Big Trip Day 136: We ❤️ Vietnam (Belatedly)
Hey friends,
The short version of this newsletter is: Vietnam rules. There, you can move on to your next email now. That pretty much covers it.
But if you want to keep going: oh man, Vietnam rules. After our mixed experience on Nias, we arrived in Hoi An with a deep and abiding desire to simply chill. And chill is exactly what we did: catching up on work, sleeping in, eating banh mi and drinking some of the most remarkable iced coffees we’ve ever had. We were warned that Hoi An is super touristy, but the truth is, we’re tourists! We are grateful for free internet, photogenic walking streets, and picture menus with English translations, and we received all those things in spades during our time in Vietnam.
The Vietnamese people we met were universally friendly, open, generous with their time, and patient with our variable levels of shared language. It’s especially impressive given the US’s history with Vietnam; many of the people we met were old enough to have grown up during the war, or during the following years of rationing and scarcity. Still, people were kind to us. Maybe it’s the power of the dollar, or maybe it’s a master class in forgive but don’t forget. Either way, we were grateful.
We left Indonesia because our visas were expiring; we went to Vietnam primarily, and sort of hilariously, for suits. Hoi An in particular is known as the city of tailors — thousands of them work in the city — and it’s world famous as a destination for super affordable made-to-measure clothes. With our wedding coming up in fall of 2025 (yes, it’s far away, but we’ll be traveling until this winter anyways!) we’re both thinking about what the heck to wear. We started our time in Hoi An figuring we might both get wedding outfits made; in the end, I got overwhelmed by choices and Justin, the more resilient clothing shopper of the two of us, left Hoi An with not one, not two, but three custom suits!
This means that next time you see Justin, you should expect him to be dressed for a formal affair regardless of the circumstances. It also means that we now know a lot more about men’s suiting than we did a few weeks ago!
We went to Yaly Tailor, one of the big names in Hoi An, because they had a better fabric selection than the smaller shops. Our assistant Natasha was extremely patient through our nine (literally, nine) fittings. Starting on our second day in Hoi An, we went to the tailor every day (sometimes twice a day) until they fit perfectly. Justin spent most of his time inside Yaly looking like he was getting a root canal, but in the end the suits turned out amazing, and stoke is high!
If you ever find yourself in Hoi An getting clothing made, here’s the advice we wish we had: you need to have a really strong opinion about what you want, and I mean exactly what you want, in order to get the most of the tailoring experience. You have to know how you want the suit to fit everywhere, what kind of pockets and lapels, what kind of buttons, what kind of break in the pants... and you have to be able to visualize the difference between a bolt of fabric and how it’ll actually look on a human body. We didn’t really know any of these things when we started! But if you come in with a plan, you’re likely to get exactly what you’re looking for.
In between watching Justin put suits on his sweaty body (we were in Vietnam for a heat wave — nearly 100 degrees every day) we ate some of the most remarkable food of Big Trip. We thought Thailand was amazing, but honestly? Vietnam is better. We didn’t eat a single thing that wasn’t delicious during our 10 days in the country. Some highlights:
After a month of brown food on Nias, we were ready for some western food and a good beer. Our first stop in Hoi An was The Hill Station, a French-Vietnamese cafe in a beautiful historic building that served us a cheese plate that almost brought us both to tears. We drank happy hour IPAs from a brewery in Saigon, ate mango and blue cheese on homemade bread, and got emotional. It was great.
Hoi An has a lot of storied, greatly hyped banh mi shops (think: 10,000 Google reviews and Anthony Bourdain ate there once) but our favorite spot was little lower key. Also mentioned on many of the “best banh mis in the city” lists, Banh Mi Sum was a glass-fronted cart in front of a narrow room with wooden tables and chairs. Their bread arrived near-constantly in open-sided plastic laundry baskets, from which it was shoved into an open wood oven to warm. The bread was always hot and toasty, the fillings were perfect, and they sold a mint and pineapple juice that transported me to another dimension. 10/10.
