Hanoi, Vietnam was exactly what I thought it would be. As the victor of the “American War of Aggression,” I expected an expensive, highly developed city, and that’s exactly what I found. I did not expect to find the best vegetarian food in SE Asia, including an incredible taro pecan soup.
I did not expect to see so many foreign embassies, all guarded by congenial military personnel. I did not expect to find a store selling Iranian saffron and saffron green tea.
I just wanted to show off the only shirt I own with Vietnamese words, bought in Los Angeles from the Chinese-Vietnamese founder of America’s famous hot sauce. I did not expect to see zero bottles of his sauce in Vietnam, which reminded me how trade agreements limit consumer choices arbitrarily. How did another country end up benefitting from the hard work and culinary genius of one of its natives while his birth country is unable to widely export or import his Vietnamese-inspired product in Vietnam?
Every immigrant’s story is one of luck, hope, tragedy, and the opportunities—sometimes realized, often missed—inherent in accepting strangers on your shores yearning to share their wisdom, experiences, and ways of living. Today, I sit in a chair that every statistic, every expert, and every survey in 1950 would have said the Huy Fong Foods founder would be 99% more likely than me to be sitting in.
And yet, here I am. It is sweet to win wars and even sweeter to escape them, but even when you win, you can still lose. The founder of one of the most popular products in the world should be sitting here but “Humans plan, and the universe laughs.” Let’s hope it’s laughing with us, not at us.
Bonus: I just walked past the Hanoi Stock Exchange (www.hnx.vn). A bull reminiscent of the famous NYC Wall Street black bull is outside its front door but smaller and more understated. So-called Communist Vietnam is interesting.
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| Ưu Đàm Chay restaurant |
Every immigrant’s story is one of luck, hope, tragedy, and the opportunities—sometimes realized, often missed—inherent in accepting strangers on your shores yearning to share their wisdom, experiences, and ways of living. Today, I sit in a chair that every statistic, every expert, and every survey in 1950 would have said the Huy Fong Foods founder would be 99% more likely than me to be sitting in.
Bonus: I just walked past the Hanoi Stock Exchange (www.hnx.vn). A bull reminiscent of the famous NYC Wall Street black bull is outside its front door but smaller and more understated. So-called Communist Vietnam is interesting.
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