What About Vietnam – S5_E18 – Hanoi Below the Surface
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What about Vietnam?

A podcast with Carrie Newsome. The series where Carrie talks with travellers about their experiences and adventures. Find out more about Vietnam from the people who have actually been there. What about Vietnam? Whether it's adventure, exploring the culture and cuisine, shopping or just soaking up the sun. Let Carrie and her travellers pave the way for a magical holiday in Vietnam. What about Vietnam? What about Vietnam?

Xin chào and welcome to What About Vietnam? My name is Kerry Newsome and I am your host. Hello to all my regular listeners. Thank you for joining me again and for your lovely notes of appreciation for the show and the work I put in here, a really heartfelt big double thank you. To my new listeners, it's great to have you on board. Please feel free to

to reach out to me anytime if you have any questions. Best way to do that is whataboutvietnamatgmail.com.

Conversely, if you'd like me to put together a trip plan, simply go to the website whataboutvietnam.com. There's a travel request form there with all the details of what I provide for you. Simply fill in that form and send that through to me and we can begin that process. Today, however, we're going to be focusing on Hanoi. Why? Why?

I guess for many the feedback is that Hanoi doesn't have a lot to offer. It's kind of a stepping point to other places. However, over time I've really learnt to love Hanoi and I've done that by engaging with and listening to different people and kind of looking at it from different

a Vietnamese's perspective. So not as a tourist headset, but from their eyes as to how proud they are of their city and their heritage. And I'm going to get to do that with one Hanoian and her name is Ha. Sometimes she is called Hannah.

And Hanoi has been a very big part of my understanding and my education to Vietnam, and in particular Hanoi and the heritage of Vietnamese. I think we can sometimes very quickly jump to, you know, Vietnam's just all about the Vietnamese War or the American War, as it's sometimes referred to. However, there's just so much more to it, and I think you can sell it short and

you're going to be wandering around the streets and seeing a real mix of, you know, chic cafes and boutiques and things like that. But then right alongside it, if you look up, you'll see very, very old buildings that belong to another part of history and another part of the heritage and the evolution of Vietnam.

I want to tell you a little bit about Ha before we invite her on. Ha is co-founder of OCD Consulting, one of Vietnam's top management consulting firms.

She's also the co-founder of a number of educational technology startups, including the popular one OMT and Kids Online. She serves on the advisory board of CFC Vietnam, which is an NGO that promotes children's right to education. She also leads projects funded by UNICEF. She

She's co-founder of the Vietnam Association of Non-Public Preschool Association, VAMPPE. In 2021, she made a tiny step, as she calls it, writing a book about the generation of Vietnamese, the

The Bridge Generation of Vietnam from Wartime to Boomtime under the guidance of her MBA professor and mentor, Dr. Nancy K. Napier. It's a great book and I'm going to put the link in the show notes that you can have a read if you wish on

Ha received a BA in linguistics from the Crimean Federal University and an MBA from Boyce State University, where she's treasurer of the Vietnam Alumni Group. She lives with her family in Hanoi. Ha

does a great job in this show to help us look under the surface of Hanoi and see it for its evolutionary process of growth and history. She will take us on a journey through its Christian background, what makes coffee so distinct, and the Doi Moi period. It will help guide you to a more refined and in-depth experience of what I consider to be one of Southeast Asia's most famous cities.

Without further ado, let's welcome Hart to the program. Hello, Hart. Hi, Kerry. Thank you for inviting me to your talk. And you can also call me Hannah, as you know very well. I couldn't bring you this show without a brief update on the fallout from the devastating typhoon Yagi.

This super typhoon, one of the most devastating storms to hit Vietnam in decades, fell I think about the 7th of September. But as of the 19th, it still carries a rough death toll rising to I think about 226 in Vietnam alone.

Look, the economic impact is staggering. Hanoi itself had thousands of residents been evacuated as the Red River reached its highest level in two decades. The flooding has been so severe, people are getting around and navigating on boats, etc., as their streets have turned into rivers. The

Typhoon Yagi, I guess, is a stark reminder of the increasing intensity of weather events, likely exacerbated by climate change. The climate in Vietnam is definitely changing and making it very hard for us people to offer advice on when is the best time to visit Vietnam.

