Street food and Christmas kitsch

In Hué, I visited about half a dozen palaces and tombs in one day and took a traditional boat ride on the Perfume River. After so much imperial pomp, I needed a contrast program and dined twice at a street kitchen. The food, once fried rice with seafood, once braised pork belly with vegetables, was excellent, the service incredibly friendly, a cold local beer to go with it, all for the equivalent of three francs – now that's what I call truly imperial.

The only thing that annoyed me about street food, just like in nearly all shops, spas, department stores, restaurants, and hotel lobbies from north to south, were the kitschy cover versions of already kitschy Christmas songs that blared from every speaker: “Jingle Bells,” “Last Christmas,” “Feliz Navidad,” “I'll Be Home for Christmas.” I never liked them, the kitsch masters such as Bing Crosby, José Feliciano, or Frank Sinatra, but after these weeks in Vietnam, I've learned to truly hate them.

It got really kitschy only in Nha Trang, a coastal city about 600 kilometers south of Hué. I wanted to spend a week of beach holidays there at the beginning of December 2024, which didn’t really happen because it was almost constantly raining. The visual aberrations in Nha Trang possibly surpassed those in Hué: Christmas trees in shopping centers and hotel lobbies; Styrofoam snowmen with Santa hats in exotic gardens; reindeer with Christmas packages on sleds; Christmas trees, dusted with artificial snow, on the beach – there's really no limit to bad taste right before Christmas.