Chapter OneLAN
Sài Gòn is a city whose humidity clings to the skin so sickly sweet that you wear its heat like clothes.
“Pfft,” I snort. What a corny start. I delete the sentence.
Sài Gòn is a city where words and language float from stall to stall, person to person.
“Definitely corny,” I say to myself, pressing backspace.
At the heart of this metropolis lies the sprawling hub of street food, finger-licking feasts prepared in front of the audience’s eyes as they bask in the glorious aroma. If you walk through—
“Ughhhh.” Groaning, I slam the laptop shut and bury my face in my palms without realizing how sticky they are from the plate of bánh cam I’ve been picking at. Now the sesame seeds that were all over my hands are all over my face instead—great. I stare at the untouched chè thái to my left, the floating jellies and cream glistening in the internet café’s harsh lighting. It’s sweating all over my notebook.
I sip on the chè, and its sweetness calms both the heat and my writer’s block. Slowly, I open the laptop screen and peek at the document before sighing and holding down the delete key.
“What’s wrong?” Triết asks, too busy clicking and clacking through a video game to even look. Sweat seeps through his T-shirt. “You’ve been hitting backspace on the same page for two hours now.”
I scrunch my brows. “It hasn’t been two hours. We just got here—”
The computer clock reads 16:00. Shit.
“You’re right, for once,” I say, to which he only shrugs before going back to yelling at his computer screen. “Maybe this is why I can’t write. I’m distracted by your screaming match.”
Triết shoots me an incredulous glance. “Whatever, you’re just mad I’m about to be the best player in Asia. Meanwhile you barely have anything written.”
I ignore the jab, choosing to grind through the jackfruit’s crunchy texture instead. “Nothing is working. I tried writing at home but can’t because it’s home. I tried writing outside—which sounded like a good idea until I remembered it’s too hot and you never know when dirt or sewer water is going to splash you in the face.”
“So—excuses,” he says.
“No.” I roll my eyes. “I’m struggling with writer’s block. It’s a real thing.”
Or at least that was what the internet told me when I resorted to Google-diagnosing the reasons why writing doesn’t click for me anymore. All my words feel fake and blotchy, and street food feels less like an adventure and more like a chore now that I’m glued to a stall twenty-four seven, three sixty-five. Everything feels wrong now that Ba is gone.
I didn’t spill my guts to Google, but the closest search result said writer’s block, and so I had a name for this strange phenomenon. But it didn’t really help: Writing has been more difficult since I self-diagnosed via the internet.
Triết huffs at the screen, his clicking becoming aggressively faster. “Who paired me up with the worst people in the server?”
It’s often like this: me ranting about literally everything while my cousin pretends to listen—and sure, he does listen, but only to about one-third of what I say. “Remind me to never open up to you ever again.” Still, I watch him take down another player before finding myself egging him on. “To your left! Triết, I said left. Hit E!”
“He’s too tanky!”
“Hit E!” He does not, in fact, hit E. I shove his fingers off the keyboard and press the key myself, earning a screen that flashes VICTORY! before us. “Maybe I should call blogging quits and switch to esports.”
“Um, please don’t.” He takes a bite of my jellies. “But okay, let’s diagnose you. Maybe you can’t write because you just can’t. Take a walk? Clear your head?”
“You’d make an awful doctor.” The embarrassing thing is, I’ve tried almost every tip the internet has to offer to combat writer’s block, including listening to a ten-hour-long playlist of jazz music (which did not help).
He grins. “Good thing I’m not studying to be one.”
“Maybe street food isn’t my thing anymore.” I fidget with the backspace key, feeling its comfort. Sometimes I wish I could just backspace parts of my life.
“I don’t even know what I want to write about. I’ve talked so much about street food and where to find the best street food and what new street food to look out for, and I’m so, so sick of it.”
“You? Sick of food? We’re doomed.” He winces at my light shoulder smack. “How about, maybe … try writing everything out, then editing it later?”
