Hanoi, Vietnam ~ the during and after thoughts

So here I am writing another forward to a story that I’ve tried to tell several times before. It’s the story of my trip to Vietnam, now two and half months old. When I travel I’m inspired to write. It’s something that keeps me company when all of the things around me are new and unfamiliar. I find comfort and familiarity in writing about my experience and how I interpret my new surroundings. It’s like a scientific observation and recording of myself as I process new inputs. Every place evokes some different feeling, some new revelation. My trip to Vietnam was no exception; however, getting sick in the middle of my trip left me lacking enough enthusiasm to share my stories about a place to which I want never to return … until today. Time heals all wounds … so let me begin, again …

Last week I traveled to Hanoi, Vietnam for the purpose of getting my Korean Work Visa from the Korean Embassy there and for the purpose of experiencing another country, its people, customs and food. I chose Vietnam because I’ve already been to Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand … and because I wasn’t able to go to China due to having less than 6 months of validity on my Alien Residency Card (a Beijing Olympics related stipulation).

Problems at the Korean Embassy and getting sick while traveling there sucked most of the enjoyment out of my adventures in Hanoi and thus the reason for my first unpleasant experience traveling to a foreign country. However, I did meet a few everyday Vietnamese people for which I am grateful because knowing them, even for just a short moment in time, helped me gain a perspective of the country from a more personal level.

This is what I wrote while traveling in Vietnam:

How can one enjoy gazing upon the vibrant tropical colors of the French-style buildings, smell the strong pungent smells of who knows what, listen to the sounds of the snapping scissors of the barber whose make-shift barbershop is a random tree upon which he’s attached a mirror, or the banging and clanking of the activities happening in one of the many open-air hardware workshops in the market by the squatted, barefooted tanned young man, or how the teens with their naked, tattooed torsos playing soccer behind the church joked with each other, or what the young women sitting together at their storefront on tiny red plastic stepping stools said to keep each other’s company … how can one absorb all that is strange and unique and different in this city when every inch of it seems to be in constant motion? Those that don’t notice you are whizzing by on a motorbike of which there must be millions. Those that do notice you are the motorbike drivers hanging out on every street block and corner ready to hoot and holler and whistle and yell to attract your attention so they can ask “Madam motorbike? Madam motorbike?” as though they are eager to be in motion once again. (Later I found out from my HaLong Bay tour guide that there are 3 million motorbikes in Hanoi, a city of 4 million people.)

This city is constantly moving and on this first day I’m determined to foot it and get knee deep in the streets of names made of familiar letters with unfamiliar squiggly marks above them, using the map I paid for at the airport as my only confidence that I’ll not get lost. Whether it helps me not get run over by a motorbike while crossing the street remains to be known. Pedestrian crossing traffic lights, which exist for only a few intersections, are merely a suggestion, not guarantee, that the road is safe to cross. Green means “Good luck, this is your best chance to get across the road but doing it without getting hit, that’s something you’ve got to figure out on your own.”

No need to have brought my nice shoes ~ flip-flops all the way. Those few streets with sidewalks (so few are such streets that they are actually labeled as such on the map) offer a lumpy bumpy surface requiring constant reassessment while walking, annoyingly interrupting my eyes from indulging in my surrounding sights. Anyway, most streets had no walking paths, which made getting by a matter of maneuvering between the merchants sat at their storefronts and the motorbike traffic passing at their feet. Those two casual dresses I brought ~ useless.

This place reminds me of Thailand with the dusty streets and motorbikes except here there are many more motorbikes and they wear helmets and keep their dogs at home. Later I found out that it wasn’t until recently, about 3 years ago, that they started to require helmets and in fact I saw many billboards of happy families wearing helmets, no doubt the campaign for promoting helmet use is still in full swing three years later.

It’s the end of day one, which only consisted of five hours of on-foot exploration. I have a sneaky suspicion that when I leave it will be the last time I leave Vietnam, as I’m not sure why I’d ever want to come back. This particular cultural experience seems to be a difficult one for me to appreciate. And I’m not sure why. None of the reading I did could have adequately prepared me for the chaos that is Hanoi. When the hotel staff showed me to my room and then asked if I wanted a room with a window I said no thanks. I knew I’d need a reprieve from the sea of horn-honking motorbikes below.

Restaurants and food establishments are hard to find (or recognize perhaps) so I’m eating at a hotel restaurant and paying maybe three times more than the lay person would for dinner but I’m totally okay with that because it’s “kind of” quieter in here.

