I need to learn to wear underwear when I go on long runs

I had a beautiful run this evening around West Lake; today was warmer/wetter than it has been all winter, and felt a lot more tropical, but the breeze coming off the lake made it the perfect temperature for a sweaty run.

Along with listening to Dr Dre on my iPod and imagining that I was a G, I amused myself with all the quirky stuff I saw on my way round. The teenage boys with mohawks, doing wheelies at 60mph on any straight stretch of road, aren't big and they aren't clever, but they do look pretty cool. The rats under my feet are my rodenty friends; the bat that flew splat into my forehead scared me and was not a friend (I thought they were supposed to have a good sense of direction?). The old man on a bicycle who decided to to a U-turn on a busy stretch of road, without looking, pretty much got what was coming to him when a motorbike rammed into him and they both went flying down the road (I think they were both ok though). There was some event at the pagoda, and hence many gold sparkly things for sale, many big plastic money-pigs, and many people in my way who did not understand my need to pass. Today I did not see the pot-bellied pig who sits by the lake, but he is usually a highlight.

I made a new friend towards the end of the loop around the lake, when I was glad for an excuse to give up running. His name is Hop, and he is vice director of a wood panelling company - quite a catch. He didn't speak English, and he spoke Vietnamese very fast; I understood about 20% of our conversation, including the bits I said. We ate pho and then sat on a bench, where we talked some more using words I don't know. I think I've become quite accustomed to perpetual confusion, and so I enjoyed the meeting very much. On Saturday we're going to go for a walk! (At least, I think he said 'walk'...)


Actually, I am currently in a very difficult situation. The reason I left England was because I wanted to travel. Now I'm about to quit my job, I've got the funds and the lack of ties such that I can go anywhere I want...but I want to stay in Hanoi! I don't know what to do! I'm like Buridan's ass (donkey), who got stuck between two bales of hay because they were both the same distance away, and he couldn't make any rational decision to choose one over other. And that donkey starved to death. HE DIED. Now I'm in his situation. Life is so hard.

"I think I'll move to Saigon," Dave said, "because the people in Hanoi are so unfriendly."

Two minutes later, the three Vietnamese sitting opposite fill us up glasses of gin from their bottle of Bombay Sapphire, and continue to give us refills, shisha and chips for the next two hours. Then they left before we could return the favour. I think they were just being friendly.

I love Hanoi.

Bac Ha, Chichester, Laos, Glastonbury...

Evidently I'm so keen on Hanoi that I couldn't drag myself away from my motorbike long enough to write a blog post. But now it's Friday night, I've got a mug of cider, no friends, and nothing better to do, so I will write.

I met an interesting man the other day. A friend of a friend of mine is blind, and although that is probably really shit in lots of ways, he has developed an awesome talent. He has the most spot-on British pronunciation of any Vietnamese person I've met. Living in Bac Ha, a small town a fair way outside of Hanoi, I'm pretty sure he doesn't hang out with loads of Westeners. He claims to listen to the BBC World Service and try to copy how they talk, but he doesn't even speak BBC pronunciation, he sounds EXACTLY like he comes from Chichester. I did a double take when I met him - a Vietnamese man gets off a motorbike, and says "Alright, how's it going?" sounding just like he could live down the road from me in England. His actual vocabulary/grammar was about as good as my other friends who speak really good English - about 80% there - but the pronunciation was mentally good.

My friend explained that because this guy Dat can't see how the words are written, he doesn't get distracted by trying to pronounce them as though they are Vietnamese words. He just hears sounds, and mimics them. I definitely do this when I'm learning Vietnamese - it's like I'm wired to produce a certain sound when I see the letter 'd' or 'u', which causes problems when I read a name like 'Duy'. If I'd only heard the pronunciation like 'Zwee', I wouldn't start trying to call my student 'Doy', and no one would laugh at me. Combining sight and sound can make things more difficult when they don't correlate like we expect them to.

I also think Dat (pronounced 'Dat') has an unfair advantage when it comes to pronunciation - pretty sure I've read that if you lose one sense, your other ones become stronger to compensate. So perhaps he can hear pronunciation more accurately than we can. Maybe he has really good tastebuds too.

Actually Dat turned out to not be a very nice man; he got drunk and started making lewd comments about me and my friend Tien. But he doesn't have to be a nice man to be a fascinating scientific experiment.

