One More Quiet American

A retrospective on traveling Vietnam

A village near Sapa, January 2024. All photos by Andrew Mullikin.

The sidewalk bia hoi stall was half empty when Kira and I wandered inside, looking forward to our first taste of Hanoi’s famously cheap, freshly brewed beer. We were the only Westerners there, and from the looks of the almost exclusively male after-work clientele, we might’ve been the only Westerners that had ever been there. But, like everywhere else in Vietnam, we were greeted with a smile, sat in low plastic chairs, and quickly served fifty-cent mugs of ice cold lager. I was on my second round when I felt a hand clasp my right knee — “Where you from?” asked it’s owner.

That’s a question I never look forward to answering in places like Vietnam. It’s one of the reasons why international travel is more complicated than a trip to Disneyland. Go to Paris and you’re an annoyance that should speak better French; except for one day in June everyone’s forgotten about Normandy. Same thing in Panama, where the museums focus more on the American occupation than Noriega. But in Japan, or Cambodia, or especially Vietnam, you were the enemy once, and those are all places with long memories.

“I’m from the United States,” I said quietly.

“America?”

“Yeah, America.”