Bourdain and Obama Go Out for Vietnamese — in Vietnam

Whatever the outcome of Monday’s debate or the election in November, I think it’s safe to say our next president won’t be as cool as our current one.

Can you imagine Hillary Clinton chilling at a hole-in-the-wall diner in Hanoi or Donald Trump eating bun cha — Vietnamese noodle soup — with chopsticks without messing up his shirt?

No you cannot.

The season premiere of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown is tonight, September 25, on CNN, and the location in Hanoi, Vietnam. The series doesn’t have “guests” per se, but Bourdain always eats with interesting people. This week’s interesting person is Barack Obama. Roll tape.

DECIDER: You have dinner with the president in this episode. How did that come together?

ANTHONY BOURDAIN: The White House had reached out to my production company quite some time ago, so we’ve been talking to each for about a year. We wanted to do it in a place that would be unusual and awesome, and when we heard that President Obama would be in Vietnam as part of his Southeast Asia tour, we jumped on the idea. It’s a place I love, and I thought the president would really enjoy some bun cha.

President Obama has been on Between Two Ferns and Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. The standard line for going on those shows is that they’re a way to communicate a message to people who don’t pay much attention to Washington media. Is that your read?

No. We were given no guidance at all from the White House as far as what to talk about. They never asked us what I would want to ask or talk about. I can tell you that the response in Hanoi was unbelievable. The next day, people who recognized me from photographs in the local papers came up to me with tears in their eyes. They couldn’t believe that the president of the United States would eat this local Hanoi specialty in a working-class place had a really tectonic effect among young people. It’s a very young country, and I believe that’s who the president was reaching out to.

His chopstick skills are pretty solid. What’s your sense of his worldliness as president?

He was very at ease and very comfortable. He looked like a guy happy to be sitting on a plastic stool eating his food. He expressed a real affection and nostalgia for the flavors in that part of the world. He spent a fair amount of time in Indonesia as a young man and was clearly nostalgic about that.

Did you talk to him at all about politics?

No, I don’t see that as my role. I’d be uncomfortable doing that. I’m a father of a young girl, and he has two daughters. I talked to him as a dad and as a Southeast Asia enthusiast. The closest I got to politics was when I asked if the intelligence briefings he got about what’s going on in the world, I said as a father, “Is it gonna be OK?” [Laughs.] He assured me that, on balance, things are gonna be OK.

There’s footage all through this episode of people riding scooters. Is that mostly in the Hanoi commercial district, or do you see that all over Vietnam?

It’s all over Vietnam. It’s less so now than when I first started going there, but most of the population there gets around on two wheels. At the end of a shoot, I loved jumping on a scooter and driving around Vietnam. It’s the best way to see Hanoi.

Is that attributable to the population being young and fairly poor?

It’s still a relatively poor country, and it’s the only means of transportation that most people can afford. It’s worth pointing out that getting around Hanoi in a car is extremely difficult. You’ll get around much, much quicker on a scooter.

Do you see recent urbanization in Vietnam like you see in China — shiny new towers and luxury stores?

Yes, very much. The president talked a little about how things are changing very rapidly there. You have a population of young, educated people, and the free enterprise in Vietnam, China and Southeast Asia in general has far outpaced whatever the ideology might be. Money is flooding into that area independent of what the governments want or can control. Communism failed its people, and private enterprise is everywhere. Buildings are going up, and homes are being improved. Western businesses are everywhere.

Is there much left in Hanoi to telegraph the Vietnam War to you, or is that mostly gone now?

As long as I’ve been going there — about 16 years now — the Vietnamese have been very welcoming. Demographically, fewer and fewer people every year were even alive during the war. The Vietnamese were at war for 600 years, and we were only a tiny part of that. For most of that time, they were fighting with China and Cambodia and other neighbors — not with us.

You noted in the episode that they refer to it as the American War, which makes sense as the American phase of a much longer period of conflict.

I once had a conversation with an old Viet Cong and asked if he was angry or had any bitterness, and he said, “Americans aren’t special. I’ve fought the French, the Japanese, the Cambodians, the Chinese.”

From the episode, draft beer seems like a big thing in Hanoi.

Yeah, Hanoi is very proud of this freshly brewed beer. They make good beer and drink it throughout Vietnam, but it’s really big in Hanoi. It’s like a very light lager.

I had never seen footage from Ha Long Bay, and it was beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like the rock formations that come up out of the water there.

It’s one of the most beautiful places on earth. It enjoys a mythical status among the Vietnamese, and it’s an extraordinary thing to see. It’s hugely popular with tourists. There’s thousands of little islands in that bay.

You were on this French colonial-era paddle ship that looked like something you’d see Mark Twain on in the Mississippi River.

Particularly in Hanoi, you see what the French left behind much more so than the American influence. The French left colonial boulevards and buildings and steam ships. The Vietnamese tend not to waste anything, so if you left something useful behind it’s probably still there. They also make excellent baguette and pate and are very passionate about food.

You’re also going to Nashville this season, where I grew up. It’s a city that has changed a lot in the last decade.

Nashville is probably the fastest changing place of everywhere we visited. Something like a hundred people are moving to Nashville every single day. The business sector is exploding. Culturally, musically, artistically, it’s an interesting and livable place.

The voiceovers that you do on the show are part history, part reporting and have to fit into these haiku like spaces. Is that how you think of them?

I write them as conversationally as I can. One of the things I don’t like about a lot of other travel shows is that the host often doesn’t write the narration and it doesn’t sound like the way people talk. I like to talk from my heart the way I talk to people rather than like some omniscient person.

Scott Porch writes about the streaming-media industry for Decider and is also a contributing writer for Playboy and Signature. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.