Never have I ever thought I’d end up in Vietnam. It just wasn’t a place on my mind, until I learned that Hanoi had a Temple of Literature. I was intrigued.

When I read Eating Vietnam by Graham Holliday, I was sold.
For me, he painted streets lined with blue plastic tables and stools, which present quite the awkward predicament for long-legged Westerners. It’s nearly impossible to fold your legs underneath the table comfortably.

But for the food, it’s worth it.

Hanoi, Vietnam: Pull Up a Blue Plastic Chair

When your nose leads you to a stall that smells delicious, you plop down at the table, and they’ll bring you their one dish. For less than a dollar, you are treated to a huge meal of Bun cha, Pho, or whatever that street food seller specializes in.

It’s a little intimidating to sit down and know that you stick out like a sore thumb…and to also realize that you (by you, i mean me) have no idea the correct way to eat the meal. Stealing glances at the people around you, hoping that no one catches you, just so you can hopefully look like you know what you’re doing.


I walk around with my eyes as big as saucers about 95% of the time. With my nose in the air, searching for the next street food.

Oh, but if you do decide to stop in a proper cafe, be sure to order the egg coffee. This dessert-level coffee reminds me of a toasted marshmallow pudding, and I’m not sure what could be better. Hot or cold, it’s next-level delicious.

While wandering through Hanoi, I looked down a street as the sun was setting, and aromatic smoke billowed up through lights that strung haphazardly between buildings. Motorcycles whizzed around me, and music bombarded me from all sides.

Curious, I walked down the street and discovered rows upon rows of vendors selling raw meat, live fish, and piles of squid. I purchased a stick of sizzling meat from one vendor, and the flavor of the fatty meat with spicy sauce had me in raptures as I tiptoed around uncertain liquids in the streets and tried not to gape at all the different meats. And it was magic.


One street vendor had live fish swimming in tubs of water, and another had some weird looking lumpy mud. Could it have been fish eggs? I had no idea, and I had no one to ask.

Completely enthralled, I gnawed at my stick of meat, contemplating the slabs of raw meat, tubs of worms, and the bowl of weird mud. When I glanced to my right, my gaze snagged on the grin of a young boy who was watching me taking it all in.

I bobbed my head in embarrassment, throwing a grin at him, before I walked further into the mayhem of meat, smoke, and roaring motorcycles.

Another day, I sought out lunch, thirsting for something truly Vietnamese. Not only did I want food, but I wanted experience.

Next to a burger place with tables seated with white people, I saw a dimly lit space with the infamous blue plastic stool-chairs spread out onto the sidewalk. Cringingly and a bit apologetically, I walked toward a Vietnamese woman who sat ripping stems from spinach leaves. She grinned toothily at me and called to a younger woman who was deeper in the depths of the stall.

Somehow I ordered. I rubbed my stomach. She said “fried rice…noodles” and I said “noodles.”

The toothily-grinning and spinach-wielding lady pointed to the table next to her, and I folded my long legs underneath the metal table, settling onto a plastic stool. This is what I came for. But I felt so so so awkward and out of place.

But then, a piping hot bowl of noodles was placed before me. And through mimicked movements, the women instructed me what to add to my soup. Within the next 10-15 minutes, more Vietnamese crowded into the table with me. And across the way, the burger place held separated and regulated tables of white people.

Sweat dripped down my elbows, and I watched desperately. How did one pay here? And how much to pay?

When done, other stall patrons stood, leaving their bowls behind and proffered money to the young woman who’d brought the bowls. Monkey see, monkey do.

Every day, I’m reminded by how little I know and how humbling it is to not speak a language. While I’m surrounded by people and the streets are crowded with cars, motorcycles, bicycles, and walkers, I feel like a giant stone in the middle of river rapids. I’m a part of it, and yet not.