A woman wearing a conical hat was selling banh mi on the street
A woman in a conical hat stood on the roadside in Ho Chi Minh City, gazing intently in my direction. In front of her sat a wooden box that looked like a makeshift stall, topped with a small stack of baguettes. She was selling banh mi, the Vietnamese sandwich that has become something of a national emblem. Of course, it isn’t as if the Vietnamese were fond of baguettes to begin with. It was the French who brought the bread during the colonial era, and over time it was reinvented with rice flour into a lighter, crispier loaf. In other words, Vietnam’s specialty lies in taking foreign imports and reshaping them into something distinctly its own.
The conical hat was more than a sunshade; it doubled as an umbrella against sudden rain. In Japan, wearing one in the middle of a city street would earn you odd looks, but in the bustle of Ho Chi Minh it passed unnoticed as an everyday necessity. Without it, life here would be far less comfortable. The woman’s face seemed etched with the traces of hardship, though perhaps that was only my imagination as a passing traveler. From behind the stall drifted the fragrance of coriander, chili, and pork tucked into baguettes, a smell so rich it threatened to pull me out of the role of detached observer and straight into the world of appetite.
| May 2009 PEOPLE VIETNAM | |
| CONICAL HAT FOOD STALL HO CHI MINH CITY WOMAN |
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PHOTO DATA
No
2807
Shooting Date
Mar 2009
Posted On
May 18, 2009
Modified On
September 10, 2025
Place
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Genre
Portrait Photography
Camera
CANON EOS 1V
Lens
EF85MM F1.2L II USM
