Across English-speaking countries the US and Australia, the Vietnamese diaspora established close-knit “Little Saigon” towns whenever they settle down, founding large markets, starting financial services, and introducing southern fares like gỏi cuốn and bánh mì to the local population. Elsewhere in Europe, however, the Vietnamese community is often known as “Little Hanoi,” due to the regional makeup of the first wave of immigrants. Some, like Prague’s Little Hanoi, have flourished to the point of being a “city within a city,” boasting its own self-sufficient administrative services, schools, and housing.
Sapa Market, the city's largest Asian neighborhood and the core of Little Hanoi, is just around 15 kilometers from central Prague.
Much of Vietnam’s initial relationship with Czechia started in the late 1940s and 1950s, when it was still part of Czechoslovakia (Tiệp Khắc in Vietnamese) — a segment of the Eastern Bloc under the influence of communism, following a planned economy. As part of this bedrock of diplomacy between communist nations, Vietnam started sending well-performing students to Tiệp Khắc for higher education.
Restaurants here seem frozen in time.
In 1955, the first-ever batch of Vietnamese students arrived in Czechoslovakia, comprising 16 delegates, all high school students from northern provinces like Phú Thọ, Thái Nguyên, Tuyên Quang, Bắc Ninh, Nghệ An, etc. The exchange program also sent students to neighboring nations like the USSR and Poland. They carried with them the hopes from the northern government that the graduates would return home later to contribute to the development of their hometowns. Many did, but some decided to make a home in Europe.
Bún chả is a star dish and the biggest signifier that this is a northern Vietnamese enclave.
The program went swimmingly for the next three decades until the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc, but the Vietnamese diaspora in European countries had grown so much and assimilated to the local societies, giving rise to the existence of Little Hanoi towns. Today, Vietnamese remains the most populous non-European demographic in the Czech Republic and Poland, with populations of dozens of thousands people. The descendants of those who decided to stay decades ago grew up ethnically Vietnamese but fully integrated into the local society.
Signs with prominent Vietnamese-language texts are everywhere.
Visiting Prague’s Little Hanoi, officially known as Sapa Market, a feeling of strangeness and surprise will hit your mind first, as the Vietnamese language is everywhere. The entrance gate is bilingual, and a few signs might have minimal Czech, but the majority of signage is only in Vietnamese, promoting homemade bún cá, haircuts, leather goods, famous Czech crystals, and a slew of other Vietnamese-specific products that one might assume to be elusive this far from home.
Markets are often the heart of diasporic communities.
Sapa, as local media reports, is autonomous to the point of having its own “police” patrolling streets and clamping illegally parked cars. It also features a kindergarten, accepting kids as young as one year old, so their parents can go about their business in many of the compound’s Vietnamese-run enterprises, like financial services facilitating money repatriation back to Vietnam. But for anyone growing tired of the austerity of Eastern European food, Sapa Market is a welcoming salve, offering a dose (or many) of tropical freshness and well-seasoned noodle broths to bread-saturated palates.
That gourd sure is a show-er not grow-er.
Fish sauce, rice paper, tea and coffee from Vietnam are a given, but a wide range of fresh produce from home will surely brighten up one’s dreary day: herbs, dragon fruits, mangosteens, and surprisingly not wilted rambutans are abundant. And even if you’re not in the mood to shop for groceries, perhaps a glass of freshly pressed sugarcane juice is just the treat you need to quench nostalgic thirst — cô Mía not present, alas.
Fresh tropical produce on sale.
Elsewhere in metropolitan Prague, trendy Vietnamese restaurants run by second- or third-generation Vietnamese might offer diners a range of pan-Vietnam dishes like bánh mì, bánh xèo or gỏi cuốn, but at Sapa Market, the menus stay decidedly northern. It’s understandable, given their proprietors’ regional roots, but what’s astounding is the fact that the wealth of northern cuisine here might rival even Saigon’s culinary diversity.
Uncommon northern delicacies, like bún cá Hải Dương and ngan nướng, are on offer here.
Bún cá Hải Dương, for example, is few and far between in Saigon, while ngan — a type of Muscovy duck popular in northern Vietnam — is a less common poultry in southern provinces. Both are on offer here in Sapa Market. Those familiar with Hanoi eateries’ naming convention of putting together the owner’s name and a word describing their appearance will feel right at home with Chè Tuyết Béo.
Every diasporic community comes with its own quirks and issues, a fact to which any Vietnamese who’s studied or lived abroad can attest. Pressures to survive, to assimilate and even to succeed can and will bring out the darker side of human dynamics. Whether one enjoys or feels disillusioned by the existence of Little Saigons and Little Hanois, it’s at least comforting to know that the phở will probably be great. If all else fails, bet on phở, always.
