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It was in the canteen car of the late-night service that the Vietnam veteran finally told me his story. We’d been friends for months, regulars at a Louisiana-themed bar off Saigon’s Bùi Viện backpacker strip, but his time in-country was,
Named for Vietnam’s ubiquitous dish of water spinach and garlic, Morning Glory in Hội An’s ancient town regularly packs them in. One of local restaurateur Trinh Diem Vy’s four local eateries (Ms Vy, as she is known, also runs Melbourne’s
The confrontation is immediate—ia hundred cluster bombs suspended from the ceiling on fishing wire. This deadly mobile of “bombies”, as the locals call them, symbolises the lethal legacy of Laos’s Vietnam War experience. It is the display that greets visitors
Pierre Gagnaire has spent the morning swimming. Never mind that the sixty-five-year-old Frenchman arrived in Da Nang, on Vietnam’s central coast, just last night, having spent the week visiting his restaurants in Tokyo and Seoul. One could forgive him for
“This is a service we’re paying for,” complained the American girl as she and her bags were shoved unceremoniously into the admittedly too-full taxi that was to take us to the Hanoi coach terminal. “We’re going to give you the
A small armada of tour boats pulled up at the floating fishing village and a gaggle of foreigners alighted onto the rickety platform that serves as its makeshift town square. They proceeded to the leaking rowboats and crusty kayaks that
How did three weeks turn into eight months? It’s not as though Saigon—I’ve been calling it Ho Chi Minh City in these pages until now, but let’s give it the name and respect it deserves—is so captivating as to necessitate
Solicitation is no strange thing in Vietnam. In Ho Chi Minh City and Dalat, Hoi An and Hanoi, the offers come at you thick and fast: sunglasses, massages, motorbikes, marijuana. But it throws you on the streets of Nha Trang,