One day, when this pandemic madness is over, John, maybe we should plan a gourmet trip to Vietnam together. The food there, in its home territory, is in a different class altogether.
Did I ever tell you that, prior to my first ever visit to Vietnam - that was to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City in 2004 - I had a phobia of Vietnamese food?! That was because of my “bad” experiences with Vietnamese food in Australia (during my growing up years) and then in Singapore (throughout my young adult life) where Vietnamese food came across as a blander, stodgier and pretty much uninteresting version of other more exciting South-East Asian cuisines.
In 2004, I was to be in Saigon for 3 weeks on a business assignment, and I was having sleepless nights on what I’m going to do with regards to sustenance. Trust a glutton to lose sleep over worries about food. I actually packed my suitcase with a few kgs of biscuits. 
Then, on my first evening there, the financial controller of our company’s Saigon office took me out for dinner at a restaurant just round the corner from where I was staying. It was truly an eye-opener - nothing Vietnamese I’d had before that moment came close! The flavours were fresh and intense, the meats had the perfect texture and balance of tastes, the salads were light and crisp and incredibly fresh. And it was like that throughout my stay, meal after every meal, every day, for the next 3 weeks! It’s like a whole new culinary world just opened to me. I went back to Singapore to recount my dining experiences to a disbelieving bunch of fellow glutton/gourmet/gourmand friends. But, one thing’s for sure, my phobia was gone.
Last March 2020 (before the global lockdowns because of the Wuhan virus started), I was in the former Vietnamese imperial capital of Hue, together with 5 other Singaporean foodie friends. Hue is located at the mid-point between Hanoi in the north and Saigon in the south. It is also the culinary capital of Vietnam, being home to 1,300 out of the 1,700 designated heritage food items of Vietnamese cuisine. We were just there to eat, and nothing much else. And every meal was amazing.
If we do a culinary expedition of Vietnam, you will be able to experience the gradual change of tastes and flavours as you move from Hanoi in the north southwards to Saigon: the cooking gets spicier, and sweeter, and you’ll get to see more vegetables in the various dishes - regional variances. It’s like in Japan when one goes from Tokyo southwards to Kyoto and Osaka: the soy sauce gets less salty and lighter, the miso bean-paste gets paler.
I’m just waiting for all these border closures are over so we can all travel again.