I have a link to Blue Dragon and UNICEF in the notes if you'd like to donate to the appeal. Every dollar counts and it doesn't take much to make a big difference in Vietnam. I've asked Ha to just give a quick local update as she felt the full force of it in Hanoi. Over to her.

So my name is Ha for a reason. I was born and raised and have been living most of my life in Hanoi.

And Ha in Vietnamese language means river. And Hanoi actually means inside the river. And by the river, we mean the Red River, which covers Hanoi. And we have a lovely dike system to protect the inside Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, against the flooding that in the past happens every year, every semester.

and autumn time in the Red River. And indeed, Yagi...

was the biggest super typhoon that we had to experience during the last 30 years. And it ravaged the northern part of Vietnam and especially schools and preschools in the northern provinces. Many places that are popular names to our tourists are actually badly damaged by Typhoon Yagi. Luckily, we...

Vietnamese are known as a resilient nation. We are a bunch of people who actually know that typhoons and landslides and natural disasters are part of our life. So we are quick to rebuild things. And I'm happy to say that my team and the educators, Vietnamese educators in other parts of Vietnam are quick to rebuild.

resources to help with the schools and preschools in the northern provinces. And we are going there this weekend to bring them resources

actually cash for them to rebuild the schools? Yes. I mean, working with my team and managing my clients and their visits to northern Vietnam, the experiences and the feedback I'm getting is that pretty much everywhere in those northern districts for visitors has been restored.

So that, you know, roads are now open again, Halong Bay is open again, and most of the hotels and resorts are bared pretty well. However, as you say, it is more the underprivileged areas, the areas where there are, you know, small communities, they are quite kind of off the beaten track,

And yet those communities have suffered quite extensively with the landslides, et cetera. So whilst the fury of the typhoon kind of hit around the 9th of September, it's still having an effect on those areas due to the landslides and the cleanup.

Because after the flooding, as you would know, those areas kind of get left with a lot of debris and mess, et cetera, that requires a whole new rebuild. So whilst essential services are back on and people have been able to get food and everyone has been able to rally, which, as you say, Vietnam is very well known to do and to do quickly.

And I've had a little bit to do with some of the charities involved in those areas. And I'm happy to say that a lot of work has been done and a lot of people have been saved. For people who, you know, who listen to me and listen to this program, I think they're probably more thinking about, you know, is this going to be

something that they need to be mindful when they're planning their trips to Vietnam. And you and I had a little chat before we even came on about climate change and how it is affecting the seasons, and Vietnam's not the only country in the world affected by this. So whilst we say hand on heart that we don't think this is going to be

conditional around the future. We don't know. We don't know what the future will hold. This is not customary for Hanoi at this particular time of the year. Well, certainly to my knowledge and

I only have 14 years. You have many more years' experience. But in 14 years, this would be probably the supercharged typhoon that I've ever seen to hit Vietnam and have the devastation that it had. So people, I think...

Yes, of course, in your planning, take the time of year into consideration, but don't let it or don't let this particular event deter you to come to Hanoi and experience the north in the month of September as well.

Mostly, it's about, you know, the kind of the beginning of the harvest season and it's a beautiful time of the year. So, you know, let's see what 25 holds up. Let's see, you know, how the future holds up. But I'm happy to take any questions or queries around your planning when you're considering your next trip. Moving on, the reason why I have been able to

enjoy more my time in Hanoi and understand some of the places I visit, some of the food I eat, some of the sites that I get to see is because I get to understand a little bit more about

What lies below the surface of those places? What lies below the surface or the origin of that food I'm tasting? What is its history? Sometimes I think we can very easily think about Vietnam in terms of its wars, right?

And whilst wars obviously bring extreme hardship and difficulties to the country, they are not the only forms of hardship that the country can experience and has experienced. And we're going to delve a little bit more into that with heart because there was some serious hardships that happened post-war. So,

To begin with, I'm going to talk to her about some of the things that are her favorites in her city, and that begins with churches.

And I'm going to throw it over to you now, Harp, because this was your idea, this subject. And I have to admit a lot of ignorance in really understanding churches and some of the ones that I do visit and that I love. But I'm going to throw it over to you to talk about the churches that you can visit in Hanoi.

