Last night in HN

I'm packing my life up into a backpack again and trying to fathom how I've acquired SO much shit in just seven short months. I have successfully created a mound of this shit next to my bedroom door; I also managed to discharge a pair of shoes to my friend Cathy, and some books to Dung. There is still so much shit. In an attempt to increase productivity, I wrote a 'to-do' list. But then I felt bad because I hadn't done any of the things on it. So then I added some things that I'd already done, like 'go for a run' and 'eat breakfast', so that I could cross them off. That satisfied me, so I took a break from the to-do list, and went on Facebook for a bit.

Today Hanoi did a good job of persuading me to stay, and distracting me from the important tasks of leaving. Pretty much all day I cruised around under the guise of ACHIEVINGTASKS but actually did nothing. But Hanoi was beautiful nonetheless; the weather is (finally) getting warmer, I really fancied the quite dirty man that cut a new set of keys for my housemate, my new $3 mani&pedi is pretty lush and very orange.

I went out for a last supper with my friend Hop (the running man). Since my Vietnamese is poor, and his English amounts to "Hello!", it's always a bit random where we end up eating, as he tries to satisfy the poorly-translated whims, appetites and vegan sensibilities of the big incoherent rambling whitey, whilst still going somewhere that tastes half-good and doesn't blow his entire month's wages. Anyway, tonight's "Lau Ca Song" (Fresh Fish Hotpot) was a massive win. Before we went, Hop was like, "If we go here...we have to drink...is that ok?" Upon arriving at this restaurant*, a bottle of spirit is compulsory. Of course it's ok, I'm English. The food was awesome; I ate a little bit of fish, but there was enough tofu and fresh vegetables to keep me happy, cooked by our fair chopsticks in a bubbling pot of stock. Accompanied by mango, many shots of apple vodka, and the ambience of a grimy hall full of vodka-full Vietnamese men toasting and shouting, discussing Ashley Cole's dalliances in broken Vietnamese, I had an awesome dinner. I also really fancied a man sitting opposite who kept giving me the eye; he was dapper yet cute, I love that. Anyone who lives in Hanoi: you should go to 55 An Duong Vuong off Au Co, it's rad. And if you're the dapper-yet-cute man, you should go to 20 Hang Bun.

After dinner, we went back to tourist town to drink bia hoi - the infamous (I think) fresh beer drank on 10" plastic stools in the street. Here ban Hop was exchanged for a new crowd of equally interesting but more English-speaking friends. I like to sit here and talk shit and watch the world go by, in what must be one of the busiest places in Hanoi. And when three pints cost me 50p, it can't go too wrong. This is one of the places that "proper expats" shun when they get too Vietnamese-initiated and cool, because there are too many tourists, but actually it's really fun so they should stop being stuck-up. I have never had a bad night drinking bia hoi.

After bia hoi, we went to Roots Bar, at the end of Luong Ngoc Quyen. This is one of my favourite bars in Hanoi, due to (a) coconut rum and (b) chilled-out grooves. There is a lot of rum and there is a lot of reggae. This bar is sometimes unpopular because it can be quiet on the wrong night, but because it was my last night in Hanoi, the naysayers were finally silenced and we went. I drank rum and I grooved; I talked about nothing; I was given a vase; then I rode home on my friend's Vespa. An awesome last night in Hanoi. It may be evident that I'm writing this post after a few coconut rums, but I'm trying hard to at least spell right.


*'Restaurant' is a bit generous here. 'Dingy fish tunnel' would be more appropriate, but it doesn't read right.

Around this time last week I went to Sapa. I don't like to complain on my blog, but Sapa was pretty shit...bad weather, bad company, bad food, bad weather, bad weather. I wanted to climb the highest mountain in Vietnam, but my friend was too lazy. I wanted to see the beautiful countryside, but it was too foggy to see 50m down the road. I wanted to go and sit next to a fireplace in a bar, but my friend is Vietnamese and doesn't approve of women drinking. I want I want I want! I want to get my own way! I ended up coming home after one day, and considering I spent around 24 hours travelling in total, this felt like a big pointless waste of my time. BUT if anything made it worthwhile, it was the many friendly animals that I met in the mountains. I thought I would share them with you, in all their fat, reproductive glory.

nipple battle

"this pig is so fat! she is the fattest pig i have ever seen! why is this pig so fat?"

