Viet Nam News Today (Nov. 9): Viet Nam, Finland move to strengthen political trust, expand cooperation; CPV values traditional friendship with Mexican Labor Party; Roundtable connects Viet Nam-Africa trade and investment; Viet Nam - Cambodia - Laos Youth Festival 2026 opens in Quang Ngai.

It was October 1992, and I was lying beneath a mosquito net in a bare hotel room in Hanoi’s Old Quarter, trying to make sense of the noise outside. Motorcycle horns occasionally duelled with bicycle bells. Pots and pans clattered as melodic Vietnamese voices rose and fell—sometimes conversational, but more often urgently bellowed so that the whole neighbourhood could hear them. Above me, a wobbly ceiling fan turned slowly, its repeated ‘whop … whop … whop’ inducing a kind of hypnotic surrender.