You may see at the beginning of the show notes in the podcast channel that you're listening from some words that say text me a message. It's a great idea. Don't get me wrong. I love hearing from you and, you know, whether that's your thoughts on the episodes, some questions, messages of appreciation, you know, I just love the feedback. It's really great. However, I feel it remiss of me not

to A, not thank you for them, but to B, not be able to respond directly to you. So if you have sent me a question and I've got lots and you haven't heard from me, there's a really good reason why I actually don't have the ability in the technology to respond to you. They kind of expect...

that you would or I would answer the questions in the form of a show. And there's just kind of too many and I just think it's just too personal not to do it that way. So I wanted to alert you to the fact that if you do send me a message through that connection option, I'm not going to be able to respond to you directly.

So if you do have a question and it is time sensitive or you want to send me any kind of message, can I suggest the following two ways? One, send me an email to whataboutvietnamatgmail.com. That is the email address that I have the most constant access to and I will aim to get back to you ASAP.

Secondly, if you go to the website for the podcast, which is whataboutvietnam.com, if you scroll right to the bottom, there is a chance for you to leave a voice message. Now, in that voice message, I can respond to you directly.

equally with a response in voice. So if you want a quick response, that's your next best way. But I just wanted to get this into the show, make you aware of this as it really is becoming problematic. And I've just got too many

and I can't kind of go naming people and answering each question. That's just a little bit silly. So if you have sent me a text message before and you're waiting on a message back as a response, I'm so sorry. I cannot do that. But if you want to send the question again, I'd be more than happy to answer. Music

Sure, Carrie. So, indeed, thank you for allowing me to start with my favorite topic. First of all, I have to declare that I'm actually not a Catholic. I'm not a Christian, which is good in a way that I have very fresh and hopefully unbiased view about the churches in Vietnam.

I normally would joke that in my next life, I won't become a Christian just because I love the very unique churches, Catholic churches of the northern part of Vietnam so much. And I can safely say that with my travel, I spent years, like six years, in the former Soviet Union. So I traveled across the country.

Russia, Ukraine. So I understand the, and I have been to too many Orthodox churches. And then I went to the USA. I understand. And I have visited many Protestant churches. I were in Europe. I went to Catholic and Anglican churches and et cetera. And,

And I went back home to Vietnam and I discovered that, okay, so I just also realized that Vietnam, among the Southeast Asia countries, I think we have the most unique, most interesting culture.

Catholic heritage, especially with concentration in the northern part of Vietnam. The birthplace of the Catholic Church in Vietnam is actually Nam Dinh and Ninh Binh provinces next door to Hanoi, right? And we have four basilica, you know, Vatican-designated basilicas to

two in the north and one in central Vietnam and fourth in Ho Chi Minh City, in Saigon. I will leave it to our visitors to find out because I won't give all the clues, but they are interesting because in many places you would be almost transposed to 18th century Europe and you have a bit of that Europe.

preserved among the lush green paddy fields, rice fields of Vietnam. And you actually only need to go about 40 kilometers south of Hanoi to be there to witness all of those. And in the

of the Vietnamese Catholic Church. That area still reports, you know, still belongs to the Hanoi Diocese. So to them, it is part of Hanoi, greater Hanoi. And the churches inside Hanoi, I have sent you some of my favorite shots of the Hanoi Cathedral.

and the other churches around Hanoi, they are so rich with history. And we are so very lucky that the majority of them actually are well-preserved, despite all the wars, the bombings, and etc.,

So I do hope that there will be more and more church-only tours to Hanoi and to the surrounding area. The next-door province to Hanoi, Nam Dinh, is not an average province in terms of size and population, and they have close to 700 Catholic churches worldwide.

dotted in almost like every village. So you travel on a van, on a car, on every road in Nam Dinh province and you look left, you see churches. You look right, you see also, you know, like... Unbelievable. Unbelievable. I did not know that. And they're so beautiful. No, that's why we do want to have tours for...

for church lovers, Catholic and non-Catholic, but church lovers, because they are so rich, so well-reserved. The people are so welcoming. You ask them one question and they will answer you with lots of stories. Going to see the churches of the northern part of Vietnam is going to be a super interesting, exciting, and surprising find for everybody.

The story behind them is so rich, so interesting. The whole basilica was built in an original swamp and the parishioners actually pulled everything they had and they actually built hardwood floors for the whole area just to keep the church to be like a sanctuary, solid, staying in the swamp area.