This is my first trip where I actually considered staying in my hotel room all day watching movies. Of course I can’t and won’t do that but the unfamiliar and chaotic life outside these hotel walls, where the roads at 6am sound no different than they do during the 5 o’clock rush hour, does not excite me today. I will go out again today. But, not a single fraction of a second do I not realize how hopelessly outnumbered and foreign I am in this city. This makes me wonder very quietly to myself, “who wants to come here and why?”. I cannot see myself thriving here and I cannot see any westerners doing anything other than “just passing through” here.

It’s going to take a lot for this placed to grow on me. I find myself not wanting to like this place. The cornerstone of my dismay: I don’t want to like a place that takes flagrant advantages of foreigners’ misunderstanding of the currency and ignorance of fair prices. Case in point:

I paid nearly 5.5 times more for a short taxi ride to the Korean Embassy from my hotel because the taxi driver was happy to take advantage of my ignorance, and well, because of my ignorance of fair fares.

My hotel called a taxi for me and gave him instructions on where to take me. From the back seat I poked my head around the empty seat in front of me to find the meter and was confused by it straight away. In Korea, there’s only one number displayed and that’s what you have to pay. So the meter on the dashboard in this taxi is a panel of several numbers ~ I had no idea what represented cost, or distance, or perhaps radio channel, or blood pressure!

Not able to immediately identify the location of the fare amount on the meter and knowing that in cases where there is no meter the fare should be agreed upon beforehand, I asked “how much?”. He says 400 as he started off into the sea of motorbikes. I assumed he meant 400,000 VND, because what else could it have been, $400? No way. But 400,000 VND is more than the cost of the taxi ride from the airport, which is about, just guesstimating here, 3 times greater in distance than the distance I was about to travel with this guy, according to my map, so I confidently felt he grossly padded the fair price. Should be 3 times less than airport taxi, I reasoned, all other things being equal. I smiled and exclaimed happily, per the travel guide’s recommendation, how expensive that was and then said, thinking that I’d rather role the dice and pay the metered amount, “meter fare”. And so I aborted my negotiation attempt and sat back and tried to relax and deal with whatever was in store for me.

Fifteen or so minutes later, we get there. He puts it in park and turns to look at me. I look at him and then again at that mysterious meter only I’m in no better shape than when I first inspected that thing. I point to the meter and ask him “what’s the metered fare?” and that’s when he began pointing to my pocketbook and motioning for me to hand over some money. Feeling like I wasn’t going to get anywhere with the questions, or the meter, I decided to just slice in half his original quote based only on the guidance given in the guide books that you should first counter offer half. I give him 200,000 VND. He happily takes it and again points to my pocketbook and motions for me to give more. “Have I underpaid? Is it an unfair amount I’ve given?”, I ask myself. And more importantly, “What will he do if I don’t give him the right amount, whatever that happens to be?” I gave him 50,000 VND in addition to the 200,000 VND. And then he motions for me to give more! Recognizing a never-ending pattern I decided it was up to me to conclude the transaction. I said no with a smile and suddenly out popped some English, “Please madam, souvenir. Souvenir. Souvenir.” Again, I said no with a fabricated smiled and got out, half wondering what was going to happen next.

He drove off.

It was just seconds later, as I walked away from the street curb, that I realize in the upper left corner of the meter it read in tiny letters “multiply by 1,000” above a box with a number that had reached 47 by the time we arrived at the destination. So, there was my answer, I figured it out on my own but too late. The fare was only 47,000 VND and I paid Mr. Happy Taxi Driver 250,000 VND.

I head into the Embassy with a huge chip on my shoulder. When my number is finally called they say they require a copy of the work contract, which I didn’t bring, even though we called to check for such requirements. I say, probably with not much cordiality, “If you need it, you’re gonna have to call my boss and get it yourself. His number is right there.” and shoved a name card through the small slot in the glass window. Surprisingly she didn’t come out and backhand me; she got the secretary to call my boss.

While I waited the hour or so for my boss to send the work contract (he was at lunch), I wrote:

The sheer number of moving people and constant commotion kills the sexy-fun mood of the yummy-pastry-colored stick buildings. Though their bright paint suggests otherwise, they seem ignored by the city, these tall, skinny, 4- and 5-story buildings, some clustered with sisters and brothers, some standing tall all alone, only as wide as the one tiny room contained on each floor leading out to doll-house-like verandas whose vacancies not only perplex me, but beckon me to them for a romantic date with my thoughts. No one else seems to be memorized by these buildings or captivated by their balconies the way that I am.