Chichester: Dat is not from here

Because thus far this feels insufficient to make up for such neglectful and erratic posting, I will update anyone who cares on my life plans. I'm going to quit my job in May, or sooner if I can bear to drag myself away from my fat paycheck. Children are very nice but too noisy, and actually some of them aren't very nice at all. Then I will travel from Hanoi to Bangkok overland, via Laos. I plan to do this trip slowly, because whenever I travel I'm rushing and missing stuff. Then I will go on aeroplane for a long time, and end up in London. Then I will go somewhere else. Then I will go to Glastonbury, and dance like a mentalist to all the music they've never heard of in Hanoi. Then I will go to Brighton or London and work in a summer school. Then I will go to Sonisphere with my brother. Hopefully there will be more festivals and more pub gardens in the interim. Now we are at the beginning of August, what will I do then, I don't know. In fact none of this is confirmed yet, but it'd be pretty sweet if it happened, and I love that I'm in a position right now where these things are options. The only obstacle is my boyfriend, his attractiveness, awesomeness and lure to make me stay in Hanoi longer than I would otherwise. Always better off single.

here is a photo of me finishing a 10k last weekend: chosen because it is the only photo I've ever seen of me running in which I look like I'm actually moving

Why it's good to be home (Hanoi vs. Bangkok)

I've never before felt so good about coming home from holiday. The last time I had to leave Thailand, I would rather have stuck toothpicks in my eyes than go back to a degree I hated (at the time). But now I live in a city I love, I even found myself looking forward to coming back, just a little bit.

That's not to say I didn't desperately want to stay in Pai, the little hippy town in the mountains north of Chiang Mai where we spent most of our time, driving to waterfalls on motorbikes and falling asleep next to campfires. But it's impossible to stay in Pai, because like going down the rabbithole, Pai isn't real. In the real world, no one actually believes that futurology and crystals actually work, there are never so many beautiful semi-naked men with dreadlocks, there are music genres other than reggae and psytrance, and if you continuously drank so much Thai whisky your liver would implode. Pai is just a dream - not sustainable.

Pai at sunrise; beautiful man with dreadlocks on the left

But in terms of where you can actually have a real life and a real job, there's nowhere I'd rather be than Hanoi. These are some thoughts I had today, whilst cruising around on the back of my friend's motorbike, as he told me how I should leave my boyfriend and marry him instead. These thoughts are inevitably subjective, with Hanoi being Home and Bangkok being Holiday Destination, and my opinions would be very different if Bangkok was Home. But usually being Holiday Destination works in favour of a place.

some bored whores

There are the obvious things about Hanoi - it's cheaper, the coffee's better, and the glittering tower-blocks are replaced with small crumbling facades, painted yellow. I also like how in Hanoi, I don't have to worry about complicated and descriptive menus that make me choose between 10 types of coconut and tofu curry, or whether I'm going to have an soy chai latte, or a pot of jiagolon tea, or a kiwi and dragonfruit energy shake with spirulina, or all three. Hanoi is so much more straightforward - a big sign outside the shop proclaiming "BUN CHA" (or whatever) tells you what you're going to have to eat, and if you don't like it you can piss off to the shop marked "PHO", because this shop only does bun cha, and they do it really well. You may drink green tea, beer, or vodka; or go thirsty. The signs are even all in the same font. I cope much better with limited options.

indonesian raw vegetable salad with tempeh and humous, and a mug of warm soya milk, on Khao San Road; admittedly phenomenal

vat of chicken feet

cart o' bugs...see, way too much choice for my brain

I really missed the tiny amount of communicative ability I have here, with people like my taxi driver, the tofu lady at the market, or the non-English-speaking friend-of-a-friend. I'm hardly up to the standard of eloquent philosophical discourse yet, but it's so good to be able to talk to people, and not feel like an outsider.

I guess this one is related to the one above, but it's also because there are less tourists here than in Bangkok. Even though I look freaky, I feel like less of an outsider here, less of a target for scams and pickpocketing. In a city with so many drunken, hapless backpackers, there are people whose entire living comes from fucking up these people's holidays, as we found out the hard way (FYI Mummy and Daddy: first night, Goob, club, rohypnol in drink, passport and money stolen but everything else fine, only messed up one day, rest of the holiday was wicked). I felt the atmosphere on Khao San Road vibrant and entertaining but threatening, with so many people and so many ways to cheat them. Even the minor things, like selling you tat you don't need or tours you don't understand, are present but less obvious in Hanoi, a city that more recently cottoned onto the notion of how much money there is to be made out of us.

hallooo, you buy my theeengs?

I really like the lakes in Hanoi, and being able to run again. I like seeing my boyfriend again, unlike the bizarre temporary relationships formed on holiday. I like my roof garden. I like my landlord welcoming me home, wearing only skimpy gold pajamas and flip flops. I like pho, bun cha, my xao rau, xoi, chao, com... I like drinking mid-afternoon vodka in someone's house with my friends, and knowing for definite that it's not got any fucking roofies in it. I like driving my motorbike on the wrong side of the road.

As you can tell, I'm feeling a bit enamoured with Hanoi today, my first day back. I even felt full of love for the pho lady with the consistently appalling service opposite my house ("Look how she ignores my order in favour of all these Vietnamese people just arriving! Such flagrant disregard for my continued custom as a hungry girl living opposite her stall! So quintessentially Vietnamese of her! I didn't even order this meal!").

See how my tune changes once I have to go back to work on Tuesday.

calligraphy in Chinatown, Bangkok