was all in addition to the requisite beatings and starvation.

There’s also a display on how a few prisoners managed to escape, a miracle given how heavily patrolled the camp, beaches and island were. Also, this island is not close to the mainland; even if an escapee managed to travel on foot, undetected, to the north end of the island (a 2-3 day walk), no rowboat or raft could get them to Cambodia. Escaping here meant surviving in the mountainous jungle, possibly alone, for years.

As terrible as this place is, it’s so essential that a piece of it is preserved for posterity. I cannot understand how anyone can be OK with torture, or even war more generally. Unless you are necessarily defending yourself (not your friends, economic interests or ideologies), there is no justification for war. A visit to Vietnam today reveals the toothlessness of the Communist boogeyman Americans battled for over 20 years. People and politics change all the time, and life is short! I think of my father: he was lucky enough to draw 365 in the draft for Vietnam, but still died before I was eight years old. As far as I know, he never saw the world beyond the East Coast of the US. How many young people lost their lives, or were irretrievably broken, before they had a chance to live at all? For what?

Hội An Street Food | Vietnam

I typically shy away from street food. Of course the hygiene is questionable relative to a restaurant . . . Where does the server wash their hands, particularly after using the restroom? How are they washing utensils? Also, as a Westerner, any stand without posted prices will charge me much more than a local: walking in Hội An Old Town with my Vietnamese friends, a serving of anything is 15,000 dong; on my own, it’s 30,000 or 40,000. For reference, a sit down meal can be bought at a non-tourist restaurant for 35,000.

Even when I’m willing to risk my health and accept being scammed in the name of experiencing local culture, the element that typically makes me skip street food is the street itself: squatting at exhaust pipe height amongst chainsmoking locals, trash bags piled around every tree and sometimes burning in the street, is enough to make me feel ill before eating at all. The setting makes it pretty difficult to appreciate good flavors, and anything aggressively pungent can quickly become nauseating.

I was recently willing to give street food a chance in Hội An, because this discomfort factor has been mitigated by the Covid pandemic. Nine months after borders closed, and less than a month after several severe floods, this extremely tourist reliant town is dead, hands down the quietest of any I’ve visited in the country. There is no crowding and very little traffic; I could easily take my street food, walk a block and eat quietly in front of a boarded up museum, without aggressive scooter drivers or souvenir hawkers bothering me.

Hội An is also particularly well known for its local specialties, and with no tourists the street food is currently in its totally authentic state (sometimes food served to white people in tourist areas is prepared extra bland, extra sweet, or drowned in soy sauce, which obviously doesn’t appeal).

Spoiler alert: I still greatly prefer restaurants, and I’ll cover the best restaurants and must-try local dishes of Hội An in a separate post. Still, there is such vlogger/blogger/foodie fervor over Vietnamese street food that I’m glad I tried a lot of it.

I have 4 ‘ratings’:

• Yuck

• Meh

• Would Eat Again

• Wow

Here are my thoughts!

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Bánh Bột Lọc

MEH.

These tiny dumplings have stretchy, tasteless rice wrappers and are filled with either a tiny, unshelled shrimp (you eat the head, tail and all, for a crunchy effect) or a lump of meat paste that I later learned was pork but was honestly indiscernible to me by taste alone. These were boring and made edible solely by the generous topping of fish sauce, chili jam and fried onions.

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Bánh Xoài

MEH.

These are the infamous mango-free “mango cakes”: thick, glutinous rice balls dusted in powdered sugar or flour (very mochi-like) and filled with roughly ground peanuts, granulated sugar, and a bit of cinnamon if you’re lucky. If Bánh Mì is the Việt equivalent of a breakfast sandwich, these are Việt donuts: you snag one or two and eat them standing up on the corner, coffee (or tea) in the other hand, regretting it more with every bite. The sugar is so rough that I was genuinely concerned about cracking a tooth! And dare I say they don’t look like mangoes either?

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Chè Bắp

would eat again.

There are about a trillion kinds of chè; the wikipedia page is quite illustrative if you are curious. The most common is definitely Chè Bắp, a corn and tapioca starch pudding drizzled with coconut cream. It’s served hot and cold, and is tasty both ways. It’s sweet, but not too sweet, and was good enough for me to experiment with some other types of chè . . .

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Chè Thịt Quay

WOULD EAT AGAIN.