If they are not seductive stick buildings or the dilapidated stores of the street markets then the buildings are massive gated mansions, too large to fit in a picture, colored brighter than the sun surrounded by these mopey and gloomy looking South Carolinian trees with long skinny tendril-like roots that grow straight out of the canopy like dreadlocks reaching for the ground. If I didn’t think I’d be run over in a second I’d take more time in a single spot to observe my surroundings. But it’s clear: to keep safe, keep moving.

An hour and a half later I check in with the Embassy ~ they have received the work contract. Can you imagine all the (unjustified) ways I wanted to hate Hanoi and thus Vietnam when I was then told that it would take over a week to process my Visa?! All previous research said it would take two business day so that’s how I planned my 4-day trip which included a non-refundable overnight cruise of Halong Bay taking up my last two days. After begging them to expedite the process due to my travel departure dates and generally being a big pain in the ass, I got them to agree to process it in three days, which still put me in a pickle. I left the Embassy with an even bigger chip on my shoulder than when I went in.

Thoughts of having to miss the Halong Bay cruise and the chance of having a better experience in another part of a country that was getting on my nerves, got on my nerves even more. Feeling pissed and with my “who moved my cheese” attitude in full swing I ventured in the direction of my hotel determined to hoof it the entire way to try to “make back” the excess money I spent getting there (or was it to punish myself?).

Along the way I realized how I needed to get out from under the sore feelings, step back and think of the bigger picture and adjust my attitude. I hadn’t lost any limbs and so I decided to try to be positive.

First things first: I forgave myself for making a money mistake which wasn’t really a money mistake if I just looked at it a little differently. Yes I gave Mr. Happy Taxi nearly 5.5 times more but the difference between the actual fare and the amount I paid was a mere ELEVEN DOLLARS! Eleven dollars doesn’t stretch farther than a few minutes in my home country but it can buy 10 meals, or 40 visits to a historical museum, or 33 beers in Hanoi. Get over it Susan. Cheers!

Next things next: I forgave myself for acting entitled to get my Work Visa in two days at the Embassy. We all make mistakes and have off moments. You forgive yourself and move on. Okay, so moving on, my mind a little lighter, I let my brain wander and try to work out what all my options were, given the new restrictions.

And the next thing I know I’m sitting on the back of a motorbike. Yep, to mark the occasion of getting over it, I hired a ride back into town on the back of some guy’s motorbike.

I pay what I think is a fair price for a surprisingly calm and safe ride on Xe Om (literally, “motorbike hug”) in a sea of other motorbikes, which takes me to Pho Hang Bang, the “street of stores”. The store in particular that I’m looking for is called Kinh Do Café at 252 Hang Bang. It’s here I finally see foreigners with their own helmets and motorbikes carrying so few possessions that I must assume the rest of their life exists at a residence not far away, busting my original assumption that foreigners can’t and wouldn’t and don’t live here. In fact, the western looking woman leaving as I entered has to be a resident, or a regular patron at the least, because she promises to return to pay her bill, and they let her go. As promised, she returns later and pays.

I finish eating and pay and get some band-aids at the pharmacy nearby for the blister my flip flops gave me and then set out for more on-foot exploration with my camera in one hand, notebook in the other, slowing down to jot random observations like these …

· The men either have creepy long feminine fingernails or stubby-grubby fingernails on hands that look like they don’t have time or can’t be bothered to be clean. And there are so many shirtless torsos that you’d think the men just forgot to get dressed before getting on with their day. It made me realize that I almost never see men in Korea without shirts.

· There is something so attractive to me about hanging laundry. It’s so domestic. If you can see how a country does their laundry then you can know about the people, the way they live, what they tolerate and what they can endure. In Hanoi hanging laundry is a common everyday sight.

· They use a simple pulley system for getting things around on a construction site, heaving supplies up and down in buckets. The kid in me wanted to grab the rope and hoist something up in one of those buckets, just to do it.

· Passing by stores where the merchants and their friends and family sit in company, you get the full up and down visual inspection by an expressionless face ending with a careful scrutiny of your feet. I can’t tell if it’s the shoes they are inspecting or the appearance of feet. I have decided that they judge what kind of money you have by the state of your feet and the kind of shoes you wear and thus whether or not it’s worth their time to attract your business.

