Like the menu, the crowd was diverse. A variety of different languages from all around the world blended together into a familiar hum found at a busy brewery tap room. I quickly found myself speaking to a brewer from Fuzzy Logic. Enjoying a cold beer after a long day, and touching base with the BiaCraft crew, he was sharing some of their resources and wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page. A spirit of collaboration and cooperation seems to be as commonplace in craft beer culture as stainless tanks and yeast strains.

Crossing the street in Sài Gòn is an exercise in trust. Driving in the States is an aggressive act, even when people consider themselves “defensive” drivers. The prevailing attitude seems to be, “Please don’t hit me.” In Vietnam, the attitude is different—they won’t hit you. The key is, you need to trust them, because the second you don’t is when you’re in danger. The one time I almost got hurt on my trip is when I flinched, lost faith, stopped. I became pretty damn faithful after that.

On the ride to Đà Lạt, I took in the pine and earth-rich air, marveling at the hilly, tree-covered terrain of the Lâm Đồng province. The nature and the silence was nice. Đà Lạt was built by the French as a resort town—a place of respite for French aristocrats. Đà Lạt ’s architecture echoes Art Deco and Swiss Alp influences. Gone is the rigid grid road system of a dense metropolis, replaced with the meandering, relaxed rhythms of twisting streets. Đà Lạt felt like I had been whisked away to Europe, and with that, everything started to feel unfamiliar. But with the streets lined with food vendors and coffee shops, unfamiliar was just fine.