[PHOTO PLACEHOLDER 1: Main Banner / Arrival in Hanoi]
Arriving in Hanoi during Tết is like walking into a theater five minutes before the curtains pull back. The city is vibrating. Electric. Ripe.
I checked into my Airbnb, dropped my bags, and found a small, bright red envelope left on the table by my host. Lì xì. Good luck money. In a city so massive and unfamiliar, that little red packet felt like a comforting hand on my shoulder, welcoming me in. It made me feel, if only for a second, like a part of the culture instead of just a spectator looking through the looking glass. One lucky enough to randomly land right as an entire country preps for its most sacred holiday. Tết, or the Lunar New Year for us Westernes. Instantly, that envelope containing a crisp fifty-thousand Dong note, the equivalent of about two American dollars, became my favorite souvenir of the trip. Not because of its cash value, but because of the raw human connection tucked inside.
But human connection doesn't quench the thirst of a six-hour flight. I needed water. And we all know the first unglamorous rule of arriving in a new country. Say it with me, Vicarious Ones: locate the nearest fluorescent-lit corner store and buy out their entire stock of local potato chips and water.
I stepped back out onto the pavement to find a market, and that’s when reality hit. If Hawaii three short weeks ago was a classical orchestra perfectly executing Vivaldi, Hanoi during Tết is pure punk rock. It’s "Sex and Violence" by The Exploited cranked up to eleven. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can prepare your senses for it.
The underlying soundtrack to these streets is a steady, deafening hum of over six million four-stroke engines. The smell of exhaust and cigarettes chokes the air, creating a heavy haze, as if a massive fog machine was left running indoors. Ten minutes into my walk, I watched a family of four tucked onto a single scooter flying down the asphalt: a mother, a father, a son no older than six, and the smallest of them, no more than one, perched right over the handlebars. Moments later, a man and a woman swerved past, both casually holding what looked like a giant white Wookie in their laps. The only person who looked nervous was this tourist. And if this was normal, I was about to become very abnormal trying to cross the street.
So here I was, within a stones throw of the mini mart but first I had to play the local game. Every pedestrian, even if they didn’t insert a quarter, participates a real-life version of Frogger. I looked at the moving wall of oncoming steel, took a deep breath, and accepted that traffic here has absolutely no rules or reason. There was a flash of fear knowing I was completely alone. Not a single person I knew was within thousands of miles. Yet somehow, that fear became my fuel. Pushing me deeper into the twisted alleyways and toward the river of scooters flowing in every direction, somehow knowing exactly how to avoid each other while I stood there completely lost.
Like Doc "Moonlight" Graham in Field of Dreams stepping off the baseball grass and over the gravel line into the real world, I had to take that first brave step past the safety of the curb. I just had to go. Logic and reason be damned! I had to trust that the river of steel would somehow part around me.
And just like that, I stepped out. The engines screamed past my elbows, the exhaust hit my face, my heart was in my throat, and suddenly, I was on the other side. Later on, I would figure out the cheat code. If you are lucky enough, an elderly person would cross the street alongside you with the confidence only seen in an old-school mafia don cutting the line at a local delicatessen. Just follow along and everyone gets out of their way.
And my trophy for winning the level? After making it to the grocery store and picking up some snacks and water, I made it to dinner. A tiny, short plastic stool at one of the best culinary experiences I will ever have in my life. I dropped down onto a seat normally reserved for a kindergarten classroom back home. A lady came over and instinctively handed me a menu with English on it. “How did you know I was American?” I joked, a line that didn’t land due to her lack of English. I looked over the menu as if it were the Rosetta Stone, matching familiar words with Vietnamese and photos to understand what each delicacy entailed. A quick search confirmed what the simple “Pork with noodles” translation left out: this bare-bones description does absolutely no justice to what was about to grace my palate.
And just one Xin chào later, I had a bowl and plate of one of the greatest food on the planet sitting in front of me. Bún Chả Hà Nội. A dish found everywhere in the northern city of Hanoi but found little elsewhere. Back home I scoured countless Vietnamese restaurants and have yet to find a faithful representation. Later on I would find out that it is due to the fact that most immigrants to the states came from the southern regions.
