A friend posted a selfie outside the newly opened BK at Hanoi Noi Bai Airport.

Globalization is complete. My Vietnam is dead.

I arrived at Noi Bai Airport for the first time on a dark, stormy night in August 1994. My wife, 15 month old daughter, and I were picked up at the airport by an official from the Vietnam Maritime University in Haiphong where we would be teaching. Haiphong is a port city off the Gulf of Tonkin about 60 miles east of Hanoi. I remember the van ride to Haiphong vividly. We had been travelling for 30-some hours, and we were dead tired. Our heads bobbed constantly as we nodded off even as our official greeters did their best to welcome us. The road was mercilessly bumpy – our vehicle bounced around like we were jumping on springs rather than rolling on tires.

At one point, we thought we were going to die. The driver slammed on the brakes, and we all went flying into the seat in front of us, wide-eyed, wondering what had happened. The headlights shone brightly on a herd of dark-gray water buffaloes which were just trying to cross the road.

The ride to our university took about 3 hours. Did I mention before that it was only a 60 mile trip? Well, this is the Vietnam I remember and know well.

There was only one road to Haiphong – not the highway that is there now – and the road was in horrible condition, preventing anyone from going quickly if they wanted to keep their lunch down. The road also had to cross two rivers where there was only a one-lane bridge – which also shared space with the train. If a train was at the bridge, or if someone had broken down, or if there was a long line of cars from the opposite side, traffic just came to a stop. We would get out of the vehicle and wait a good 20 minutes until it was our turn to travel over the bridge.

On a good day, you might have been able to travel to Hanoi in 2.5 hours. My longest trip back in the day lasted 4 hours.

This previous illustration should instruct you in your understanding of every aspect of life in northern Vietnam during that time. Here’s a few more examples:

• Very few cars – the popular ones were the Russian Lada from the 1970s. Only government entities or large companies had vehicles.
• Motorbikes were only starting to become more common.
• Best mode of transportation – city to city – was by train (but you had to be prepared to burn a lot of time.)
• Inside a city, the best mode of transport was by bicycle or by Xich Lo – the three-wheeled “pedi-cab” where you sit up front and the driver would pedal you around.
• The new Hanoi airport had not yet been built, and the old airport was still used, including its small, dingy building which was just creepy.

Foreign food was simply not available in Haiphong. Even in Hanoi, there was no place to buy pizza, burgers, or any other kind of foreign food. Any foreign food in 1994 would have had to have been purchased from one of the few upscale hotels.

And to further illustrate what Hanoi was like, we called 1994 Hanoi “B.C.” – that is, “Before Coke.” That’s right. We arrived in Vietnam before Coca-Cola. That’s hard to do. The shops carried Coke bottles from China which were always flat. Sometimes you could splurge for a Coke can from Singapore, but those were rare and expensive.

I have lots more examples which I’ll share in a future post, but in 1994, we never dreamed that Vietnam could ever change enough to have a Burger King open in Hanoi.

It took twenty years, and now the end is near.

McDonald’s, too, is on it’s way.

Oh, how I would trade every McDonald’s in Malaysia for one Vietnamese Pho street vendor.

Sad, indeed.