That's incredible. I also don't know whether there are any other places in the world that people would do that kind of thing. And that is a designated basilica. It's belonging to the Hanoi Diocese. It's a

Khe So, basilica, 40 kilometers south of Hanoi. So things like that. All the monasteries, the Scythian monasteries in Ninh Binh, it's just like you are stepping into German Gothic area and then nearby are all Vietnamese rice fields. So it's very kind of unique.

And I have been to churches in China, in other countries around here. You don't really have that concentration and the kind of density of both Catholic churches' presence and history behind that. So I won't leave it at here because I think it

People would want to find out more themselves, just like me when I started to discover the Vietnamese Catholic churches around me. So start with Hanoi Cathedral, going to Co Bac Cathedral, and you go further. And I really hope, Carrie, that you will be introducing more and more specific, you know, Vietnamese Catholic tours to the churches. I've never...

to seek out other than one or two of the main ones, as you pointed out, the cathedral in Hanoi and obviously the Pink Church in Saigon, you know, that would be it. That would be the full stop after those two. When you say there are up to 700, that just blows me away because, you

I think for people to understand once again that Vietnamese have a Christian or a Catholic background to them other than Confucian and also Buddhist background.

That's a little bit of a revelation, I think, that everyone listening would be going, well, I never thought of Vietnam as having that kind of heritage. So it's wonderful, wonderful to know this. The expansiveness of Vietnam just continues to blow me away. But I think what we'll do, Hannah, what we'll do is

We'll put some links in the notes for everyone so that they can do a little bit of investigation. And certainly for anyone that is interested in this in more detail, happy to take your inquiries and I will certainly put some tours together so that I can get you to those places. So feel free for that.

Can we move on a little bit now and just understand a little bit more about that below the surface Hanoi and get to another subject that you and I both enjoy, which is coffee. Yes.

and enjoying a lovely coffee in Hanoi would have to be one of my must-do recommendations for anyone in Vietnam. But maybe let's talk about some of the origins of coffee, where it stands in the world as a coffee producer, and then, of course, the fascination around egg coffee because, once again,

People don't really understand the origin of egg coffee and how it came to be in the first place. So share away, pass.

Yes, so we continue on the sea later. And so after church, of course, my second obsession is coffee. I have to say that I'm lucky on two fronts. So first of all, Vietnam has been for, I think, for the last at least last 15 years to be the number two world exporter of coffee to the world. We

We are only behind Brazil in terms of coffee volume export. Vietnam is a grower of Robusta coffee mostly. That's why you don't really see Vietnam like single origin coffee in coffee specialty shops because majority of Robusta coffee goes into like mass coffee, like instant coffee. So Nestle is one of the biggest producers.

importer of Vietnamese Robusta coffee. We also have Arabica coffee. And why I'm saying I'm lucky on two fronts, because first of all, we are a major coffee country, coffee producer country. And my father is one of the earliest Northern Vietnamese coffee export. So when during the war, we actually have...

North Vietnam and South Vietnam, majority of the Vietnam coffee production area are actually in Central Highland where Da Lat and Lam Dong and Da Clac

And it used to belong to so-called South Vietnam. My father is a northern Vietnamese. And in Vietnam, we only grew Arabica coffee. More acidic, but more fragrant, more aromatic coffee, which lower yield, higher value. And Hanoi coffee, even during the very hot days where we didn't really have much to eat,

Coffee shops were there everywhere. We had to recycle coffee, right? You know that Vietnam, we drink coffee the French way. We use the French drift and we put like two teaspoons full of coffee into the drift and then you pour hot boiling water on it.

And so if you only had a little bit of coffee and you want to have coffee aroma like in the morning and then in the afternoon and also on the second day, then you actually recycle that coffee in that little coffee drip like a lot of time. It's very strong.

The first drip would be strong, the second and the third not so much. But since we had to save them, we actually would recycle it. Like me, when I was small, I would be drinking the third round of refuel. There are nostalgic coffee shops like the Kop Cafe chain, which started in Hanoi, actually. This is called...

Yeah. So, C-O-N-G. Yeah. How do you say it? N-U-C. Yeah.

Cộng means actually it is, it actually is a short for Cộng Sản, which is communist. So communists buy coffee and you go into those coffee shop and you see the Vietnamese military. Yeah, they all wear the similar clothes and there's a lot of propaganda posters. Yes, because it's nostalgic of the time when we actually drank those refueled coffee and

But it's part of the joy that we had. It's a very big change.

