Pho

Here's how a freshly barbered Thom started his morning, our last in Hanoi.  He bought the shoes on our trip to Rio in April.

Contrast the size of his seat with that of this equally chic woman just a few steps away on Hang Gai (Silk Street).

She's eating pho, a breakfast soup that requires a very exact, interrogative pronunciation because sound is meaning in the Vietnamese language.  Needless to say, it baffled me as much as my father who learned exactly one phrase after weeks of study in our backyard, 8,763 miles from Saigon:  chào ông or "Hello, sir."

We got our first taste of pho during a tour of a vocational school for students throughout North Vietnam seeking careers in the hospitality industry.

Christmas was less than a month away.