These are small glutinous rice balls filled with tiny bits of roasted pork, floating in a hot sugary broth seasoned with sesame, ginger and sometimes cinnamon. The contrast of sweet and salty is great; this reminds me of the flavors in a traditional moon cake.

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Chè Hạt Sen

Would eat again.

To me, the least interesting types of chè are those served with jellies over ice. However, I approach my food listicles as a completionist, and these were clearly the most popular versions. I heard somewhere that lotus seed chè was trendy cuisine in the 19th c. Imperial City, which is almost correct: the imperial chè was actually lotus seed stuffed longans in vanilla and jasmine flower soup (needless to say, too expensive and time consuming for street vendors to bother with). I still really enjoyed my poor man’s version, which was a nice balance of sweet and starchy. As the ice melted into the syrup, it became a really refreshing drink. It opened my mind to the various bean iterations on offer . . .

It’s official: I’m a chè convert.

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Đậu Hũ 

Meh.

Đậu Hũ, Đậu Phũ, Tào phớ and Tàu phớ are all transliterations of “tofu”, and refer to the same dish. The dessert features a slightly sweet soy custard topped with oversweet runny caramel syrup, miscellaneous jellies, and occasionally a spoonful of chè (the above pictured has chè đậu xanh, or mung bean pudding) or shaved coconut. It’s served either hot or over ice. It’s so pretty that I really wanted to like it. It also tasted so familiar, so nostalgic, that I bought it from three different vendors despite not really liking it, trying to place it . . .

Flan. It’s the mediocre flan your second generation Puerto Rican aunt would bring to your birthday party and everyone ate because she tried and she’s an RN and no one is good at everything so be nice! A forgettable prelude to the Carvel cake. My favorite was Fudgie the Whale. Also, this could be a lot better with half-frozen berries on top instead of almost flavorless jellies. Anyway . . .

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Bánh Tráng Nướng

Wow.

Your choice of seasoned dried beef, shrimp or chicken (I chose shrimp and chicken) are layered with green onions atop a thin fermented rice shell. The heat is turned on, a quail egg is cracked on top and cooks as it flows into and blends the other ingredients, and the whole thing is finished with a drizzle each of mayo and chili sauce. If you’re sitting down to eat it’s served open faced; if you get it to go it will be folded over, quickly flipped and handed to you in a paper pocket. Yet another Việt street food with a hmmm . .. kinda I guess? English nickname, this is commonly referred to as ‘Vietnamese pizza”. It’s much closer to a tostada, in my opinion. Delicious!

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Bánh Khọt

Wow.

Dung is the place in town to go for bánh khọt, with foodies and locals packing her stand all day. She also has two employees frying and packing the shells for wholesale to restaurants. The shells are made of rice flour, corn starch, and coconut milk, tinged yellow with turmeric, and fried in a griddle. The filling is typically fried egg, and deluxe versions can include a shrimp or shredded chicken. The whole thing is topped off with fresh veggies, and enough nước mắm pha to make a soup at the bottom of the bowl. This meal gives the satisfaction of fried food, but I find it much less heavy and oily than bánh xèo. Dung doesn’t serve shrimp or chicken, but tops her dish off with a generous slice of fried pork, for a salty/sweet contrast and a really filling meal.

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Xí Mà

Would eat again.

This sweet black soup is surprisingly elusive. It’s served by one family only; they grow sesame plants in their garden and make the soup with water from the Bá Lễ well, which is only a few steps from their home. It’s served to tourists as part of a cooking demonstration in their kitchen, and to locals on the sidewalk across from the Catholic Church.

It’s considered a special occasion when the octogenarians (who started selling the soup 50 years ago) get out on the sidewalk and sell themselves; it’s usually the younger generation who will do it now. The simplicity of this soup and it’s low price (10,000 dong/bowl) have made it a popular local breakfast for many years. I like it enough to buy if the family is out that day and I happen past, but not enough to look and look for it on different days, at different times, many days in a row, as I had to.

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Trái Cây

Wow.

Probably the healthiest street food ever, fruit cups are simple: pick your fruit (mango, guava, watermelon, avocado, dragonfruit, pineapple, etc.) then choose sweet or spicy. Sweet is dressed with a drizzle of chocolate or caramel syrup; spicy is dressed with a red pepper or chili based syrup, then shaken. My favorite (pictured here) is spicy mango.

