Long distance connection: Perfect link from Aurora to Vietnam

AURORA | By the time the little airplane icon on the Boeing 789 screen was blinking above the Bering Strait, I didn’t know what I was going to discover when we landed.

For as long as I can remember, walking in Vietnam was a matter of when not if. So when I landed in Hanoi 48 minutes past midnight in December, I wasn’t sure how to feel. 

Eight thousand miles away from my lifelong Aurora home, I had this image of what Vietnam should look like in my head. It was exactly what I imagined my whole life, and it blew me away.

With the mindset of an 18-year-old Grandview High School grad excited to see the roots of my Aurora family far from home, we trekked for 17 days across nearly 127,000 square miles of Vietnam, with stops in Hanoi, Ninh Binh, Da Nang, Can Tho and Ho Chi Minh City. 

I discovered a lot, but three things stood out. 

Anthony Bourdain was right

“It grabs you and doesn’t let you go. Once you love it, you love it forever.” Anthony Bourdain loved Vietnam, and it loved him. He wasn’t wrong in the least. Obviously, the world-renowned chef had to have known where to find the best food in the world, and you don’t have to look further than Vietnam.

Bánh Mì Phượng in Hội An was featured in an episode of No Reservations, and I was lucky enough to visit – twice.

Each bite of the pork banh mi was airy and light, while each vegetable added an extra layer of crunch to the freshly made, hot baguette. The gastronomical worlds colliding made me appreciate the art of a good bahn mi. Even something as simple — and questionable as an American tourist — as the gas station bahn mi was something I will never forget. 

Did I crave a burger when I got back to the United States? Sure. Did I even once think about a McDonalds or a Wendy’s on Colfax when I was in Vietnam? Absolutely not. Because the best meal I’ve ever had in my entire life was the Michelin rated bún chả off a busy street in Hanoi. 

The low plastic stools and metal tables squeezed together made up the dining room in this hole-in-the-wall restaurant. A lady sat at the front of the store, cutting the pork belly into pieces and wrapping it with a minty paper. She poured a light, savory broth into a bowl while we looked at the menu of six items – water, coffee, tea, Coke, Sprite or Fanta. The mix of the broth, sweetened by papayas and minty pork belly that melted in my mouth, added to the taste of tangy rice noodles with fresh herbs added on top. Even the chopsticks added a smoky flavor. The orange Fanta I had chosen contributed a tang because of the local cane sugar used to make it, instead of the processed chemicals in the United States.

The fruit was better than delicious. Familiar fruit like mangos salivated with me. Watermelon was the most vibrant red I’ve ever seen. Getting fresh-cut coconuts on the street were amazing refreshments.

Then there was fruit I never imagined. The almost hairy rambutan that tastes like a relative of a grape: Yum. The jackfruit peeled away to sweetness and appealed to mangos and bananas. There were bitter Asian pears that honestly were no different than an apple. 

The importance of family

My grandparents immigrated from Vietnam. I grew up around the language, the food and the customs. There’s a Buddha statue in my house, and the rounded vowels that fill the air from the small talk my father has with his mother still exist all around me. Even though I don’t know what those words mean, it sounds like family.

While we were in Vietnam, my grandparents made it a point to visit relatives, cousins, aunts and uncles who still live in Vietnam. I never knew they existed. Surrounded by those familiar ringing tones and rising prefixes, I realized just how similar we really are, but how different everything could be. 

My grandma’s sister still lives in Vietnam, never immigrating after the North won the war. There was a moment where I was sitting at a restaurant table and turned to my brother and said, “Can you imagine how different our lives would be if grandma and grandpa never left for America?” 

But then I talked to those distant relatives, and we feuded over whether Liverpool or Manchester United was better, or if we had seen the new season of IT: Welcome to Derry. Even though we lived on opposite sides of the world, continents away from each other, it’s those small moments that made me realize no matter how far the distance, we’re made from the same flesh and bones generations ago. We’re family.

When we were in Can Tho, we visited the hospital where my dad was born and the old house where he lived the first six years of his life. We saw the convenience store that my family used to own. That’s been a coffee shop since my family rented it out. My grandpa was still able to walk the streets and show us the restaurants he eats at with ringing gongs from the temple across the street. 

Being able to hear their stories always made me appreciate where I came from, but being able to experience it, see it and have it all in front of my eyes gave me a new perspective. 

The need to be picturesque

There was a moment where we were on a boat in Ninh Binh, looking out at the beautiful rock formations. I was struck by the look in my grandpa’s eyes as he looked out on the green moss climbing the limestone and trees that had branches reaching out toward the water. I was seeing it the same way.

While we were in Da Nang, we visited SunWorld at Ba Na Hills, an almost knockoff version of Disneyworld. But the day we went was foggy, and cast a sheen over everything as statues and castle turrets disappeared into vagueness. While we rode the gondola up to the Golden Bridge, it just suddenly appeared from the fog, and it added to the spectacle. It was no Disneyworld, but the mystery and the environment made it uniquely its own.

We travelled by rowboat on the Mekong River, hiked to the tops of mountains to see dragon statues, crossed through caves in lagoons and rode rusty bikes on back roads to dusty brick factories. And nothing was more beautiful than what is . A beach at the bottom and a path shaded by trees, the setting sun poked through the leaves and branches, painting everything in its shade of orange. By the time we reached the top, the sky was clear and that sunlight was glittering off ships in the bay, illuminating sides of the limestone karsts rising out of the ocean into the blue sky. It was unforgettable.

Even the city was beautiful. The systematic and continuous bustling of cars and motorcycles in Ho Chi Minh City weaving through traffic while people played a real life version of Crossy Road. The sidewalk was lined with busy street food carts and shops. The alleys between them led to people’s homes and lives hidden behind storefronts in Hanoi. 

Part of Vietnam’s beauty is that it puts a layer of luster over your eyes that makes everything seem so picturesque. Even something as simple as a street food cart, or a second floor to a shop, or an outdoor seafood boil, or using the buddy system as you cross the street becomes beautiful. It may seem unassuming at first glance, but if you let it, you’ll learn just as much about yourself as the country itself.