Today, we finally enjoyed pho at a local spot called Pho Thin in Hanoi. We’ve been fortunate to stay at beautiful hotels with lush and extensive breakfast buffets complete with local Vietnamese dishes including pho, but I really had a need to try pho in at least one spot in the north during this trip. Pho is said to have originated in the north, somewhere near Hanoi. From what I have studied, both in eating and in reading, I’ve learned that there are two types of pho, northern and southern. Both region’s basics are the same in that they use the same spices, the same charred onions, and cook their bones down to nothing so that their soups are fully flavored, but the difference is in the level of sweetness and the herb additions. In the south, a sweeter broth is preferred, so a tad more rock sugar is used. In addition, herbs like bean sprouts, basil, and Vietnamese greens are added to the noodle soup while at the table. The northern pho stands alone with perhaps a sprinkling of green onions and a squeeze of lime on the top. Since the majority of the Vietnamese who fled Vietnam were from the south who now reside in the U.S. or in Australia, it then makes sense that the pho we are accustomed to is the southern style soup.

From a historical perspective, it’s been said that the regional differences of pho have to do with what was available in each region. In the north, food scarcity was at many times an issue. In Vietnam overall, beef is considered a luxury meat vs. pork or chicken. Whereas in the south, food has always been more plentiful, perhaps due to the warmer climates and the terrain. This resulted in the additions of many herbs and vegetables in the southern pho, and even variations of beef, including tripe and other cow parts.

I did a lot of food research on this trip, and Pho Thin was supposed to be one of the top local favorites for pho, and since, has been discovered by tourists, as well. Pho Thin was kind of what I imagined it to be. We arrived at around 9am (as pho is typically eaten for breakfast in Vietnam; some popular places close by 9am because they run out of noodles and broth!) to a crowd outside, waiting for their bowls of pho bo, plus a fully packed dining room of boisterous and soup-serious slurpers. This little hole-in-the-wall is bare-bones with little decor, long metal tables, and short stools. The front is open, with the workers busily stirring and scooping out the broth, noodles, stir-frying the meat, and dishing out long, fried Chinese donuts so that diners can enjoy their rich broth with a dip of crunchy fried savory donut. You line up at the front, place your order (you have the option of pho bo, pho bo, and pho bo. Oh, and if you want the donuts, you have to tell them. But they don’t speak much English at all). You pay, they give you your change, then you find a seat inside, where they will bring you your pho. We shared one bowl after a hotel breakfast, and as soon as it came, I knew it was going to be a delight. The top of the broth had a nice film of beef fat (my mother would not approve; she would have taken a spoon to that and quickly scooped it all out to dispose of it), a thick layer of chopped spring onions, and lean stir-fried beef on the top. The first thing I did was put my spoon in and take a taste of the broth. It was full bodied, rich, complex, and fragrant of beef, star anise, and charred onion. I could really have sipped that soup all day long; it was so good. These are the moments I’m so happy I have not given up meat. The noodles were fresh, not dried, and were soft and springy, but with a little bite. We devoured that soup in just a few minutes. And then it was gone.

As we left, I took photos of the outside and watched the workers in the front scoop out the broth from one vat to the next. I saw another worker quickly speed walk and deliver steaming hot bowls to diners two storefronts down. Another was barking out orders for the server to bring to tables. This is my kind of eating when I’m in Asia; quick, delicious, cheap, no frills, and all about the quality of the food. One does not go into Pho Thin for the ambiance or to socialize. Nope. They go there to inhale the pho, have zero conversation while eating, and leave. Your company is really just the pho, your chopsticks, and the spoon. Your dining partner, if you have one, is just a silent partner in eating.

I have only made pho ga (chicken pho) and not pho bo given the amount of effort it takes. But maybe now that I have an Instant Pot, this will finally be my chance to take a stab at my absolute favorite soup in the world. I’m going to remember this visit for a long, long time.

We arrived in Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City, this late morning around 10:30am. As we took a Grab ride and headed towards District 1, the city felt very much the same and different from the first and last time I was here in January 2008: the roads were still narrow, the street signs were in Vietnamese and English. The buildings were anywhere from two- to five-stories tall, all just as skinny as I remembered from before and was surprised by. But what shocked me was seeing a very different skyline: far more skyscrapers and multiple-storied, modern buildings were there today, not to mention Landmark 81 and the Saigon Skydeck/Bitexco Tower, which were built just in the last couple of years. In 2018, the tenth tallest building in Asia is Landmark 81 right here in Ho Chi Minh City. Endless Starbucks abounded in different neighborhoods. Many bubble tea chains from Taiwan and mainland China dotted the streets. Even major well-known Korean cosmetic brands like Innisfree have brick-and-mortar shops here. We’ve arrived in one of the fastest growing economies in the world, one of the top 20 globally and depending on the source, one of the top 5 in Southeast Asia. This is a world my mother never would have dreamt of coming into existence given what she saw and knew from the 1960s and early 1970s before she left the country during the Vietnam (American) War.