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Bánh Dừa Nướng

Would eat again.

These are French crèpes in a different shape; it’s the exact same taste and texture, but instead of the folded envelope/cone I’m used to, the dough was artfully shaped into a sort of clamshell. The filling is shaved coconut, toasted peanuts and a bit of chocolate syrup; nothing special, but satisfying nonetheless if you like sweets.

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Kem Khói Hàn Quốc

Yuck.

Hàn Quốc means Korean, and this dessert is definitely as flashy and trendy as everything else that seems to filter down to Vietnam from Kpop culture. I had to look up what exactly this is, because it wasn’t ice cream as advertised! Truly light as air, fried yet completely flavorless, the brightly dyed balls are drizzled with chocolate syrup and disgustingly sweet strawberry flavored syrup. Then, the whole thing is sprayed with liquid nitrogen, instantly freezing it and creating the smoke effect.

If you eat it before the smoke dissipates, the smoke will come out of your nose and mouth while you eat and breathe, so this is marketed as ‘dragon’s breath ice cream.’ It looks cool, but could look a lot better with more sophisticated shapes and colors. It tastes awful; all I could taste was the saccharine over-sweetness of the fake strawberry syrup. I was done after 3 or 4 balls, but it still left my mouth feeling numb and coated. This is more an edible toy for children and Instagrammers than food.

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Khoai Tây

Meh.

These seemed to be the least popular option in the tourist area and the most common option in the non-tourist area, so I was curious. They’re grilled cakes of mashed sweet potatoes mixed with a few small bits of banana, coconut, or green beans. They don’t taste great and they don’t taste bad; they really don’t taste much different than the rinsed and grilled whole sweet potatoes you can buy for the same price three feet away.

They would taste a lot better deep fried, or at least buttered before they were grilled; they could really take off with both bigger bits of fruit and more creative choices, like pineapple, or caramelized peppers and onions, or blueberries. However, these are an old-fashioned subsistence food for locals who need to eat on $1-2/day, not an experimental foodie culture item.

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Where to Buy Street Food

Street food is truly ubiquitous in Hội An; I genuinely don’t think you could walk down a single block without passing a vendor. If you have as little as 20,000 dong (less than $1) you will not go hungry here. It’s sometimes difficult to find the same vendor twice because most will rotate within the same couple blocks just for variety, and others get shuffled off their corners every now and then by police officers cracking down on unlicensed sellers. However, if you are looking to try a large variety of foods without walking too far, these are the hubs:

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All Hours:

Châu Thượng Văn, for the whole block north of the Bridge of Lights, is packed with sellers at all hours; they spread out heading towards the Japanese covered bridge along the river, and stretch west along Trần Phú for a few blocks before turning northwards on Lê Lợi for a block or two.

Early Morning Only:

Chợ Hội An (the Hoi An market) has a really large indoor food court where local specialties are sold to locals (so extremely authentic foods and a lot of variety). However, it empties out after 10 AM, with 3/4 of the sellers going home, and by noon it’s just a few local businessmen eating lunch. On the north front of the market, and for a couple blocks of Trần Phú on either side of the entrance, are many more sellers.

Evening Only:

On An Hội island (across the Thu Bồn river from the old town) there is a nightly evening market on 2-3 blocks of Nguyễn Hoàng. They sell the local classics as well as more modern sweet treats like Nutella pancakes. There are also a couple bars here with live music and a nice evening scene. Things start up around 7:00 PM.

Phát Diệm Cathedral | Vietnam

In The Quiet American (a book all expats in Vietnam are obligated to read, it seems), Graham Greene describes an early 1950s procession at Phát Diệm Cathedral:

“Past the white statue of the sacred heart that stood on an island in the little lake before the cathedral, under the bell tower with spreading oriental wings and into the carved wooden cathedral, with its gigantic pillars formed out of single trees, and the scarlet lacquerwork of the altar, more Buddhist than Christian . . .”

Thankfully, the cathedral wasn’t significantly damaged in the ensuing 20 years of war, and stands today exactly as described, a unique monument to Catholicism in Vietnam. Built between 1875 and 1899, one might assume the cathedral was constructed as part of French colonization efforts; in fact, it is entirely the work of an already long established local Catholic community.