· I can’t imagine for whom or for what purpose these high-end hand bags and sparkling, bejeweled high heels and designer dresses are, but sure enough there they are, in display cases and behind storefront windows and so out of place in this city of flip flops, shirtless men, dusty roads, and complacent littering.

· Virtually all prices in Hanoi are either listed or quoted to you in USD. Restaurant menus, store items and the like are marked in USD. Hotel staff, travel agents, and servers all quote the approximate cost of things in USD, which is widely accepted in addition to VND. Only if you inquire can you get the VND price, unless you happen to know the exchange rate, which I did not, seeing as how my brain works in Korean Won these days.

· The rain slows down the pace and brings a calmness to the city.

· I’m no longer surprised by my fascination with their eyes ~ they are a beautiful brown color matching their tanned skin far different in feeling from the see of black eyes I face everyday in Korea. It’s easy to stare into these topaz gems and smile at their attractiveness.

Eventually my walking took me to a small park near the Vietnam Museum of History and indeed, there, at the park – a small sanctuary among crisscrossing motorbike traffic – something quite historical happened to my journey …I began to like Vietnam.

I could have never grown an appreciation for the Vietnamese people until I met one, on a bench with my customary don’t trust anyone wall of protection guarding me. He was like every other guy his age, a motorbike driver with struggling teeth and dirty fingernails, and, like all the rest, approached me with, “Madam, motorbike?” to which I responded, for about the 463rd time since landing the day before, “No thanks” with an ever regressing smile. I wasn’t surprised when he sat down on the park bench next to me but I did wonder why I hadn’t just sat right smack dab in the middle of this 2-person bench if I didn’t want company to begin with. Anyway, I was exhausted and all I wanted to do was write. But I sensed there was an opportunity unfolding before me so I put away my plans and turned and looked directly at him … and smiled. That’s all it took.

He and I proceeded to communicate using my notebook and pictionary. His name is Ahn Yeu Em and he’s 32, married, no kids and will probably drive a motorbike for 40 years, or at least I think that’s what he was jokingly saying, or until he’s 40, not sure. I met a father and son at the park too, and witnessed some universal signs of affection and love with the hugging and smiling that went on between them. The boy’s desire to sit in his daddy’s lap was so familiar to me that I thought I could see myself at age 5 climbing into my dad’s lap. And the next thing I see, the boy now cuddled-up comfortably under his dad’s chin, is the boy stretching out his legs in a splendidly symmetrical gymnastic-like Y formation so he could show his penis to the world (he was not wearing underwear under his shorts). The dad’s awkward response registering somewhere between trying to teach his son discretion and letting him be a silly kid made this country so very real to me regardless of what technologies they may not have or how dirty their streets are or how underdeveloped their architecture is. A father’s love of his son and the joy adults see in children are universally understood expressions that require no words.

The sun was setting by now, air still hot, and the father in his sandals and the son on his tricycle, left for their home. But my night was just getting started. That park bench introduction to Ahn Yeu Em led to dinner across the street which then led to a personalized motorbike tour of the city’s main points of interest, which then led to lake-side drinks. He would speak to me in Vietnamese and I’d speak to him in English. We were having two different conversations at the same time, smiling and snapping pictures along the way. Three and a half hours later I signaled the universal “I’m tired” sign and he dropped me off at my hotel. And slowly that chip on my shoulder began to break away.

And then, I got sick. This is what I wrote in my journal:

I feel almost certain that I am sick with what I hope is nothing more than a food bug that will pass quickly. My visits to the bathroom have all been “business as usual” but I feel utterly void of energy, my skin highly sensitive to my own touch and a bit shaky, a little dizzy and weak in the stomach too. I keep thinking about those beers I drank out of dirty cups with black flecks floating in the foam and the curious morsel of something resting at the bottom, and the Duck Sweet and Sour meal I order from the English menu which turned out to be breaded and fried duck feet in sweet and sour sauce and the mildly unpleasant flavor of the sauce and the crunchiness of feet cartilage which left the most awful after taste and smell in my skin and body and hair and nose and gave me the most horrendous smelling gas. Or could it be the salad I had at the hotel’s breakfast or the skin of the raw fruit I ate or the juice? I wasn’t careful about avoiding things that could have been in contact with ordinary tap water. Not far from my list of sickness could-bes is cholera. So until my condition worsens or a new condition appears I’m drinking bottled water and taking my vitamins and staying in bed. I’ve decided that I’ve experienced the essence of Hanoi as I’ve become numb to the pace, the persistent honking and the people on every inch of street asking every second “Madam motorbike?” My feet are sore and my back hurts and I feel it’s time to rest in the peace and quiet of my windowless honk-free hotel room.