Our favorite coffee shop was a sprawling garden near our hotel, full of low chairs, creeping vines, and mismatched cushions. The menu had English and Vietnamese; a coconut cold foam matcha and an egg coffee rung up to a grand total of US$3.30. Most days, it was half empty, just us and a handful of Vietnamese students; one girl taking an online English class on her laptop, a few kids in school uniforms editing a video together. The internet was fast, and it felt familiar in some ways (if you set aside the fact that it was a hundred degrees, there was no air conditioning, and once I saw a rat chase a toad across the patio.) It isn’t a tourist trap, it’s just a random neighborhood coffee shop. Us and everyone else there came for the same thing: a good drink, a cute vibe, fast internet. In Vietnam, I reflected a lot on how this, too, is a local experience. In some ways I think it can be overly precious to demand that everything feel “rustic” to be authentic. Authenticity can look a lot of different ways in the global cities of the world.
We also ate a lot of vegan food in Vietnam! Chickpea Restaurant was our favorite — a locally run vegan place, led by a Vietnamese woman about our age who did a silent meditation retreat during the pandemic and was overcome with the sense that opening a vegan restaurant was her calling. We’re so glad she did. We’re vegetarians when we’re not traveling, and it felt like a physical relief to eat delicious, authentic local food without meat. Chickpea tempeh banh mi, fresh spring rolls filled with beautiful veggies and shredded tofu, steam buns with tempeh and tofu and the world’s best peanut sauce... we loved this place so much.
We also took a cooking class in Hoi An, where we learned how to make banh xeo, a thin savory pancake that you fill with fresh greens and then wrap in rice paper. We ate several variations of it during our time in Vietnam, and they were all amazing. And since we took a cooking class, we can give you the recipe! So if you’re feeling intrepid, here’s how to make one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes (you can substitute cooked mushrooms for meat, if you’re vegetarian:)
Our travels in Vietnam were scheduled to conclude in Ho Chi Minh City, mostly because the tickets back to Indonesia from there were significantly cheaper. So we wrapped up our time in Hoi An with an overnight in Da Nang, the nearby beach town that we later learned was an infamous military landmark from the Vietnam War (or the American War, depending on who you’re talking to.) Today, Da Nang is a tourist destination for huge groups of Chinese people on tour buses, and a seemingly limitless volume of Vietnamese families. We people-watched on one of the most crowded beaches I’ve seen in my life, drank sugarcane juice on the sidewalk when the sun set, and the next morning headed to the train terminal for our overnight trip to Ho Chi Minh.
Reviews of the train ranged from “this is the best way to travel and I loved every second of it,” to “my train was full of baby cockroaches and the bathroom reminded me of a horror movie.” As usual, reality ended up being somewhere in the middle, trending positive. We were on the top bunks of a four berth cabin, and our downstairs neighbors were a friendly, English-speaking Vietnamese couple, truly the perfect people to share our 18 hour journey with. We boarded at 3pm, and spent the evening peeking out the window, reading, and watching movies on our phones. We each got an okay night’s sleep (no baby cockroaches in sight,) woke up late, and before we knew it we were pulling into the station in Saigon!
Our time in Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City, depending on who you ask — our Vietnamese friend from Nias assured us that Saigon is how the locals refer to it) was surprisingly delightful. I think we both half-expected a loud, over-crowded capital city, but we were instead greeted by tree-lined streets, twisting alleyways, and an overall lovely time. We ate more incredible vegan food (at two places recommended by the owner of Chickpea back in Hoi An,) went to the War Remnants Museum (where we both left feeling truly horrified by our government’s behavior, yet again,) and ran some final errands in advance of our return to Indonesia. A few days later, we were back at the airport, and en route to Java for our second visa in Indo!
We’re once again behind on updates (we flew to Java back on May 4, oops!) and are currently posted up in West Sumbawa, Indonesia. Justin will tag in to share with you about the intervening weeks (guest starring my parents!) shortly. In the meantime, don’t be a stranger, and thanks for continuing to read our Big Trip diaries!
Love,
Dory + Justin