Jesuit missionaries, primarily from Portugal and Japan, first built small communities of converts in North and Central Vietnam in the mid-16th century. Soon, French and Spanish Jesuit and Dominican missionaries entered the fray. By the early 1600s, Catholicism had gained enough of a foothold to make ‘toleration of Christianity’ a political issue. In 1630 Trịnh lord Trịnh Trang decreed from Đông Kinh that the French Jesuit mission (led by Father de Rhodes, the inventor of the modern Vietnamese alphabet using modified European letters) represented a threat to Vietnamese society, and expelled it from court and country (or Đàng Ngoài, at least). Throughout the north, Trịnh sanctioned pogroms in Catholic communities were regularly used to limit Catholic influence and expansion.

The Nguyễn lords in central and south Vietnam (Đàng Trong) were more tolerant of Catholic missionaries, because unlike the Trịnh (who purchased their artillery from Holland and England), they relied on Catholic Portugal to supply cannons. Nevertheless, ten thousand Catholics were martyred during the Tây Sơn rebellion (which temporarily bested both Trịnh and Nguyễn dynasties from 1778 to 1802). These local Catholics were both specifically targeted as traitorous collaborators with Nguyễn Ánh, and more broadly scapegoated as harbingers of Vietnamese colonization.

The Nguyễn dynasty relied on Catholic missionaries to arrange for European cannons and soldiers to put down the Tây Sơn rebellion, defeat the Trịnh, unify Vietnam, and conquer most of Cambodia. This was done by 1802, and as long as Nguyễn Ánh (installed in Huế as Emperor Gia Long) lived, Catholicism spread unchecked. At the time of his death in 1820, 4% of the Vietnamese population, including his firstborn son, had converted. However, Emperor Gia Long saw this tolerance as the repayment of a personal debt of gratitude, not a purposeful theological or philosophical expansion beyond Buddhism and Confucianism. So, he skipped over his firstborn to make a strictly Confucian and isolationist son, Minh Mạng, his successor.

Emperor Minh Mạng expelled and banned all missionaries just 5 years later, in 1825. He went as far as inspecting French merchant ships for non-sailors, banning French and Spanish interpreters from working, requiring all priests to gather at Đà Nẵng and henceforth depart, and executing those who would not. It’s important to note that these efforts weren’t specifically anti-French nor even particularly anti-Catholic, Minh Mạng simply shunned all Western influence and contact, also denying British and American overtures. Unlike his father, he preferred fighting Siam and Qing unaided to accepting foreign influence alongside foreign weapons.

It’s possible that Emperor Gia Long’s suspicions weren’t misplaced, or perhaps they acted solely out of desperation to survive, but in 1833 two thousand Vietnamese Catholic troops led by Father Nguyễn Văn Tâm rebelled against Minh Mạng, holding Saigon for two years while attempting to fight northwards and install Prince Cảnh (Gia Long’s firstborn) as a Catholic emperor. Though that particular effort failed, Vietnamese Catholics collaborated with French colonizers and fought against Nguyễn armies from the 1850s through the 1880s, and were rewarded with government jobs and formerly royal lands after France’s success.

Of course, just as the Nguyễn dynasty had come to perceive their Catholic allies as dangerous interlopers within a single generation, so did the French. This is the generation, from 1875 to 1899, when Phát Diệm Cathedral was constructed: when Vietnamese Catholics were still proudly reaping what they had sown, and only beginning to perceive their privilege would not outlive their usefulness. Though European elements were inevitably incorporated, the architecture here was never intended to imitate foreign churches, and the bishops here were never foreign born.

A Catholic never gained the Annamite throne; the French considered it more useful for the puppet emperors to remain Buddhist and Confucian, thereby appeasing the majority of Vietnamese. And France itself had just buried its last monarch (the defeated and exiled Napoléon III) in 1873, finally and permanently transitioning to Republicanism.

The nun who showed me around was a young woman named Rose, and she was earnest in her beliefs, an intellectual, eager to learn the English names for everything (I supplied ‘sacred heart’, ‘immaculate heart of Mary’, ‘order of nuns’, and ‘stations of the cross’, among others I forget). She hoped to eventually be deployed to Europe or America or elsewhere she could see our cathedrals and hear our masses. She showed me how to ring their bell, which doesn’t have ropes; you strike it on one side with a wooden log in the manner of Buddhist temple bells. She showed me how the columns of the church were made of massive ironwood trees, in the manner of Vietnamese traditional houses; how the gongs are sounded to begin processions (where in the West, a table bell serves); how the angels’ faces had been carved and painted to reflect the local Catholic population at the time: 11 cherubim with Asian features, one with European.

