Vietnam

Vietnam arrives at full volume. Traffic, construction, signage, several thousand motorbikes moving like water through an intersection. The instinct is to brace against it, and that instinct is wrong — the country gets dramatically better the moment you stop resisting and let it move around you.

A country shaped like a coastline

Fifteen hundred kilometres north to south, which makes distance the main planning constraint and regional variety the main reward. The north is cooler and subtler in the kitchen; the centre, around Hue and Hoi An, is the most intricate; the south is sweeter, hotter and thick with herbs. There is no single season — the north has a real winter, the south does not.

Life at knee height

Social life here happens on plastic stools on the pavement, facing outward toward the street. That is where the phở is best at six in the morning, where coffee gets nursed for an hour, where beer over ice runs through the evening. Sitting on them is the best single decision a visitor makes.

What gets photographed here

Phin filters dripping over condensed milk, market light through corrugated roofing, the Hai Van Pass from a train window, and the particular organised chaos of an intersection at rush hour that looks impossible until you have crossed it yourself.