It is a big chain, successful. They are now in Vietnam, Malaysia, Korea, Canada. I think they just opened one in Toronto. Wow. Maybe next to Tim Hortons. There is a reason, there is a history that we associate with coffee and that's why coffee and the likes are popular.

But then we also have egg coffee, which you mentioned. And Hanoi is the...

the origin of egg coffee and you tried egg coffee the other time you were in Hanoi and I think you mentioned that it's of course you had reservation you said how do the egg flavor would go with coffee flavor and would it be like a little bit too strange a combination too sweet and etc right yeah

But there is a reason that it didn't, like if it is just a concoction, then it must like pass away long time ago. But it stayed on. It became kind of a thing by itself because there is a recipe that actually makes it

very possible and very interesting. Some people, it's like durian. Some people won't want to have the second cup of air coffee, but if you are addicted to it, then you actually look forward to the time when you are back in Hanoi and in the cool autumn time, like September, October, November, right? And you sit in those Hanoian, old French colonial-style small houses and

and you saw that the barista was very carefully making it for you. So, okay, at coffee, there is one whole corner of the internet about the origin and all the speculation of theories about it. So, please go and find out. But at coffee is indeed a very quintessential Hanoian thing.

Next to a coffee, I would recommend newcomers to visit some neighborhood coffee because that is where they can experience how an authentic Hanoian would go to have their morning coffee. In the past, we read newspapers. Now, we read the news on our smartphones, but it's the same thing over the same cup of coffee. Yeah.

My understanding, just before we jump from egg coffee, because you won't believe how many times people ask me about the origin of egg coffee. Oh. I understand, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I was to understand that egg coffee originally came about when there was a time in Vietnam, in hardship, where it was very difficult to get any kind of milk from.

So to replace the milk or to replace, you know, where you had tinned milk, where you had condensed milk, which you sometimes use, they or someone decided that they might try egg as a replacement to make the coffee. And then because, as it turned out, it tasted very good, it kind of caught on.

and has become this very, very quintessential Hanoian Vietnamese thing to try. But for everyone, I think that's origin. Am I close?

You are very close, indeed. So two things is true, indeed. The Vietnamese way, the Northern Vietnamese way to drink coffee is actually with condensed milk, which is just a little bit of milk, but a lot of sugar. Yeah, a lot of sugar. A lot of sugar. And that's why the Vietnamese traditional, like old style coffee is both strong on the coffee side and too sweet on the sugar side.

And indeed, it doesn't make foam. So we, in the past, we didn't have fresh milk. And indeed, we can't do milk with very nice looking fruits like... Like a cappuccino. Yes, that's indeed. The next...

Best alternative to it is egg. And I think it caught on because we do have nice chicken eggs every day and it was not difficult to find out even during the war time. So it caught on.

But the claim to fame of egg coffee of Hanoi is that it is still very difficult to make it. As you can see, there are not many egg coffee shops around, even in Hanoi, because it is an art to make an egg coffee. I can't do it myself. And not many baristas can do it. So there are only a few places and they are very well-trained.

Do you remember the place we went to when we were doing the filming for VTV4? So just a shout out to VTV4. We did a day filming where I got to spend a whole day with her and we went around Hanoi and talked about lots of things. But that particular place, and I think I've got a link and a photo and I'll share with everyone.

They had been doing it for a very long time. Am I right? Like 60 years. Yes. About 60 years later. Yes. Yeah.

I was truly gobsmacked how tasty it was because as you would expect with egg coffee or people that profess to sell that type of coffee, there will be good and bad practitioners of this. But this particular shop, I've had egg coffee before, but it never left me with any wow feeling where –

Having it at that coffee shop, you would not know about that place. It's quite hidden. It's quite old. Once again, it is below the surface of Hanoi. That's one of the places that you would definitely have to seek out.

to find, but wow, it was just amazing. I can hand on heart say that that would be the best egg coffee I have ever had. That's Cafe Zhang. And indeed, we won't give you more details because we are talking about Hanoi below the surface. So

a lot for you to discover yourself, right? Everything in Hanoi is about a little bit of discovery for a population of 100 million in Vietnam. In total, Vietnam has over 500,000 coffee shops and majority of them could be in big cities like in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang.

