Jeune Street

Sunset football on the harbour beach

5. Highlands Coffeeshop. My first encounter with Vietnamese coffee was rather traumatic, when I ordered a black coffee with no sugar and served up a small glass with an inch of black sludge (yes, I drank it, regrettably). Since then I’ve come to appreciate more about Vietnamese coffee, which is almost always had with condensed milk and a bit of hot water — sometimes over ice. Nevertheless, it’s not quite the same as a quality Americano. Highlands Coffee is a western-style coffee shop chain (not too different from Starbucks, but the comparison seems unkind) that serves up delicious Vietnamese grown coffee the way I like it. The widespread coffeeshop culture here in Vietnam means that there’s really nothing wrong with buying one coffee and hanging out all afternoon — which is precisely what we did many afternoons, establishing Highlands as our second office.

The second office

6. Vietnamese Breakfast. I made a morning ritual out of motorcycling over to the neighbourhood market to pick up our breakfast. I stopped at the bakery, where I bought fresh baguettes, and then visited my favourite greengrocer women for fresh mangoes, cut pineapple, and cold cocunut milk. Lita rolled out of bed most mornings just in time to dig in (although I regularly appropriated the lion’s share of the mangoes).

Not our neighbourhood fruit stand (this is Hanoi), but you get the idea