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 brainI 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