So I don't have a specific data or statistics on how many coffee shops we have in Hanoi, but I just, it's a lot. Another unique feature of Hanoi that you don't really see in many places, especially you don't really see them in Ho Chi Minh City or southern part of Vietnam, is those collective living quarters. In Vietnamese, we say khu tập thể. So khu means quarter, tập means quarter.

and thê, thê means collective, so collective living quarters. Those are actually now, by now, a little bit shabby-looking areas

But that is where, and because they have been along for like 60 or 50 years, some of the oldest living quarters, collective living quarters in Hanoi, Kim Lien and Trung Tu, they were built, actually they were built in the 60s of the last century. So 60 years old. But the community, the vibe of like everybody together there,

are still so strong now, just as before, because the people who live there, they have been there like four generations and they have, you know, kids going together to kindergarten and schools all together, doing their daily shopping, groceries in the same, you know, wet market next door and enjoying the coffee shops all together, all at the same time.

And so there are underground arts coming out from those living quarters. Interesting stuff is happening there. So I also recommend if visitors to Hanoi are interested,

If they want really to deep dive below the surface, they go to Trung Tu or Kim Lien Collective Living Quarters, explore those older buildings, but with huge big trees around because those trees were also planted like six years ago. Seeing people going around and going into some of the shops around there, which is quite like...

And still some of those things can remind you of the old time Hanoi, like before Doi Moi. When you start to peel back the onion of Vietnam's history, you start to appreciate some of the most influential transition periods for the Vietnamese people.

These go well beyond the hardships and recovery from what's known as the American War. Let's take a look at 1986 when a series of new reforms called Doi Moi were introduced. Ha is going to share with us how this period played out for her as a young woman in Vietnam.

and how it shaped the country we're visiting today. These reforms had a profound impact on modern Vietnam, and understanding them helps us see the country in a whole new light. The Doi Moi period in Vietnam refers to kind of a series of economic reforms. It was a plan to

raise a socialist-oriented market economy. And there's various key points about Doi Moi, and I'll put a link in the notes so that you can better understand it. But when you're walking around the buildings and you're getting a feel for the country, and in particular in Hanoi, it's more pronounced, I think, in Hanoi, you're going to register that this period is played out in Doi

how the Vietnamese adapted, how they adapted their economy, their way of business, their attitude, their thinking, their choices, their education, their entrepreneurship. It flavoured everything. It changed everything. And I think

This is what's going to give you some insight into Hanoi, that without it, you just might not get it. Anyway, Hutt does a better job of it than me. So let's welcome Hutt to talk about the Doi Moi period.

This period of Doi Moi I know is a time in your life which was extremely influential in how it paved the rest of your life, I guess. So maybe talk to us about the Doi Moi period and then how that played out and how it plays out in Vietnam today.

Indeed. So for my generation, Doi Mui is totally life-changing. We started our education and became like teenagers and then young adults under the centrally planned economy where the government took care of everybody, took care of our education. They would allocate a job for us. And then you would

would expect to work for the government your lifetime and then you would be given a salary, subsidized housing and everything. Your children's education wouldn't be taken care of by the government because it doesn't

It doesn't increase our productivity. Actually, it was like the opposite. But the expectation is that, okay, you just need to be an obedient citizen and the government will take care of everything for you. So we grew up with that kind of mindset and mentality. And boom, okay.

The socialist bloc was dissolved when I was in my final years of university in Crimea in the former Soviet Union.

And when I graduated and went home and then the Ministry of Education at that time almost like told us that, sorry, we are not going to do job allocation, employment allocation for you because there is no such thing no longer. And you are now free to do whatever you want to do. But then we didn't know what we want to do because there was no.

only a very nascent private sector and market economy in Vietnam at that time. And majority of us, not in the world, were very scared because that is something totally new to us, totally uncharted waters.

We didn't know about market economy. We were taught all the time that capitalism is a bad thing. It's like people exploiting people. Some people got very rich and rest would become like living slaves, that kind of thing. Now it's very funny to think.

to think about that, but it was like that during the late 1980s, right?

Yeah, but I think Vietnam, as in many cases, we are a rather resourceful bunch of people. We said, okay, this is our life. We have to take care of our life, you know, central planning or market economy or whatever. We don't figure out how to do that, right? So the first thing that majority of us, so-called young people,

or young intellectuals found out that, okay, now we need to switch from learning Russian language to English language, right? Because the rest of the world do not do business or do not work with Russian language. They actually prefer English language. So suddenly English language became a very popular language

Skill.

