Hanoi Gray

Hello and xin chào! Preparations for Tết  (lunar new year—and the most important holiday in Vietnam by far) are well underway here in Hanoi. Groves of potted kumquat trees and boughs of peach blossoms have appeared along roadsides, and traffic is becoming a round-the-clock nightmare. The expectant energy of an upcoming holiday is palpable, especially given that I get more than a week off of work. Last Sunday, meanwhile, I made a less-than-ideal trip to the cultural capital of central Vietnam, Huế. Since I didn't want to use up any of my precious vacation days on a domestic trip, I decided to fly down on a Sunday morning and return on Monday. I had scored round-trip tickets on the hour-long flight from Hanoi for about $50, which made the prospect of a 24-hour visit seem pretty reasonable. What I didn't account for was that I would be subject to the caprices of Vietnamese weather for a single day of outdoor sightseeing. Naturally, it was drizzling that entire Sunday in ...

Hello and xin chào! With the new year underway, life has calmed down, and Hanoi weather has lurched into a seemingly endless drizzle that doesn't quite merit an umbrella or poncho but still gets my glasses totally wet. (Someday I'll live somewhere that doesn't have awful weather nearly year-round.) At any rate, I come to you with the post about food that I've been telling myself I'd write for nearly as long as I've been here! I'll highlight three of my favorite dishes that are Hanoi specialties: Bún chả The bún chả I had for lunch before writing this post. Quite possibly my favorite Vietnamese dish, bún chả  is ubiquitous in (and endemic to) Hanoi, but I don't think I had ever encountered it before coming here. You get a plate of bún , or rice vermicelli, and a small bowl of broth. The bún is sticky and comes in a clump that is cut several times with scissors before serving. The broth, meanwhile, is both sweet and savory, and I like to a...

Hello, xin chào, and สวัสดี! The end of December was surprisingly hectic, so I return not with a post about food in Hanoi (which will happen… eventually), but a post about my fantastic New Year's trip to Chiang Mai, Thailand. Conveniently, Sunday and Wednesday are my days off, and New Year's Day (one of a handful of paid holidays) fell on a Tuesday, making it easy for me to take off New Year's Eve and spend a few days in Thailand. This was my second time coming to Chiang Mai—the last time being on my two-week trip to Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia last January. Normally I'd be somewhat hesitant to repeat a destination so soon after my first visit, but I didn't feel like I had enough time there last time I went (mainly thanks to a delayed sleeper train from Bangkok). Moreover, when I was searching for the best places to spend New Year's in Southeast Asia, Chiang Mai popped up as a rather unique option among more typical suggestions like Singapore, Hong Kong, an...