The priest who oversaw the cathedral’s construction is buried in its courtyard, with a carved stone dragon bed fronting his grave in the manner of Vietnamese emperors. The clouds painted on the ceiling are in the Asian curlicue style; the prayers overheard from the chapels are loud, uniform, continuous and monotone chants in the Buddhist manner, not the singsong intermittent mumbles of the West. In the West, three doors on the front of a church are for the convenience of getting people into the building, nothing more; here they are made in the Confucian tradition, so scholars can enter on the left, military men on the right; or women on the left and men on the right; or students on the left, teachers on the right, etc. The more you know about both temple and church architecture, the better you can appreciate the incredibly special blend of this place.

Part of the Kim Sơn rural coast district, Phát Diệm is approximately a 45 minute drive from Ninh Binh city (about $20 on Grab) and so worth it. If you have some hours to explore, the village has several small old churches and restaurants serving local seafood specialties.

Hanoi Craft Villages | Vietnam

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According to Voice of Vietnam, within a two hours’ drive of Hanoi are 1350 craft villages, where families have passed down local artisanal skills for hundreds of years.

The most famous among them are:

• Bát Tràng Pottery

• Vạn Phúc Silk

• Đông Hồ Woodcut Painting

• Làng Vân Rice Wine

• Non Nước Stone Carving

• Ngũ Xã Bronze Casting

• Phú Vinh Rattan and Bamboo Weaving

• Đào Xá Traditional Musical Instruments

• Quất Động Embroidery

• Định Công Jewelry

• Chuông Conical Hat

• Chàng Sơn Carpentry & Fan

As a lover of material culture, I very much wanted to visit at least a few. Based on my current shopping interests, I ended up choosing Đồng Kỵ wood carving, Hạ Thái lacquer, Chuyên Mỹ mother of pearl inlay, Quất Động embroidery, and Bát Tràng pottery.

I paid a local tour guide $100 to drive me around to all five villages in one day. I do think it’s possible to do it on your own and have the same experience if you are comfortable on a motorbike; my tour guide had clearly not prepared anything special and we were more or less successfully walking in on craftspeople at work during the week. That said, if you plan on Grab taxi-ing it (like I would have otherwise done), even a sort of incompetent tour guide is more efficient, less stressful, costs the same, and you have someone to translate if you want to buy something.

Speaking of shopping, I didn’t do any. I was fully prepared to spend hundreds on something special, but didn’t see anything. The villagers were mostly working to fill large, expensive, local, custom orders; what they had on offer at retail didn’t appeal. I’ve always noticed that Hanoi souvenir shops and galleries have heaps of the few same uninspiring wares. There seems to be no effort whatsoever to understand what tourists would buy. I wondered if the craft villages were really where these unremarkable things are made, and that seems to be the case.

Once upon a time I owned a designer vintage shop, and recently I’ve been bitten by the retail bug again. The world has changed so much since I was in the game 15 years ago! Now, businesses can survive solely on social media. I’ve been toying with the idea of selling triple bottom line products I source as I travel.

I believe there is potential in these villages to transform heritage savoir faire into modern luxury product, if I could find a local partner to handle communication and logistics. However, it would have to be built from absolute scratch; there is currently zero supply chain infrastructure in place. I also have zero capital, so it would be a slow and painful bootstrapping venture. Le sigh! I’ll get there eventually.

Heritage House, Hanoi | Vietnam

At 87 Phố Mã Mây, the ‘Heritage House’ or ‘Ancient House’ is possibly the best preserved 19th century “tube house” in Hanoi. The tube house is a layout unique to Hanoi; it consists of a front house for retail and a back house for living, separated by a courtyard.

Through the 17th and 18th centuries, the wealthy built even further back, with a second courtyard, a second back house, and often a small yard, gate, and back entrance, in the manner of temples. As Hanoi became more densely populated in the 19th century, the wealthy started building upwards, constructing front and back houses with two or even three floors each, often joined by balconies.

This was the prevailing style well through the mid 20th century, when wartime and communism saw houses confiscated and subdivided. Until the 1990s, whole families typically lived in what used to be a single room; 5 different families simultaneously occupied 87 Phố Mã Mây until 1999.

