{"id":960,"date":"2020-04-03T09:45:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-03T09:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/designkyn.com\/growers-table\/?p=960"},"modified":"2026-01-27T09:47:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T09:47:24","slug":"hanoi-fruit-market-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/designkyn.com\/growers-table\/hanoi-fruit-market-visit\/","title":{"rendered":"Hanoi Fruit Market Visit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I made my first to visit Hanoi Vietnam in 1997 to visit some of our customers. I was working for Paramount Export Company and we had started to ship California table grapes and Washington apples from the United States to Vietnam. When I arrived in Vietnam, I learned that my luggage was left behind in Bangkok where my flight originated from.&nbsp;One of our customers picked me up from the airport and took me to the hotel to check in. As soon as I opened the door to my room, I could hardly see inside because there were so many mosquitos. This coupled with my lost luggage almost brought me to tears.&nbsp;The hotel staff told me they would take care of this while I went out to dinner.&nbsp;When I returned later that evening, the mosquitoes were all gone but there were 2 large geckos on the wall.&nbsp;I became panicked and asked the hotel staff to kill them.&nbsp;They refused explaining the geckos were harmless and would eat the mosquitos and insects. That night I slept very little as I left the light on in my room so I could keep my eyes on those geckos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"590\" height=\"567\" src=\"https:\/\/designkyn.com\/growers-table\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/hanoi.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-961\" title=\"Me in the Hanoi Fruit Market c. 1997\" srcset=\"https:\/\/designkyn.com\/growers-table\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/hanoi.jpg 590w, https:\/\/designkyn.com\/growers-table\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/hanoi-300x288.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 590px) 100vw, 590px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The next morning, our customer took me to the wholesale produce market to see where our fruit was being sold.&nbsp;As we walked through the entire market, I was met with stares as it wasn\u2019t often a Westerner had visited them.&nbsp;As we made our way through the different stalls, a large crowd of people accumulated and began to follow us. I started to get anxious as I didn\u2019t understand their curiosity. I was tired from the lack of sleep the night before. In addition, my luggage still had not arrived, so I was feeling irritable. Out of nowhere, this female policeman appeared and gave me a Non-La (the traditional Vietnamese cone hat I am wearing in the photo).&nbsp; She was smiling and began to speak to me in Vietnamese with such animation on her face.&nbsp; I had no idea what she was saying except she was so amusing that I began to laugh.&nbsp; I asked her if she would take a picture with me and she made an exception&nbsp;Later, I was told they are not allowed to have their photographs taken with civilians while they are wearing their uniform. &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I made my first to visit Hanoi Vietnam in 1997 to visit some of our customers. I was working for Paramount Export Company and we had started to ship California table grapes and Washington apples from the United States to Vietnam. When I arrived in Vietnam, I learned that my luggage was left behind in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-favourite-photos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/designkyn.com\/growers-table\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/designkyn.com\/growers-table\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/designkyn.com\/growers-table\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/designkyn.com\/growers-table\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/designkyn.com\/growers-table\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/designkyn.com\/growers-table\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":962,"href":"https:\/\/designkyn.com\/growers-table\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions\/962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/designkyn.com\/growers-table\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/designkyn.com\/growers-table\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/designkyn.com\/growers-table\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}