I took a picture of the skyline from our hotel room along the water and emailed it to my dad so he could see it and show my mom. I looked out at the view and marveled at it. In just 11 years, this much growth has happened. But since 1975 when the war ended, who from that period, like my mother, could have imagined Saigon to look like this, to be this prosperous? Who could have fathomed that the city would be this developed, that Wi-Fi would be available at even random hole-in-the-wall restaurants, or that pretty much every young person in a major city like Saigon, Hanoi, or Danang, would own and regularly use a smart phone? My mom always insisted, no matter when the conversation happened, whether it was in the 90s, in 2000, in 2008 when we came, or even last year, that Vietnam was the poorest country in the world. She liked to say often, “there wasn’t even enough rice to eat! We were so poor!” I never agreed with her in her absolutes, but what was the point of arguing? When I show her these photos, she will know she is wrong. But more importantly, she will see that the country that she once called home, a country where she and many of her family, friends, and extended relatives, witnessed heartbreak, tragedy, violence, and terror, is actually moving forward. It is growing. It is thriving. It wants and has stated goals to be a “developed” economy. And she will have that to smile about, knowing that life there has moved on, and at a relatively quick rate.

In Christmas celebration depictions and decorations seen around the world, you can expect to see a fat Santa Claus riding in his sleigh with reindeer, traveling atop the clouds, above snowy, wintry towns around the globe. But what you rarely see, unless you are in the Southern hemisphere in December, is Santa wearing shorts, sunglasses, a “Santa” hat, standing on a surfboard in the ocean waves or standing by a barbeque grill. This is the normal picture I see when I am in Australia during Christmas time. In the beginning, it was a bit strange for me given that I never knew a warm December or summery Christmas. But to be fair, it’s not like white Christmas is a norm in San Francisco where I grew up, or really anywhere in California or on the west coast of the United States. It’s normal in the Northeast, in Boston and New York where I’ve lived and do live now. But I didn’t grow up with that, so I never “missed” something I never had. In fact, I embrace summer Christmases. I love that when everyone else in New York or on the east coast is complaining on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter about how cold or icy it is that I can chuckle a little because I get to soak up anywhere from 70-100 F heat in Australia (or last year, in South Africa). I get to bask in the glow of the Australian Southern hemisphere sun, only to grumble a little that in a couple weeks, I will return to that negative-zero temperature, wind chill, and snow, grounds that will be covered in ice, and streets that will be slushy with snow semi-melted, but not quite. I mumble and groan while thinking about the short daylight hours we have and the early darkness that descends across New York city around 4-4:30pm. Short daylight hours – the absolute worst.

It’s funny to me that others who have never experienced a summer Christmas would immediately reject it. It reeks of ignorance and small-mindedness. I’ve had many a colleague across companies I’ve worked at say it’s weird, that they wouldn’t like it, that it’s not “normal.” But then, what is “normal” to you is different from “normal” to me or to Chris or to anyone depending on where in the world they grew up. It’s a common theme that comes up no matter what the question or situation regardless of whether it’s in a work or social environment. For whatever reason, people seem to reject what they are not accustomed to regardless of how much background information they have on it. And… well, from my perspective, that’s kind of their loss. California doesn’t experience snow period unless you are on the border of California-Nevada during the winter time; is that “abnormal” or “wrong”? I was used to 40-50-degree F winters in San Francisco – is that “bad”? Or then I have a friend who grew up and now resides in Arizona, so all she knows is an 80-degree F Christmas, which she deems as “mild” weather in terms of warmth. Is she a weirdo then?

The older I get, it seems the less patient I am becoming with ignorance and lack of openness to what is new. I am less inclined to hold my tongue and more likely to ask deeper questions, which could result in discomfort for those around me. If anything, when we learn about new things, we should be pressed to ask more questions and explore it rather than to outright reject it. Otherwise, how do we ever grow and evolve?

We’ve been quite spoiled for food and drink the last few days here in the Adelaide area. Without even really trying that hard, we’ve had delicious and fresh Australian, Malaysian, Argentinian, fish and chips, and of course, wine. All the vegetables and fruits were brimming with richness and flavor. We had a tasting menu with a wine pairing last night (the latter of which we almost never do because of how expensive it is in the U.S.) that I loved every bite of. We even had a flat white today from a random coffee shop in the Barossa Valley that Chris marveled over while drinking. “Ugh, I’m going to miss having good food without trying hard when we go back home,” he grumbled on our drive back to Adelaide.

