Hanoi for The New York Times

I don’t spend much time in Hanoi anymore, but it still feels like home whenever I’m back. Or as much like home as a place that is 100% definitely not your home can feel. But I guess Hanoi feels like home in that way that home always feels familiar, coming back to it. Something maybe kind of wells up inside of you. Looming communist structures start to feel almost intimate. Street scenes become familiar tableaus. The sounds of morning exercises and blaring loudspeakers are no longer jarring. So it’s always nice to be back, as I was a few weeks back for an assignment with The New York Times, on the then-upcoming 12th Communist Party Congress. Here are some images from the story as well as a few outtakes that didn’t make it to the final piece.