And I think Vietnam was able to turn around very fast at that time. And it has to start with the mindset. And I think I am very appreciative of the leadership of the country at that time. They were all communists.

party members and they said okay now we have to do our version Vietnamese version of communism which is very funny so our key leaders actually reached out to Singapore to neighboring countries saying that

sorry, we did not pay too much attention to you in the past, but now we want to know how you do your economy, how you uplift your nation out from poverty. We want to learn from you. I think we did it in a rather sincere way. Senior Prime Minister Liu Guangxiu of Singapore agreed to become a

a special advisor to the government of Vietnam in 1993. And he was one for a long time. And we did really listen to our neighbors' advices. And I think we did it in a very decisive manner. And so we were able to resume discussions

normal relationship with the United States of America, which used to be the enemy of Vietnam for so long during the war. During late 1995 and 1996, we started to have the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi. And now we didn't have to go to Bangkok to get a visa to the United States. And I was among the

some of the earliest batch of Vietnamese students to do an MBA in the American. To study, yes, in the US. Yeah, in an American university. And we were then really like shown how capitalism actually works. And we said, okay, so capitalism actually has its own merit and it actually could work in many other different settings. And then there is a

you know, like a real road for us forward. And that is what we covered in our book, you know, the story of people, individuals, Northern Vietnamese like me in the Bridge Generation book, you know, how we, as an individual, as a smaller, you know, communities, we embrace that kind of which means renovation. Actually, it's

a big transition from our mindset to make the kind of future we want to have first for ourselves and then for our community and our country. And it reflects in cities like Hanoi, right? And I think for everyone, if I can give, and I hope you'll permit me to give my understanding and how it actually plays out,

in your visit and when you start to travel around Vietnam is that you will see and you will notice very quickly the old next to the new almost everywhere. So you'll see a building that, you know, is 50, 100 years old right next to a brand-new cafe.

you will notice in the streets still the occasion of flower vendors. And, you know, they are – sometimes, you know, people think, you know, they're a little bit lost in time, that they are still –

pedaling, I guess, their wares the way they would have done years ago. And then all of a sudden you'll see a Mercedes car drive past and, you know, sometimes that contrast just, you know, blows you away. But it's because the speed in which Doimoi and it changed the

as I understand the mindset of Vietnamese, to have to quickly adapt from, and this is actually out of the book, No Choice Soup to Choice Soup, where

But unconditionally, people were then allowed to explore their own futures, their own education, their own entrepreneurship. And this is where the growth spurt went berserk, in my opinion. It just like shot up. Because I can remember my very, very first visit to Vietnam was like back in 2007. And even then, I was like...

This is still a country a long way away from terms of living standards and entrepreneurship and even...

curiosity. You know, Vietnamese were not intrinsically educated to be curious. They were educated to accept the status quo and not question. So then all of a sudden, the book was open and through Doi Moi, as Ha was a gifted student and she was able to apply her

her intellect and her discipline to venture further, to be able to explore education, even in the U.S. and with other Western partners, to be able to, you know, today she has a startup business and has had successful businesses in the past. That would never have happened without Doi Moyen.

Am I close to explaining it to people? Because this has taken me a while to get my head around over the years.

Indeed, you are very to the point on that. And I think for visitors to Vietnam, if they can add that kind of curiosity to understand or to like to see a country so fast changing itself over like the last 50 years, it is fantastic.

It would add to much more interesting angles to the two days visit to Hanoi and maybe two days in Hoi An and then two days in Ho Chi Minh City, right? So indeed, your first time to Hanoi 2007, that was the year when Vietnam was admitted to the World Trade Organization, to the WTO. And that is where our

our economy would actually start to take off because we would be able to integrate whatever industries and exports that we have to the global economy. And that is indeed, you were witnessing the start of the takeoff of the Vietnam so-called boom time. Before 2007, we tried and we did what

is needed to do but it's mostly still you know like one-sided efforts from Vietnam but when we were admitted to the World Trade Organization it is bilateral and then multilateral and now Vietnam is among the

some of the few countries in the world that has so many free trade agreements, FTAs. I think by now we have 17, 17 FTAs with many countries and regions in the world so that Vietnamese products can be exported and also we can import things from other countries to Vietnam.

