Hitting the Mekong: An Incursion Into Indo China

Phuong can wake up in the morning, declare herself hungry, and walk one hundred meters to a freshly cooked bowl of soup or a mini-baguette filled with meat pate and vegetables. Pho and banh mi—we have a choice at least between those two in the space of a two-minute stroll on the street. Phuong will then come home and devour half a kilo of lychees while I eat the leftovers from the night before because she will not touch them. It’s funny that she eats my cooking, because maybe she has to—she...