He’s kind of right. You could rarely just pass by a random Malaysian hole-in-the-wall back in New York and just trust that the food was good without looking up reviews.This place we stopped by on a whim made its roti dough from scratch every single morning, and while we just stopped in to grab a snack, a queue quickly formed after we sat down, proving how popular and delicious the place was to locals. Back home, you also couldn’t stop in for a coffee at a discreet coffee shop and just assume that the coffee quality was high. Even after we finished our shared flat white, the creaminess and well-roundedness of the coffee still lingered on my tongue. I enjoyed it for the time that it lasted.

Whenever we are here, I always tend to eat more bread. I rarely eat much bread back home because I just don’t really care for it that much as a food group. I’d much rather have rice or noodles. Bread in the U.S. is the same as with most food; you have to know the company and the brand in order to trust that it will be tasty. Here, any random grocery store or market will have delicious and fresh multigrain bread that would be amazing as toast or a part of a sandwich. Maybe it’s just higher quality wheat, lesser sugar, and higher freshness here.

For most Americans, visiting a winery is about doing a formal winery tour, looking at barrels and being photographed with them, taking whiffs of different scents that are associated with wine grapes and other flavors that you get when tasting wine. You go for tastings or a full fledged wine tour. They tend to feel a bit formal. You might feel like you will be judged for liking or not liking a particular wine. You will inevitably have to pay for that tasting (and in Napa or Willamette Valley, you will certainly have to pay at least $20-30 for a very simple tasting with average to mediocre-sized pours). It is not value for money that you are getting. You’re doing what the average person would consider something that higher-brow people do… because wine is a luxury for the well-to-do, right, unless you are buying 3-buck-chuck from Trader Joe’s? One of my cousins even said I was “acting like a white person” by drinking wine and visiting wineries; so nice of him.

In Australia, wine is just kind of part of the culture. The Europeans brought their vines (from South Africa) and settled in South Australia, and the rest is pretty much history. Most wineries here do not charge for tastings, and when they do, they will waive the fee or apply the fee to a bottle purchase. The pours are generous, and the feeling is not even remotely pretentious. It is casual and fun. Even the rule of thumb Americans typically are told, that you can generally trust that the cuter or funnier the wine label, the worse the quality of the wine will be — this does not exist here. A few of the best wineries have whimsical names and even funnier wine names (e.g. “Floozy” or “Mongrel”).

We spent the day visiting wineries in the Maclaren Vale region, just 40 minutes outside of Adelaide. The most interesting cellar door (as they are called here) that we visited today was the D’Arenberg Cellar Door, also known as “the cube” in Maclaren Vale because if you had to look at it from the outside, it does not appear like any winery you’d ever see in the U.S.; it’s a very modern building shaped like a blue, white, and black-patterned cube. And the inside of it is like a museum, full of interactive exhibits, scent-testers, and even a bathroom that begs to be photographed, with “human mouths” as urinals and flora covering the walls from floor to ceiling.

Wine drinking shouldn’t be perceived as pretentious or so serious; it should be fun and playful the way it is here.

Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, a city that Americans would consider not high on the priority list (if on any list) of places to visit in Australia, since most travelers would prioritize Sydney, Melbourne, and Cairns/the Great Barrier Reef over this city; I get why they would. I guess Chris has, too, in showing me the glories of his home country. It’s my seventh time visiting Australia, yet this is my first time visiting South Australia. But it’s far more diverse and interesting than I could have imagined before, with interesting and modern architecture, cuisines representing the entire globe (today alone, we had a Malaysian snack, Australian meat pies, and Argentinian food), and one of the world’s most famous wine regions with Barossa Valley among others right in the city’s backyard, some areas less than an hour away from Adelaide. Honestly, before Chris, all I really knew about Adelaide was that it was in South Australia and that the musician Ben Folds spent some time living there with his then-wife, who is Australian. Folds has a song called “Adelaide” that mentions things like the quaintness of this capital city and places to visit like Rundle Mall.

With the wine scene being so vibrant, I found that in my restaurant research that many of the highest rated restaurants for local eating in the country are actually right here in Adelaide. Many had won national awards for restaurant of the year or newcomer on the scene by well recognized dining publications or newspapers. It was comical to read in many reviews that some restaurants were so posh, modern, and in high use of local ingredients that “it feels like we were eating in a Melbourne restaurant!”

Traveling for food and wine — what could possibly be better than that?