Nowadays, the front and back houses of old properties have often been divided and sold separately. Former courtyards have become communal gardens/parking spots, accessible via very narrow alleys. New construction goes solely upward, with 5 and even 6 floor walkup townhouses being the norm. Outdoor space is incorporated in the form of roof decks and balconies, not courtyards.

a typical surviving tube house: divided and surrounded by modern construction

In addition to the layout, the architectural details at 87 Phố Mã Mây are compelling: unlike many other houses of the era, they incorporate no French colonial influence. The windows onto the street are very small and privacy preserving, while within the house full length shutters and shades open rooms completely to the outdoors. Each set of doors is an odd number of spans, and each threshold is raised, respecting traditional ideas about controlling the flow of good and bad energy in domestic spaces. The roofs are gabled and saltbox, oriented perpendicular to the Western norm.

The final point of interest in the house is the décor. The house has been fitted out with era appropriate furniture and decorative objects, and a small collection of historic ceramics. Aesthetically, the objects are strongly southern Chinese: over thousands of years and intermittent centuries of domination, the two areas have traditionally been much more culturally, linguistically and ethnically fluid than they are today.

The land border between Vietnam and China wasn’t formalized until the 1885 Treaty of Tientsin concluded the Sino-French War; to this day the Chinese name for Vietnam is 越南, meaning ‘South Canton.’ More regrettably, the maritime boundaries between the two countries remain undefined, and are currently an issue of dangerous political, economic and environmental contention.

The house dates to right around the time of the handover from China to France, and I only noticed the odd European or European style antique in the house, like the Thonet type coat rack.

If you know a bit about Vietnamese religion and Chinese symbolism, the meaning of the décor is more engaging. The Vietnamese practice a mixture of Buddhism, Animism and Ancestor Worship; in every house and business there is a shrine where offerings to ancestors are made, incense is burned, and prayers are said. Older, larger, and wealthier houses like this often have a dedicated room with a full size altar; casual businesses or studio apartments will have something shoebox sized just inside the front door or on a shelf in a corner. The scrolls here depict a catfish and peacock: In Chinese, fish is a homophone for affluence, and the thousand-eye tail of the peacock makes it a symbol of protection.

There are also two sets of Fu Lou Shou in the house, one in the altar room and another in the bedroom. San Xing are the three star gods; they are not worshipped, they are just auspicious to keep in the home for believers in feng shui. Fu, Lu and Shou are the gods of good luck, wealth and longevity respectively. They predate and arguably relate to the Christian concept of the Three Wise Men.

In the living areas, characteristically Vietnamese lifestyle goods are included: lacquer betel boxes sit atop a wardrobe; water pipes rest on a low table. If you are familiar with Asian porcelain and ceramics, you will be able to spot regional wares between 150 and 600 years old: I spotted Champa shipwreck, 18th century Bát Tràng, celadon, and contemporaneous rose medallion pieces, among others.

In addition to the house museum, there’s a gift shop selling expensive souvenirs and, more importantly, excellent and cheap books on Hanoian history and culture, in English and French, from Thế Giới Publishers. They inexplicably do not distribute outside of Vietnam, though they seem to be the dominant publishing house in Hanoi and their guides are the best I’ve encountered (ultra short, narrowly focused, date and fact rich). If you are interested in understanding the culture and history of Hanoi and Vietnam more deeply than the average tourist, I highly recommend buying as many of their books as possible (they are just $1-2 each) and reading them at leisure.

The entrance fee here is less than 50 cents, well worth it in my opinion!

Đường Lâm Ancient Village | Vietnam

Approximately an hour’s drive west of Hanoi, Đường Lâm “ancient village” is actually a group of five hamlets: Đoài Giáp, Cam Lâm, Cẩm Thịnh, Dông Sàng, and Mông Phụ. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the area was home to wealthy mandarins of the Later Lê dynasty. Designated a national relic by Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture & Information, strict building codes have ensured UNESCO award-winning historic preservation. Each hamlet is easy walking distance from the next, and either walking or bicycling is the best way to take in the scenery. The village is surrounded by land mostly in agricultural use, dotted with temples and relics.

