Vietnam, March 2026

Ho Chi Minh City, 14–20 March 2026, with a day out east in Đồng Nai province. This was a work trip, so a fair amount of the eating happened out of a compartmented box at a desk — and I have put one of those on the page, because a section that only shows the pavement grill and the banquet is telling you a flattering half of the week. But almost everything I ate and almost everyone I met, I found by going out and exploring on my own; my colleagues more often than not did not come with me. The big group dinners here are the exception, not the rule. The rest of it was phở on a steel stool at ten past six in the morning, a bún bowl handed over a folding table by someone I still think about, and bánh xèo I had been eating wrong for years. Every photograph is mine. Where I cannot name what I ate — and there are several — this section says so rather than guessing.