Hùng

Mì Quảng at the wet-market stall in Thanh Khê

It's what my mother made every Sunday. The broth is turmeric-yellow, there's a shrimp and a quail egg and a shattered rice cracker on top. Nobody points tourists there because it doesn't look like anything from the outside.

Ask Hùng about this.

A honeymooning couple from Brooklyn booked me for a day. A typhoon came in overnight. Plan A was My Son. Plan B was driving them to my parents' village inland — my mother taught the wife to make bánh xèo, my father showed the husband how to mend a fishing net. Seven of my relatives showed up because 'the American honeymooners are here.' They said it was the best day of their honeymoon.

There's a road that bypasses the famous one. At the end is a pool, a small family-run café with banana fritters, and nobody else. I take families there when the kids need to swim and the parents need quiet.