Gems From the Stack #4

An Ode to Vietnam

May 06, 2026

Hoki mai anō and welcome back to another Gems From The Stack - my first pre-scheduled one from the road. This time, a theme seems to be emerging - Vietnam is the subject matter of all these pieces.

I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as I did before I left.

Five-Generation Noodles: - Rowena Harding 🍉 of Postcards from Rowena

Vietnam and noodles, what’s not to love? Rowena takes us on a journey deep into the home of a family that has been making Cao lầu (a traditional rice noodle) in Hoi An for generations, five to be exact. Due to the demanding nature of the work and the fact that restaurants and hotels don’t buy preservative free noodles, this culinary art is slowly being lost to time. Now, only two families still make the noodles by hand. Her detailed description and photos take us through the steps of the process. The way Rowena moves from observing to participating (albeit as a failed apprentice) and finally eating the noodles made me feel like I was there in that smoky room at 4:30 am with them. It’s so easy to see the pride and care the family puts into the production of these unique noodles. As she puts it, “These are noodles that have fed generations. These are noodles for the soul.”

This post inspired us to book the same tour and I am not really a tour person.

If you enjoyed this, I highly recommend also checking out Thailand Told Through Noodles.

My Vietnam travel plans - Defne of Defne’s Substack

Defne’s post on her plans to approach her Vietnam trip like a thesis, one in which she aims to “systematise how to travel in a way that fosters curiosity and zeal”.

While this is the complete opposite of my going-in-cold-approach to travel, Defne’s unique take on travelling intrigued me. Her underlying premise that travel is about affect and transformation, about curiosity and learning, echoes my own ideas. I tend to agree that merely wandering around looking at things without really letting them in is akin to a museum or zoo visit - distant and observational. The way she approaches her upcoming trip to Vietnam through an ethnographic research lens, complete with a literature review, a series of fieldwork questions, and a list of research tools (including a potential Bumble date), makes me want to read her findings even more.

I Didn’t Leave Hanoi. I Grew Anyway - Giang Pham of Giang in Translation

This is a slightly different journey to the ones I usually read. It’s an internal journey while staying still. Giang explores what it is to feel stuck in your hometown and people’s perceptions of you seldom change even though you do… because as she says, “The biggest changes rarely leave fingerprints on the outside.”

The way in which Giang writes about the textures of Hanoi is captivating and her desire to “stop muting the place” she lives in is aspirational. Her closing idea that maybe the problem wasn’t the city or even being geographically stuck, but rather the issue was fragmentation, really resonated. This is a piece for anyone who felt out of place at ‘home’.

The Ancestors Upstairs - The Sober Vagabond

The Sober Vagabond writes about how a seemingly innocuous stop at a shop in Hoi An led to an unusual feeling of peace and comfort amongst the wares of local artists. As she points out, the shop was in a converted old house with a calamansi tree in the garden. In that place, there was a sense of ‘rightness’. After a discussion with the owner’s husband, she discovered they didn’t live upstairs because it was reserved for the ancestors. Apparently, the ancestors were very happy with the level of care and dedication of the property.

This post made me smile and reminded me of what my mum used to say about places holding good and bad energy. That you could just feel if something bad had happened when you entered. Similarly, in warm, happy places, you can feel the positive energy.

kumquat iced tea - Macholicious Girl of tales of taste

Macholicious Girl does a fantastic job conveying the sensory chaos of Vietnam’s streets. From the noise, to the vibrant colours and pungent smells, “It all bleeds together into a sea of pigment, text and objects.” Accompanied by the tart sweetness of kumquat iced tea, sipped through a pink straw from a plastic bag. It took me right back to the streets of Hanoi.

As always, if you have read something you think I would appreciate (or just something too good not to share), please let me know and I will read it when I’m back in July. In the meantime, I am planning to work my way through my extensive stack of saved posts while I am off-grid. So I should have uncovered some more gems by the time I’m back.

Between the Dots

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