So I think as an Australian, now you go to Vietnam, you see so many Australian stops around in every, even neighborhood stores and corners, right? I saw, so I saw, I now have Australian beef in my refrigerator. I have Australian butter. I can buy Hanukkah honey from New Zealand also in the nearby store and et cetera. Australian water.

Australian wine is everywhere, yeah, indeed. And the Australian trade office in the Australian embassy are having, you know, like really fun time introducing even some very unique Australian products to Vietnamese market. All of that did not happen, you know, like 15 years ago. Yeah, and let me share just also the diversification into food because

because a lot of people consider Vietnamese as still only focusing on their own cuisine. That couldn't be further from the truth. Now you can go to Vietnam and enjoy Greek, Italian. The Four Peas group have promoted very well their pizzas.

The opportunity to have really quality Japanese, Korean, it is especially in the major cities, probably predominantly in the major cities. But that diversification is paramount.

part of the origin of this came from free trade and that opening opportunity. I think the sad part for me is I can remember in early years when I used to come to Vietnam, people used to think I was brave, that, you know, that I was venturing to Vietnam because it was still unknown to the rest of the world. It was, you know, it had been a closed book and

And it had not allowed itself or had not shared with the world really very much about itself. It was still known as Vietnam, and Vietnam was just known as a war. That was the only word that was attributed to the country name, which was sad, very, very sad. But very quickly that has come to change.

But even today, even today, I will get people that will think that Vietnam is a third world country, that they will think that they're coming to some primitive place

that, you know, they're not going to have the facilities or, you know, some areas of it are going to be so primitive that they're going to have to, you know, be wary of. And, you know, that's in health standards, sanitization, quality of accommodation, English speaking places, all of that. So it is a bit of a revelation, but, you know, I'm happy to say

that it's very much a country on the move, I call it. It's continually evolving. I want to, I'm mindful of the time and I'm just wanting to see where we're going with this to make sure that we cover the real key points that we wanted to feature in this show. So is there anything else we should be adding here that we haven't covered so far that you'd like to?

I just want to encourage visitors to not worry about the facilities and the convenience that they won't have in Hanoi. I think they would be very amazed that the internet and free Wi-Fi are almost everywhere in the city, right? All the coffee shops would offer you free Wi-Fi unconditionally, for example, right?

And we have some of the highest literacy level in the world. Facilities and everything are there. And it's a safe country. It's so safe, except for the traffic jam that we have. Otherwise, we are really safe, right? And Hanoi is indeed some of the...

most interesting place for visitors to discover because it is a big enough city. We have close to 10 million people living in the greater Hanoi area and it has such a long history, right? We, as a city, we are like over 1,000 years old and

And the legacy that we have, we have the biggest, the strongest French colonial legacy in all Southeast Asia. And that has to do with all the Catholic churches, the French legacy in architecture and culture around Hanoi.

So it makes Hanoi really a hidden charm, something that for visitors to discover. Hanoi is so different, so standing out. Even in Southeast Asia, we are very different. And that is the beauty of it that we talk a little bit about this below the surface, but below the surface is for each of us to discover, right? And I would like to end our presentation

discussion today on that note. Hanoi is for you to discover below the surface. And every time you come, you discover a little bit more below the surface. And it is exciting. I thank you so much, Har, for coming on.

I really relish the time with you to be able to explore these things. I think that we could probably do another show and talk about other things like, you know, the history behind Buncha, the history behind Bihoy. All of those things are...

For you as a tourist, I really encourage you to do some research, do some investigation because that first drop of information

Bihoy will mean so much more as you will understand the origins. Having delicious bun cha, once again, that will resonate with your taste buds and you'll go, I can understand why they appreciated this. Because also the thing we have in touch with Hanoi is it can get quite cold and

And that's where the heartiness of some of the food comes from because just to keep people warm, the warm broths and the thickness of the broths, et cetera, is very much part of their history and belongs to their background. I'm going to leave it there now. I want to say thank you again for coming on the show.

Thank you, Carrie. And thank you, everyone, for tuning in to our discussion. So as a Hanoian, I would like to welcome you to Hanoi. And indeed, we hope to have more chances to speak to you about food, about the other interesting below-the-surface things of Hanoi. Till then, bye-bye, Carrie. Thank you for listening.

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