I blow at the strands in front of my face. “But write what? People want something new. I can’t give them anything.”
He hums before restarting the match, clicking through a new character avatar. “As your unofficial official social media manager, I’m here to tell you that people following your blog love the content you’ve been giving them. You don’t have to do anything new. They keep asking when you’ll write something again. And I don’t know much about blogging or writing, but I think they miss you.”
My blog exists on both Instagram and its own website, but I put the website on hiatus along with the longer blog posts last year. Now all people get are pretty food photos in a curated feed paired with short captions. Maybe that’s all I’m meant to do, move on from the long think pieces and rants I used to write, and just focus on the aesthetics. I wonder if people would care if I start featuring the work that I do as a bánh mì seller on the blog—how would they react? It’s not that I’m ashamed of being a street food seller, it’s just … what if they think I’m uncool?
How silly.
Sighing, I scroll through the comments on my Instagram, and for every nice one, another question about my blogging hiatus follows. “This writer’s block and the pressure from my readers aren’t helping. I don’t know if I could ever write something that they’ll like again. What if they hate my next blog post? Tear it apart?”
His gaze flickers to my laptop screen. “But why did you stop posting your food think pieces? You know that whatever you write, people will still read it. It’s been months.”
A couple months seem so short compared to everything else, but too much has changed. And I hate change.
“I got too busy.” I shrug. “Speaking of which, we should head back.”
He sighs, nodding and still not getting up. “Your mom will be fine. There’s fifteen minutes left, I could play another game and you could let some more ideas stew. How does that sound?”
“No.” The stall needs me—it’s our family business—and it’s what good daughters are supposed to do, especially if their mother is a widow.
“Worth a shot.” He shrugs and tells me to go first. I protest and insist on splitting the bill, but Triết shoos me out the door anyway.
The bustling city greets me as I pass through the glass doors, and at once, Sài Gòn overwhelms my senses. The noise of the streets. The rich, decadent smells of phở and coffee. Humidity on my tongue. A light breeze down my back. The not-so-shy sun on my cheeks. People’s voices from every direction, some haggling with shopkeepers and some gossiping about their in-laws. I don’t see any familiar faces—I often don’t—and I feel relieved. I can exist here in Sài Gòn, be just another part of this city.
But sometimes, I think about other cities. Are people lonely in Paris? Do they see faces they recognize on the subways in New York?
I scroll through my Instagram once again, analyzing every engagement. Every like and every comment—good or bad.
The flan here is THE BEST. Thank you, chị!
Best bánh xèo in Sài Gòn for sure.
Then there are the international comments.
Wishing I could visit!!!!!
Việt Nam is SO pretty!!!
I like each positive comment, replying Thank you! and Thanks for reading! under every single one. But sometimes I wonder if that’s enough. What if one day I stop posting about food altogether? Or declare that I can’t write anymore?
Will people even care? Or am I just colors and pixels on a screen, something people scroll past during their day? Flicking away a sesame seed on the screen, I’m about to close my phone when a notification chimes through. The username brings a smile to my face.
Evermore13: Love this post so much that I keep coming back to it! I miss your blogs, please write more soon.
Thank you, I type back to the one person who never fails to comment on all my posts—multiple times, too. Please write more soon: I zero in on those words. Maybe they’re disappointed in me. They must be.
Running a street food stand is hard work. The only constant is yourself and the food you sell. My followers flock to every local business I showcase on Instagram, so even if my website is on hiatus, I still owe something to this community as a fellow street food seller. These aesthetic photos are more than my platform and followers. They’ve somehow helped the aunties and uncles out in the sun, allowing them to make a living.
Another notification pops up on my screen.
Evermore13: Putting this on your radar! Not just saying this because you’re literally my favorite blogger, but I really think you could win.
