80 - Happy Joy Hanoi (Hanoi, Vietnam)
“Hanoi is chaos—metaphorically, historically, rhetorically, allegorically. No other way to slice it. Research the last hundred fifty years and try to process it all. I dare you. Then stand on a busy intersection...”
by Mr. Nos T. O’maniac
GREAT EXPECTATIONS. I HAD THEM. Vietnam was a whim, an unexpected detour. My future held a romantic rendezvous. I met Irish Michelle in Uganda two years earlier on break from a civilian stint in Baghdad, Iraq. I had gorillas on my mind, mountain gorillas a la Bwindi Impenetrable Forrest and Virunga National Park. She’d just finished volunteer service as a teacher in a village at the base of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. We met at a hostel in Kampala, Uganda’s capital.
We hit it off, engaging in sporadic bouts of tickle kissy-face. Nothing too serious, actual intercourse never materialized. She was justifiably hesitant about sharing carnal knowledge with someone she hardly knew. And when I had the feeling she wasn’t so keen on me after all, I did something befitting my evolutionary predisposition—I slept with an Israeli woman. Whoopsie… pig. Excuse? Well, let’s just say the male/female ratio in a war zone was less than ideal. Make hay whilst the sun’s a shining, ya know?
Even with the bumps, we remained friends and kept in touch over the intervening years. Initially, I thought she might be sore over my Jewish dalliance as I hadn’t heard from her in months. Michelle was sore all right. Near-death experiences can do that. I learned she’d nearly died from malaria at a Nairobi hospital. We attributed her general malaise to a host of nebulous causes—contaminated food, water, air, etc. The malaria gathered momentum, reaching a crescendo just after my departure.
An extraordinary ordeal. Doctors advised her parents to get to Kenya quick, time was running out. They weren’t optimistic; she was on the edge. The Irish lass pulled through, recuperating in a Nairobi hotel before finishing her rehabilitation on the Emerald Isle. This may be one reason she explored a possible “us” scenario. I liked her. She was funny, intelligent, and kind. When I suggested Vietnam, she was in.
The ‘Nam seemed like the ideal place—robust tourist infrastructure, safety/security, exotica, motorcycle friendly (-ish), relatively cheap, etc. I arrived a week earlier to conduct recon and arrange a two-week fandango with my co-conspirator. I chose Hanoi for its location near the mountains and proximity to the sea. Strategy? Rent a motorcycle, head north toward Chinese border, explore a cave or two, and round out the escapade relaxing on a Chinese Junk in Ha Long Bay followed by hiking, biking, climbing, swimming, and whatnot on Cat Ba Island. Giddy as a schoolgirl was I.
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men…
Hanoi is chaos—metaphorically, historically, rhetorically, allegorically. No other way to slice it. Research the last hundred fifty years and try to process it all. I dare you. Then stand on a busy intersection and behold. Kinda like that. Describing Hanoi’s streets as frenetic is like describing the Grand Canyon as a sizable hole, exploring the French and Old Quarters cause for invalidating your health insurance policy. Boots are made for walking. Sidewalks? Not so much. Walking is about the only thing you can’t do. If you want to park your motorbike, eat pho (flat rice noodle soup), sip coffee, quaff beer, repair a bike, sell a pineapple, shine a shoe, get a haircut, carve a gravestone, copy a key, or let your kid take a piss, the sidewalk’s perfect.
Streets are narrow and there’s a bazillion motorbikes sprinkled with enough four-wheeled traffic to spice things up. Folks couldn’t give a soggy shit about slowing down. Fuck your brakes. Fuck ‘em. Collision avoidance requires an annoying horn and a piss-poor attitude. Nothing more. I suspect motorbikes are handed out at birth, or there’s an ongoing “buy one, get one free” promotion. And I may epitomize the judgmental, ethnocentric American asswipe archetype, but you’ll never convince me talking and texting while driving is justified. Never. I’ll admit it—when I spotted a foreigner embracing the “when in Rome philosophy,” I was tempted to clothesline him off the motorbike. This regrettable impatience/intemperance was to plague me for the whole of my Vietnam excursion. It wasn’t without reason, but I’m ashamed at my inability to forbear.
In the years since, I’ve encountered conflicting accounts of foreigner experiences, ranging from “wonderful” to “unpleasant” to downright “aggressive” regarding the populace. Initial reviews were mixed. Tourists are a permanent fixture, many locals regard them like they would a stray dog or exploitable commodity. Examples? Mr. Roving Shoe Repair Guy offered to fix my separating sole with industrial shoe glue. He set a price, squeezed a minuscule dollop and gave me the “pay up” hand extension. I balked in frustration. He responded with a vibrant, “Fuck you” and stormed away. This troubled me, so I found him the next day and made nicey. We agreed on price and process beforehand, and all was well. A woman selling bananas didn’t like my extravagant street photoshoot and accused me of mafia ties for not compensating her unwilling participation. Uh, mafia? Exaggerate much? I repeated my “make nice” tactic the following day, securing a pineapple and mollifying another detractor. Hotel/guesthouse staff were a belligerent bunch and borderline hostile about booking tours through them—a “book or else” vibe. Not a problem unless you consider my belongings were at their mercy. Motorbike or cyclo (bicycle) taxis are on every corner dying to take you somewhere, anywhere. One shadowed me in the Old Quarter for over a mile as I politely tried to explain walking was the goddamn point. He produced a logbook with satisfied customer comments touting his excellent service. Can’t refute that kind of ironclad evidence.