So what are the hallmarks of an ancient Vietnamese village? A village gate, communal house, communal well, ancient banyan trees, and traditional houses made from local materials. Each hamlet in Duong Lam has all of these; buildings here have been made of laterite bricks and mud for at least the last 500 years. The houses here are considered the height of Vietnamese vernacular architecture, built and inhabited by local elites when emperors still ruled from Đông Kinh (modern day Hanoi; anglicized to Tonkin). The sayings of Confucius still line the rafters of the descendants of bureaucrats, carved in old Sino-Vietnamese characters; dragons curl down the columns of homes presently occupied by the kin of military leaders long gone.

Though almost a thousand such houses exist in the village, fewer than 10 are open to the public. They are all in Mong Phu hamlet, the largest of the five. In Vietnamese, nhà cổ means “old house,” and a google maps search for the term will reveal a few 300-400 year old houses to visit. Please note these are not museums; they are still very much in use, with many of the older folks using tours to make a little extra cash and alleviate boredom.

You are expected to be exceedingly polite, visit on their timeline, ask before taking any pictures, and buy whatever they’re selling in exchange for experiencing their home. This isn’t a bad thing! If not for trying to get my camera into some interesting buildings, I would have never tried the extremely good local rice wine, soy sauce, mung bean cakes or bánh tẻ (rice with mushroom or pork filling, wrapped in banana leaves). If Mrs. Qua or Mrs. Lan aren’t open or aren’t home or seem busy, don’t act surprised or entitled; this is their real life!

Though each hamlet has its own communal house, some have fallen into disrepair as both the population and median income of the village has shrunken considerably since its heyday. Mong Phu communal house is where the most important community events happen; it is a carefully restored and maintained 17th century structure with wonderful carvings. Mong Phu also has: an active market square where you can rent a bicycle or buy a conical hat or some tamarind for a snack; the only two coffee shops in the village; a minimart; and the only places to stay overnight— perhaps 4 homestays.

Mong Phu hamlet also features the best preservation, with picturesque laterite walls and streets. If you consider Café Lang the center of the village (and who doesn’t need a non-powder coffee some mornings), the rest of the sites and villages are in opposite directions. Heading northwest, you first pass the confusingly named Đền Phủ Thờ Bà Chúa Mía, which (though an incredibly lovely, beautifully maintained, and active 17th century shrine) is not as important as Chùa Mía, the far older shrine just a bit farther northwest.

Chùa Mía is undoubtedly the most historically and aesthetically significant pagoda in the area. Though the Cuu Pham Lien Hoa Tower dates from the 13th century, the temple complex buildings all date from the 1620s-30s. Lovingly maintained over the centuries, everything is original or a necessary replacement made with the original materials and methods. The bell was cast in the 1740s and the gong in the 1860s; the ancient banyan tree is the largest I’ve seen in Northern Vietnam.

Even more significant than the architecture is the collection of Buddhist statuary: 287 wooden, stone, bronze, and gold plated statues fill the shrine, most over 300 years old, and some exceedingly rare. The most famous statues include the 8 Arhats, Tuyet Son, Dharmapala, Vajrapanis, and Guan Yin.

Just next door is the Đình Làng Đông Sàng (Dong Sang communal house), which is also in good repair and current use; if you are interested in doing further temple hunting, even further northwest, but still walking or biking distance, are Đình Làng Cốc Thôn and Đình Cam Đà. The Cam Da communal house is of particular interest if you want to see what pre-renovation 17th century temples look like; it’s totally intact, but not in use.

Going southwest from Café Lang, you can either go through Mong Phu village or bypass it on the way to Đình Đoài Giáp, which is unfortunately terribly dilapidated. Continuing on the same road, the quite small and ancient Miếu Đông Thịnh is used by the community instead. Again continuing southwest, over a bridge and past rice fields, are the tombs of the two kings, Phùng Hưng (761-802) and Ngô Quyền (896-944).

Phùng Hưng famously overthrew the Tang Dynasty colonists in 791, ruled as a local king of the former Annam protectorate for 11 years, and was deified post mortem. Ngô Quyền more permanently ejected the Southern Han Dynasty in 938, founding the Ngô Dynasty. Though his dynasty only lasted for the twenty years of warfare following his death, Annam remained an independent monarchy under various dynasties, repelling Mongol and Champa invasions, before the Ming Dynasty recolonized in 1407. The Ngô Quyền tomb is particularly lovely as it is located on the water, in a park.

Duong Lam village can be done in a day, but I think it’s much more soothing to languish for a few days in the rural quiet, biking around, eating local food, and going to sleep early.