This culinary discovery was eye-opening to me. Fish sauce doesn’t have to taste… fishy. Nước chấm is the perfect gateway drug to the funky world of fermented fish! The fish sauce delivered pure umami, with the vinegar and sugar cutting through the funk like a high-wire balancing act. After tearing fresh leaves of coriander, Thai basil, and mint, tossing them directly into that perfect concoction, I picked up my chopsticks. Thanks to time spent in Japan, I held them steady with pride like a samurai holding his katana, reaching out to grab the perfectly charred pork patties, just begging to be submerged in a dynamic, shimmering pool of nước chấm. It was a baptism of smoke, sugar, and acid, a combination so perfectly balanced it made everything I’d eaten before feel like a rehearsal. And just to add a little the ambiance, feet away, a woman sat fanning the billowing smoke of a live coal fire as the fat sizzled from a new batch of my pork patty brethren.
A beer arrived from the stall next door. A simple and unassuming Hanoi Lager. I took the first sip, and to this day, it remains the best sip of beer I’ve ever had. It felt like sipping a cold Natty Boh at Pickles Pub outside of Camden Yards in Baltimore. It’s surley not the finest brew in the world, but in that exact setting, it was my Chicken Soup for the Soul. In one swift motion, I gathered a bunch of cool vermicelli noodles, dipped them deep into the delicate sauce, caught the fresh herbs, and slurped it all down like a toddler eating spaghetti.
There I was, sitting knee-to-knee with total strangers. Day one, hell, hour six, of one of the most real, uncompromisingly foreign moments I’ve ever experienced. I have been lucky enough to have gotten lost in all kinds of places. Philly at night, Istanbul, Athens, all places where I felt out of my comfort zone. But this? This small, shared pocket of time with strangers at a communal table? It felt like a concert, like I was one with the crowd. In a mosh pit, you are all a sum of many. And at this moment, I felt connected.
Looking up from my dinner I was brought back to reality. In that moment was the first time on the trip I realized everyone was staring at me. I was the towering, obvious outsider—completely out of place, balanced precariously on miniature plastic furniture. I was the odd one out, and I absolutely loved it. There is a strange freedom in being so visibly foreign, stripped of any pretense of fitting in. Just passing through, collecting moments and memories.
The evening rush outside Bún Chả Đắc Kim on Hàng Mành street, where the smoke from the coal grills meets the hum of the old quarter.
I refocused on my meal by taking another bite of the perfectly charred pork, and just like that, everyone went back to slurping their bowls of noodles and drinking their beers. Surrounded by strangers who didn’t speak a syllable of my language, and I theirs, I realized I could belong just about anywhere. I didn't need to understand every word to understand the people in front of me. I just needed to remember that kindness, respect, and curiosity are their own kind of language.
On that plastic stool I found a sense of belonging for the first time on this trip. Not because I was around people who looked like me or talked like me—quite the opposite. Yet even though that was the case, I felt accepted. The lady who was cooking the patties over the sizzling coals gave me a gentle nod of approval as she watched me correctly eat this treasured dish. For the first time in my life, I felt completely unjudged. I was just here. Living.
I asked for the bill and promptly paid it. The total? Fifty-thousand Dong. The exact crisp note from my red envelope. The universe just traded luck for local pork, and it was a perfect transaction.
Sitting there, my mind wandered back to the last time I sat so low to the ground. I was six years old again, in kindergarten, feeling the same emotions as back then. Realizing as I rose from my seated position, knees popping with the sound of age and miles, that I am still just learning and trying to figure out how to fit. Here in Hanoi, surrounded by strangers and sights so new, yet familiar.
And just like that, I finished one of the best meals of my life. I had just tasted a dish one of my greatest heroes had eaten only a twenty-minute walk away. The only downside of arriving during Tết? Businesses shut down for the next few days. So the story of sitting beside the famous table at Hương Liên will have to wait for another day. Yet, in that moment, everything felt simple. It felt safe. I looked at the woman who cooked my meal, smiled, and said thank you: Cảm ơn.
I walked back to my steel-lined apartment, cutting down a narrow alley past half a dozen cats and a barbershop that inexplicably had a poster of Taylor Swift hanging outside. I can honestly say that this Airbnb was the most lived-in one since staying over that ice cream shop in the Balat district of Istanbul.
With a deep breath, I took one more puff of the smog-filled air. The soft hum of scooters and the chatter of men drinking their beers and sharing stories melted off into the distance. I exhaled the weight of a thousand atmospheres.
And here, in an empty alley except for the cats, around the corner from an out-of-place Starbucks, everything felt right.
I was fed. I was happy. I was home.