In the U.S., I always use Yelp to look at restaurant reviews. As anyone should with any random review site, I take the reviews with a grain of salt, as many of the reviews are going to be completely baseless and say absolutely nothing helpful, or, written by people who have no idea what the cuisine is supposed to be, or base their review on the dishes they ordered that the restaurant is not even remotely known for. Some examples of types of reviews that I disregard are: “All of Portugal’s food is nothing noteworthy, but THIS RESTAURANT IS WORTH GOING TO! I loved it!!”; “Chinese food is always so greasy, but this place is not!”; “My husband and I came here for dinner last night (a steakhouse), and I don’t eat meat. So I ordered the swordfish, and it was horrendous!”; “The food here was good, but not great. I’ve had better (end of review, or details on what was ‘good, but not great’).” In other words, that person wrote a bunch of words that said completely nothing.

But what I have noticed overall is that for Asian restaurants in general, the reviews in the U.S. on average tend to be more forgiving than the reviews in Australia. Here in Australia, people use Zomato and rate/review restaurants, and the reviews tend to be more critical. People will be more exacting about whether the pho lived up to their high standards (“beef flavour was not deep enough”), or if the noodles were house-made or not (“noodles were not fresh!”). Reviewers will also on average not give as many five-star reviews as they do in the U.S. for reviews, meaning that in the end, even if someone really enjoyed a restaurant and found it quite good, it might have at best three or four stars. The reviews where people wrote that the restaurant was “good” and only gave them three stars — these were mind-boggling to me. They are really taking “okay” to the extreme meaning of “good” here.

Because of this, when I am looking at the average review in the U.S., I might give a place that has on average 3.5 stars the benefit of the doubt (especially if they are relatively new and are still working out their kinks and consistencies in both service, food, and presentation), but on average, would prefer places that have at least 4 stars. Even a 3 I would almost always pass on there. But here in Australia, I’d still consider a place if it had 3-3.2 stars (ratings seem to also include all those .10s, too, here). In fact, one Vietnamese spot I really enjoyed had only 3.3 stars, and I felt a bit deflated afterwards.

Since arriving in Melbourne on Saturday and wandering through the Central Business District, I couldn’t help but notice a few signs that said, “We welcome all refugees.” Though it is up for debate whether Australia is more welcoming to refugees than the United States, particularly in an age of Trumpism where bigotry and racism have been reawakened across the globe, it is comforting to see a sign that at least appears to acknowledge that there are innocent, well-meaning, and hard-working people struggling in war-torn countries today that need a home in a safer, happier place. Not everyone believes the fake news that all refugees are potential terrorists looking to leech off of “free handouts.”

I’ve also been doing some research for the few days we will be spending in Adelaide this week, and I noticed the immigrant stories on some of the restaurant websites. One of them was especially heart-warming, describing a couple who migrated from Afghanistan with their young family in the late 1980s during the height of the Cold War. As is common with many immigrants to a new country, they didn’t see much that resembled the foods that they loved to eat, so they opened their own restaurant in 2009 to share with Adelaide an authentic piece of the Afghan culture that they left behind. Their website reads:

“At Parwana we believe that even loss and suffering can forge beauty and generosity. It is in this spirit that diners at Parwana are welcomed like guests into a home, and treated to the culinary pleasures of age-old secrets of genuine Afghan cooking, hinting at the glory of the country the family once knew.”

If you ask any American, Afghanistan is not on anyone’s “bucket list” for travel. It has a dark gash over it with an ongoing war there, with heavy U.S. involvement. When people hear the name of this country, they immediately think of Osama bin Laden or the Taliban, of the terrorist attacks of 9/11. And for the conservatives of the U.S., for which there are many, they likely believe that almost anyone from Afghanistan is a potential terrorist. So a story like the one shared above is lost, reduced down to nothing and forgotten, the stories of most immigrants families who leave their home countries, their places of familiarity, seeking out a better life and future for their children and their children’s future children. It’s tragic because it’s a culture like most Central Asian and Middle Eastern cultures that embraces family gatherings, guests being welcomed into a home, and delicious food.

And, this isn’t any surprise, but this restaurant is on our list.

Every time I’ve come back to Melbourne over the last six years, it feels more and more Asian to me. It doesn’t seem to matter what neighborhood we are in or what block we’re walking along, but there is inevitably yet another noodle or dumpling spot, many of which are chains from China or Taiwan or Malaysia. They have have both Chinese or Vietnamese or Thai writing in addition to English. The food always looks authentic and beautiful. And there’s always Caucasians ordering the “right” dishes at the restaurants when we pass by and I take a quick peek through the windows.

And then lo and behold, as we were walking through Melbourne’s Central Business District today, I noticed Happy Lemon, a popular chain of “salted cheese” milk tea drinks that originated in Shanghai that has hundreds of locations around Asia and the world now. They have a location in Flushing in New York, but not yet in Manhattan. And in the Bay Area when my two friends introduced me to it, it’s located in Berkeley, not in San Francisco. This is their first location in Oceania.

It’s overwhelming in a delicious way. I want to eat everything.