New York likes to claim it’s the city that never sleeps, but Hanoi is the real deal. At least that’s the contention of Daniel Nguyen, the pioneering distiller and researcher who has been living in the city for more than a decade.
What he means isn’t just pace, but texture. “Viscerally, it’s so vibrant, robust, kind of indomitable,” Daniel says of Hanoi. “The noise, the smell, the sights, the sounds—the motorbikes, people hustling, peddlers calling out what they’re selling.” The energy is constant, and it’s physical. Morning bleeds into night, and whatever passes for quiet tends not to last.