I feel like I imagined it would feel after being Tasered: tingling, numb, exhausted, sore, warm, sensitive. I need rest but I can’t fall asleep… the staff at the hotel have been great. When I told them that I needed a thermometer and said I was too weak to go out and get it they sent someone to buy it up-front who then brought it to my room for reimbursement. Unfortunately the first thermometer was broken internally and the second one never would report anything other than 38 degree Celsius even after having been run under cold water and put in the fridge for a few minutes. So I never did find out if I had a fever but I just assumed so because at night, even though the AC was on I was sweating. I closed my eyes hoping water and sleep would help me recover. I just wanted to enjoy the HaLong Bay cruise scheduled for the next day.

I did go on that HaLong Bay tour, my condition did get worse, and in spite of it I did enjoy a romantic cruise (though all the romance was totally wasted on me, the lone single traveler that everyone pitted), was befriended by a lovely Australian couple, went kayaking for the first time, saw some amazing karst and caves (ok, the caves weren’t any better than Luray Caverns ~ sorry, I’ve got to stay true to the Virginian in me), snapped lots of pictures, and I DID make it back to Hanoi, on my final day in Vietnam, just in the nick of time to pick up my passport from the Korean Embassy who had agreed to extend their pickup hours after I humbly begged them to do so in a call I made to them prior to leaving for the HaLong Bay cruise.

With 6 hours to kill before I needed to be at the airport for my overnight flight back to Korea, I decided that I couldn’t leave without trying some authentic Pho soup – the most popular Vietnamese dish in the US and Korea. After walking what I’m sure was a two mile stretch of Kim Ma street, in both directions, my rolling suitcase and obvious foreignness attracting unwanted attention and gawking, hungry and in disbelief that not a single restaurant I entered served Pho, I picked some random cafe because it looked like the best place for me to hide and eat and write, and then I was cheated out of correct change by my server, which was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Sick, and sick of Hanoi, I decided my exploration was officially over and that it was time for me to go to the airport.

I would have the last laugh though.

While every one else was all lovey-dovey on the HaLong Bay cruise, I made it a mission of mine to ask the two Vietnamese couples on that tour how they would go to the airport from Hanoi if they were to go to the airport from Hanoi. I scored big with some insider information! Bus 07 from Kim Ma bus station, though it takes one hour to get to the airport, only costs a whopping 5,000 VND (about .29c)! So my suitcase and I rolled up to the Kim Ma bus station, confirmed the destination of bus 07, waited about 20 minutes, then boarded a bus headed to the airport for a measly .29c. I felt like I was cheating; that any minute they were going to tell me to get off the bus; that foreigners weren’t allowed; that the low price was for Vietnamese only, but that never happened. The bus fare collector man (yes, they have an extra bus employee, not the bus driver, to go around collecting fare from each new rider, and he actually does well to know which riders have already paid and which riders just got on the bus even when they have entered through the middle doors and the bus is packed solid) so yes, the bus fare collector man came around to me and I have no doubt in my mind that he could not have imagined that earlier in the week I had paid 25$ to take a taxi from the airport to Hanoi, or that that price was a discounted fare for a shared taxi with another traveler, or the joy welling up inside me when I handed him 5,000 VND. He took my money like it was an everyday thing. I grabbed a handle and got settled into my standing slot spot, and enjoyed my ride on a bus that was, but for its age, identical in every way (seats, seat back covers, seat positions, hanging handles, door design, floor covering, etc) to the buses of Seoul. (Later I found out that Seoul sells their old buses to Vietnam. Though I did not see this, apparently some people have seen buses in Vietnam still marked with their former destination in Korean. And only a Seoulite of at least a year could appreciate the irony of a bus marked 압구정, the affluent district of Seoul and the 10th most expensive shopping district in the world according to Wiki, puttering around the dusty streets of Hanoi.)

As anticipated, I arrived at the airport 4 hours ahead of time to think about how much I was ready to leave Vietnam, and then flew home.

[photos coming soon]