My chest feels light at the words favorite blogger. Do I deserve that? I click on the link, which leads me to a site about a journalism contest. Chewing on my lips, I close the page and go to my website. I stare at my last post, written months ago: “Best Places to Hang Out After School.” I remember perching around a plastic table surface, surrounded by friends, and suddenly, on this busy Sài Gòn street, loneliness hits me. Most of my classmates have left, pursuing passions and new lives all over the world while I’m … here. Just here.
An ache pounds at the base of my neck and I knead at it, accidentally plucking two strands of one black and one white hair in the process. It’s not like I didn’t want to leave. I had big dreams, too, once. But when death and grief change your life, then dreams become just that—dreams. Má can’t tend the stall alone. This is a family business, and family means we do this together.
“Excuse me? Xin chào?” A gruff voice tugs at my attention, but also because the owner butchered the pronunciation.
“Hello, do you need help?” I take in the couple in front of me, two white tourists, each with their passport in one hand and suitcase in the other. They’re wearing Patagonia sweatshirts—insanity in this heat—while carrying Herschel duffel bags at their sides.
Stunned, probably at my English, they motion me toward their phone, tapping furiously at a restaurant name. My heart flutters. They’re on my Instagram. “Where. Is. This. Restaurant?” The man enunciates every word, dragging his vowels while his partner nods excitedly. My eyes almost roll out of their sockets.
“Cross the bridge after this street and turn right once you see a huge red pagoda.” The actual directions are a lot more complicated than that, especially because the restaurant is tucked into an alleyway. But I’m sure they’ll figure it out. There’s a huge sign by the bridge.
“Thank you so much! One more question.” He points to the lanterns floating above our heads, his face visibly confused. “Why does Việt Nam look like China? All these lanterns and pagodas … and even Chinese letters! What does this mean?”
Of course. I paste on the same smile I use every day at the bánh mì stall, and in my best customer service voice, I say: “Maybe try researching why when you’re free.” But I feel a twinge of guilt—they found this place on my Instagram—and backtrack. “Việt Nam has a lot of multiethnic communities. Not everywhere is just phở or bánh mì. We have immigrants here, too, and they’ve been flowing in and out for hundreds of years.” And beyond all of that, Việt Nam’s history and culture have been so deeply influenced by Chinese imperialism. Wait till these tourists realize why some of the architecture of Sài Gòn resembles Parisian homes.
“Thank you again.” They both nod enthusiastically. “This is our first time in Asia and we’ve wanted to go to Sài Gòn for so long because of this blogger.”
How nice that is, to pick a spot on the map and call it a vacation, or to have the money to pack all those suitcases and head for another country.
“The author is a genius for blogging in both Vietnamese and English, and they seem to know this city so well. Everything looks delicious, and I can’t wait to try it all. Thank you for helping us.” They nod at me and head for the bridge, their suitcases bouncing against the asphalt.
The blog was written in Vietnamese for the first year, but as I moved to advanced English in high school, I took up translating to practice, and so the Instagram captions are in both Vietnamese and English. Still, I wouldn’t call myself a genius for having a bilingual blog.
It’s not strange to see foreigners here. Maybe I should be proud that Sài Gòn is such a tourist destination. A must-see spot—a line other travel bloggers say often, but I’ve never understood it. My city isn’t a must-see spot, it’s what I’m used to. My home. All the other travel blogs portray Sài Gòn as this glamorous city where young people can find themselves and live their best lives. I can’t do that. My life isn’t glamorous. It’s a cycle of work and bánh mì crumbs and even more work.
But readers don’t want to see that; they want an escape, something beautiful. The blog used to be a way to capture a portrait of my home, but now every follower feels like more pressure to help turn Sài Gòn into a tourist playground.
Just as I near the bánh mì stall, my phone chimes again.
Evermore13: I’m on my way to Sài Gòn right now and can’t wait to try all your yummy spots! <3
Copyright © 2024 by Trinity Nguyen
