Vietnam

Vietnam

At dusk the lanterns come on all at once — red, orange, yellow — reflecting in the Thu Bon river while motorbike horns fade and someone nearby is grilling something on a charcoal grate the size of a shoebox. Hoi An's Ancient Town is genuinely old, a 15th-century trading port where Japanese merchant houses and Chinese assembly halls sit shoulder to shoulder on streets too narrow for cars.

Vietnam

Motorbikes come at you from every direction. The pavements are occupied by tiny plastic chairs where people sit knee-to-knee over bowls of pho at 6am. French colonial buildings peel gently behind banyan trees, and somewhere in the Old Quarter a woman is grilling bun cha over charcoal in what appears to be her living room. Hanoi doesn't try to impress you — it just goes about its business, and you either fall into its rhythm or you don't. Most people fall.

Vietnam

The motorbikes don't stop — not at midnight, not at 6am, not ever. Ho Chi Minh City moves at a frequency that feels like the city is running a fever. Banh mi carts park next to glass-tower lobbies, French colonial facades peel behind neon signs, and in District 4 a woman ladles bun mam from a pot that's been on the boil since before reunification.