Becoming Vietnam's Pickleball Sunshine☀️✨🤗

There are a few things in life (okay, maybe many), that you just have to see and experience for yourself in order to truly believe. One of those things is definitely pickleball in Asia, but you guys have heard me talk about that before, and that was my main takeaway of my last pickleball trip abroad. I feel so blessed that after my week in Vietnam I’ve come away with many more realizations that I want to share with you!

Here’s the vlog of the week (:

They say travel broadens your horizons, and well… it’s true. I feel in all of my other trips to Asia, I haven’t really gotten to see anything. My schedule was jam-packed with nonstop events, and for the most part the deepest interactions I had with people were smiling for a photo after signing a paddle and exchanging the briefest of pleasantries. Of course, these experiences are still positive for me, but this week in Hanoi was so different in the absolute best way. Consider my horizons broadened.

This week, I didn’t get to do near as much as I wanted to, but I still saw so much more than I got to see last time I was here. I rode a motorbike (12/10 experience !!!), visited train street (no train though unfortunately), tried a lot of local foods, and made real connections with people I will never forget and dearly hope I get to see again. I was also given the Vietnamese name Anh Duong, which means sunshine!!! To say I love this name would be an EXTREME understatement. You guys know how much I talk about being the sun and sparkling☀️✨.

The people of Vietnam are intense, and in all honesty I think that intensity scared me a bit last time I was here. But now I understand it better, I have a deeper respect for it, and I appreciate it- they are attentive, wholeheartedly caring about what they care about, and detail-oriented. Everyone I met was so kind, so generous, so loving, and SO EARNEST. They freely give compliments and share their thoughts. I was SO BLESSED by the team I was given by the PPA Asia staff - my driver, my security, and my assistant are all now people I consider good friends. It was so cool to see their English improve over the course of a mere few days (I wish my Vietnamese had improved similarly😂).

People are people, no matter where you go. The sameness is so much more striking than any minute differences. I want to see a lot more of Vietnam, and you better believe I will be trying to see a lot of it with my TEAM!!!

This is a pickleball newsletter and not a travel one, so I do have to talk about the actual pickleball of the weekend! You guys could probably tell on stream, but to say we were exerting ourselves in Hanoi would be, well, as the heading says… a massive understatement.

I have practiced outside in many Florida summers, but what we experienced in Hanoi was fundamentally different. Minimal airflow plus the body heat of thousands with blasting lights on center court made for a very memorable experience! I scraped through the week with 0 pairs of clean socks remaining, and I was even able to wring out my shirt over 45 minutes after my match against Zoey and Brooke ended. It was SO GROSS. I FELT LIKE A MAN. A SWEATY GROSS MAN. YUCK. 🤮🤮🤮

To all the men reading this who sweat profusely, I apologize if you found my disgust at your everyday experience insulting, but I feel how I feel. I’m not used to feeling that yucky, and I’m really sorry for you if that’s a normal feeling😂💦.

I wasn’t having trouble breathing like I saw some people suggesting on social media, and no one I spoke to complained of respiratory issues, it was mainly just issues related to losing obscene amounts of water and electrolytes. I was regularly having 4 packs of SLAMIT per day (ANNA20 for 20% off!) along with a lot of fresh coconut water (Federico had 7 in a day I think LOL).

I would be lying if I said I felt I played particularly well in Vietnam. Some combination of the hot/muggy conditions, the different ball, and the lower bounce had me struggling. My feel was farrrrrrrrr worse than it typically is, and I think this was reflected in my play. If you want to see more lob thirds like my third against Ben/AL in Mesa, just watch Game 1 of me and AL vs Brooke/Zoey LOL. And we still won this game!!!

In women’s I got more comfortable as the tournament went on, and Anna Leigh and I spent some significant time drilling to work on a few adjustments that were hugely helpful in women’s. I never really figured out what to do in mixed or what was optimal there, and truthfully I was pretty deep in my head. Other people adjusted better than me and that was reflected in the results. Oh well! Like I said in my instagram story, losing is temporary, being hot is forever. I’ll be back and will adjust better. After losing to Christian and Katilyn I was seething for a while and the main thought circling through my mind was “I have to work harder”, but congrats to them on their amazing run! And KK on her epic singles title, of course!

I think this ball and climate favors people who are good at getting the ball DOWN as it’s so hard to generate power and resetting is more difficult. I also think hand speed was less important and power more important. So many nerdy nuances I could get into. I am unsure about how men’s felt, but in women’s and mixed it felt as if skill was less important and it was just about winning firefights. People had so much time to react to an initial speedup that it just became about winning the subsequent slugfest. Thankfully Anna Leigh and I are both skilled and adept at winning firefights, which carried us through.

The conditions are definitely an equalizer (also only having 1 timeout!!!), but Americans still generally prevailed. That may not be the case for long though, as was demonstrated in men’s singles. I would love to see both Hien Trong and Hoang Nam Ly play more singles in the US with the LifeTime ball and see how they fare once they adjust to the different style. Hien Trong, in particular, had one of the cleanest backhands I have ever seen.

Like I said in my intro and have talked about previously, pickleball is truly an international phenomenon. The exponential growth is insane, and I remain more certain of that after this week. But I have some other thoughts about this growth following my recent experiences.

This week was so cool as it was my first time really feeling national camaraderie and pride, and like I was playing for something more to an extent. I have long been a fan of Federico, but being one of the few people cheering for him when he played ___ was a really cool experience. It was awesome to see a stadium full of people cheering for their countryman against an outsider. It was also cool to pull for other US-based players I would usually not cheer for or really care about. The us/them dynamic was really fun, and it wasn’t negative at all. It was just something new for me, and really makes me excited for when real country versus country event types are possible. The Olympics maybe??? 👀👀

The other thing I feel it would be wrong for me to ignore is the cheating scandal in Christian’s first-round match. I had heard previously that ___ is not known for making good line calls, and I would still argue that this was not a good call from what I’ve seen of it, and I am not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. However, I do agree that the amount of hate and publicity this call received was uncalled for and unfair.

There is definitely a “match point” effect, but this is not EVEN CLOSE to being the worst call of all time. I do feel it’s easier for people to pile hate onto someone they don’t know and also to go after someone who “wronged” one of “our own”. That’s just my 2 cents, but I think media outlets in the future should do better to cover things in a way that is, at minimum, more neutral and leaves viewers to make their own decisions rather than pose things in such an incendiary fashion. Christian did not lose because of one call, even if it was extremely unfortunate and unfair and the timing terrible.

That’s all for this edition folks! I sometimes struggle to find photos to share with you guys, but it was actually difficult to choose which ones for this edition! I will be back in action next week to share with you all my other thoughts on my time in Malaysia and China, but I will be extremely busy and don’t expect I will be able to see much like I was able to in Vietnam.

Love you all immensely, XOXO, your internet bestie, Anna (Anh Duong)🫦♥️☀️