week two: vietnam

an unrelated comic about carpooling, and a breakdown of my week in vietnam (lots of food)

I’m very much not currently in Asia anymore, but I started this format of documenting the whole trip by week, so I might as well continue it. The second leg of my family’s Southeast Asia trip was: Vietnam! It was my first time visiting, but my parents had previously visited Ho Chi Minh City and Phu Quoc. Before I start getting into it… here’s a completely unrelated but recently drawn comic I made to share on the newsletter!

Before we make any assumptions- the friend that asked if I could get to the place on my own was NOT being malicious!! This comic is about my own anxieties as a chronic carpooler as of late. I posted this on instagram first a couple days ago, and a lot of people chimed in with lots of different thoughts and feelings. Most people feel pretty bad and anxious about being someone that has to rely on others a lot- and that’s how I’ve been feeling lately. I can drive, it’s just really hard to do long distances with my recently bad health. I’m also sometimes just too anxious to drive to a new place with mystery and possibly really bad parking. And I’m super grateful for all the people that have made the time and space to give me a ride when they do! I’m sure many relate, and I’m sure we’re all endlessly grateful. I just feel a little ashamed sometimes…

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We stayed about a week or so in Da Nang City, which is part of central Vietnam. Da Nang City has it all! Beach, mountains, river, popmart at the top of the mountain. We got to explore most of the city in the short amount of time we were there- and according to the city bus tour guide, you can hit up all the main sights in like 3 days.

We started off in Hoi An, which was about a 40 minute drive from where we stayed. My mom wanted us to walk to all the bridges, but we ended up getting lost and hitch hiking on one of those little tour golf carts. The driver took us to all the tourist spots in Hoi An and everyone got to take pictures! We saw all the bridges, stopped for coconut juice along the way, and escaped the heat a bit. It was well over 90F! Basically the entire time we were in SEA. It was over 90F in the Philippines and Singapore, too. Anyway, it was hot as fuck in Vietnam, so being on that little cart and scooting around instead of walking was really nice.

My cousin’s friend gave us a bunch of recs for where to eat so we went to a few of them. While in Hoi An, we made our way over to HOI AN CUISINE Restaurant - 73 Tran Phu (that’s literally the name on google maps if you wanna look it up). We ordered 2 different specials, made to the amount of the people that were sitting (eight). It reminded me of Borit Gogae in ktown here in LA. As an example, you can order the special for the table and they’ll adjust the servings for the amount of people sitting, but everyone has to pay the price of the special each. Makes sense? The food here was amazing and it was my firs time trying the rose dumplings- so good! Dreaming of that food forever…

Upon returning from Hoi An, my cousin and I met up with her friend Luan (the one with the recs) to explore a bit! She was classmates with him back at UCSD, and he was in Vietnam (specifically Ho Chi Minh) to celebrate his birthday. He flew into Da Nang just to hang out! And I’m soooo glad he did, cause this was my favorite part of the trip. Luan and his boyfriend showed me and my cousin around (my brother was too tired) and we got to eat at this amazing seafood spot: Hải sản Châu Nga (Châu Sơn 1) where we picked out the live seafood in person, and then they grilled everything immediately in front of us. There were some tourists from HK that were having a hard time communicating, so Luan’s boyfriend translated everything for them. Bro spoke english, vietnamese, mandarin, and cantonese. It’s always so inspiring going abroad and meeting polyglots… I’m still attempting to learn mandarin, but I can fluently understand tagalog and I can somewhat understand kapampangan, but it’s hard to speak since I literally never practice it.

Anyway! After devouring what we could at the seafood spot, we meandered over to a snack spot: BÁNH TRÁNG NƯỚNG 49 ĐÀO DUY TỪ. All the snacks revolved around rice paper! Luan told us that all the restaurants in Vietnam only make like one thing, as opposed to the big menus we have here in the US.

The next day, we shuttled over to Ba Na Hills. You have to take a cable car up the mountain- and that cable car is 5,801 meters long! According to the internet, it holds the record of longest nonstop single track cable car. The longest cable car in the world, however, is the Hon Thom cable car in Phu Quoc, Vietnam. My parents have also been on that one haha. I love cable cars, and I was delighted that it was like a 20 minute ride one way!! It was sooo beautiful being at the top, with the city disappearing into the atmospheric perspective. The giant hands reminded me of Elden Ring’s fingers. What I didn’t expect at the top of this mountain… was the theme park and popmart?! They had a few rollercoasters and a full arcade along with a popmart embedded into a castle. My family went crazy at all the popmarts in Asia… they all own labubus now, including my grandma!!! And me!!!

I wanted the tempura labubu but I got a labubu sandwich instead… smh.

We did a couple more bus tours, stopped at a few more temples, and checked out museums for the rest of the trip. Saw so many statues of buddha! And so many beautiful gardens.

We eventually returned to Hoi An in the evening so we could enjoy the lantern festival! It was so pretty. And I took the opportunity to finally grab a banh mi nearby: Madam Khanh - The Banh Mi Queen. I think this stall in particular was one of the ones that Anthony Bourdain had visited! It was a little cart in front of the restaurant it’s part of, and people kept showing up out of seemingly nowhere (like literally down the alleyway) to refill the ingredients. My entire family just got the special, and it was suuuper good. I’d love to magically conjure one in my hands right now.

The last two days before our flight to Singapore were dedicated to resting, relaxing, and shopping. We did a couple massages and went to a few different stores to get souvenirs. I bought a ton of instant coffee to give out as souvenirs- I don’t drink coffee at all. My luggage was completely full from all my souvenirs from this week. I didn’t have any extra room for souvenirs for the rest of the trip lowkeyyy. But it was worth it!

I think my favorite part about being in Vietnam besides the food is the scooter culture! I love mopeds and motorcycles. That’s now me and Corey met! So it was soooo cool to see the sheer amount of scooters parked by the sidewalks, and the massive amount of scooter commuters on the streets everyday. It’s a little scary to cross the street, but you get used to it. I finally split off from my family in those last 2 days so I could take the grab scooters around. I took one to the beach! It was so nice. It made me miss riding around on the motorcycle by La Jolla in San Diego, something me and Corey did a lot before we moved to LA.

one of my outfits from the trip

And that was my week in Vietnam! Hoping to visit with friends someday. Hoping to see more of Asia again someday… thanks for reading this. See you in the next one! :-)
-nicey

my grandma was my roommate for the entire trip