The Hanoian “Unpleasant Disposition Phenomenon” gathered steam day by day. It doesn’t help when everyone looks pissed off. A mere cultural artifact? Yep, one requiring constant mindfulness. I eschew blanket generalizations and abhor conclusion jumping, but the totality of my experience in those first days wasn’t favorable. There were exceptions, but they were few and far between. I remember hoping folks were much happier than they appeared. Sheesh.
A woman at a local market shooed me away as I ogled a bowl of live eels. Pardon me, ma’am, not something I see every day. Forgive my curious nature. I’ll fuck off now, thank you. Then again, where did curiosity get that cat? I saw another woman with a headless turtle squeezing blood from the neck into a plastic bottle. Nummy. And then there were the live puppies I heard barking incessantly. (Not a pet market. Nuff said.) Perhaps, they’ve dealt with their share of judgmental Westerners and have had enough. Also, maybe I just look like an asshole.
Disgruntled shoe dude was mildly upsetting, but the rest I laughed off with ease… mostly. I found the quirkiness endearing… for a while. I’d experience this before and assumed it would dissipate, that I’d grow accustomed to it, that tomorrow is always a new day. Wish in one hand, shit in the other. It wasn’t all bad. I met an ethnic Chinese, Vietnam-born man while sipping potent Vietnamese coffee at a street café. Born and raised on that very street, he left in 1979 when tensions flared with China—first to Hong Kong and then the US in 1981. He’d lived there ever since (Houston, and then Oakland), revisiting Vietnam and China (his parents’ homeland) for years. He’d known the café owner from childhood. Both remembered watching US warplanes bomb Hanoi during the war.
Walk the Old Quarter streets and pay attention. Pay attention to anything and everything, to whatever the hell it is folks are doing. Sit, stand, watch, listen. Hanoi’s frantic pace hypnotized me. Grab a beer for eighteen cents outside one of many ubiquitous Bia hơi, snag a tiny plastic chair designed for hobbits, and revel in the chaos. That’s right, beer for eighteen cents. If that’s not grounds for alcoholism, I don’t know what is. I liked Hanoi. I didn’t know why exactly, but I did, though I wasn’t quite ready to scope out a summer home.
I spent days in the ‘Noi without visiting a single tourist site. I had shit to do and snags abounded. The largest bike I could find was a Yamaha 125cc “not-so-mega” hog. All others were booked. This was not ideal, and I had real concerns about comfort, not to mention maximum cruising speed. Concerns? Justified. (Insert ominous foreshadowing soundtrack here.)
Random encounters/experiences flavored my preparations. A young Vietnamese woman approached me on the street touting a desire to practice English. She asked how long I’d be in Hanoi. I replied it would be a short stay. She asked for the name of my hotel. (Spidey-Sense? Engaged.) A sudden bout of amnesia took hold. In response, I grunted, pointing in a general direction. She asked if I spoke Vietnamese to which I answered in the negative. She thanked me and said goodbye. I watched her jump on the back of a motorbike with a man old enough to be her father before speeding away. I suppose it could’ve been a concerned dad doing what he could to improve his daughter’s language skills. Had I encountered my first scooter ho? If I were a betting man…
My benign bemusement regarding the “Mad Max: Fury Road” traffic picture became a tad malignant as the days progressed. I fantasized about forming a Traffic Gestapo deputized to administer random interrogations—not for their sake, for mine. Common, accepted behavior? Sure. Normal? Never. That’s just the way it is. Well, fuck the way it is. I prefer less death and less injury. (I’m quirky that way.) People wear helmets that might as well be paper mâché. Not sure if they’re meant as a fashion statement or to satisfy minimum legal requirements. Either way, most are useless.
No trip down memory lane is complete without supporting documentation. So, I searched on Amazon for books on Vietnam history. These days I lean toward audiobooks and there’s no shortage… on the war, that is. Hard to imagine having your homeland defined in terms of its most tumultuous period and the decade or so leading up to it. The words “Vietnam” and “War” go together like “peanut butter” and “jelly.” Given the country’s rich and varied history, is this not a shame? The scars, both physical and psychological, remain. To the land. To the people. To the collective psyche. Don’t get me wrong, the war chronicle and its precursors are fascinating in their own right (Best documentary—The Vietnam War by Ken Burns), but the topic consumes so much of Vietnam’s cultural oxygen.