(investigation)

"this pig is so fat because she is a mummy pig! she ought to be given Savlon to stop her fat tummy chafing on the group thereby forming a painful rash, but they don't have much Savlon in the remote Vietnamese highlands, especially not for use by pigs. if only she lived in Kirdford, my mum would give all all the Savlon she needs, probably applied by hand in a warm soapy bath and followed by kisses and some Marks & Spencer's control pants."

another enigma, as of yet unsolved: apparently this is neither 'vịt' (duck) nor is it 'ngỗng' (goose), but 'ngan', a third duck-goose-like animal. i suspect it's actually just a duck, and that i was being had.

this is a cockrel. he's sitting on a swing, in a cocky fashion.

this is a human child.

Another highpoint of my day was when a fat old French man got stuck in knee-deep mud, and I had to pull him out. Then he put his other foot straight into the same mud, and I had to pull him out again. He lost both shoes. He seemed kind of angry with me, as though I was a mudwitch who had planned this whole thing, although in retrospect maybe he was just angry because I was laughing so hard.

An educational note: In many places throughout the highlands of northern and central Vietnam, there are ethnic minority people, who aren't Vietnamese but have migrated to Vietnam at various points in the last 1000 years or so. Sapa is probably the most popular place to go and gawp at these ethnic minority people, buy their trinkets, and patronise them by taking photographs. Because I'm really ignorant, before I went to Sapa I wasn't really interested in them and thought they were basically just Vietnamese people who dressed up in funny clothes to make money from tourists. Now I am wise, and know this is not the case. Physically they look very different to the Vietnamese, and there are around 54 ethnically different groups, each of which speak their own language, and have different traditional dress and different customs. They still live almost exclusively in their own villages, having changed little since they settled in Vietnam, and the people you meet in Sapa making money from tourism are the tiniest proportion of the total number. Because the ethnic minorities are migrants that got here a bit late, and were never really accepted by the Vietnamese people, they've been marginalised and given the scraps when it comes to choosing where to live. This is why they live in the moutains where it's pretty difficult to farm anything. They were big producers of opium for a long time, but that made the Vietnamese government hate them even more, so now it's mainly rice and just a lil opium. I reckon the women I saw here work EVEN HARDER than Vietnamese women do (which is saying something).

these are Red Dao women. they shave their foreheads which makes them look a bit bad-ass.

these are Flower Hmong women, their clothes are my favourite.

this is a Black Hmong woman, this photograph is awesome (not mine) (the other two aren't mine either, I feel weird taking photos of people)

I'm going to stop now, because of all the inane posts I write, I feel that saying "ethnic minorities actually aren't in fancy dress but their clothes are very pretty anyway" makes me sound even more stupid and blonde than normal. I just learnt about ethnic minorities in the last week so I think it's very interesting, but really after going to Sapa for a day and then going to the Ethnology museum in Hanoi, I'm still not much of an expert. In fact, this entire post could be the work of a five year old.

uh-oh! bronun-a-lorry! (on the bus on the way home)

Why soup is exciting

I was driving to work in heavy traffic the other day, when I saw some tourists standing on a street corner, taking photos of the traffic. When you're doing something as mundane as driving to work, it seems ridiculous that someone would consider it photo-worthy. And I'm pretty sure the Vietnamese driving around me thought the tourists looked even more stupid than I did - reactions to the abysmal traffic situation in Hanoi usually range from nonplussed through to mild irritation, and "one for the photo album" is nowhere in that range. But then I remembered my first day in Vietnam, crossing the road feeling all at once completely scared, excited, fascinated, disgusted and tempted to join in. I definitely took photos; I think I even blogged about it. I also remembered forcing my mum to cross one of the busiests roads in the city centre when they visited: "I'm not crossing here, no, no way, no, Laura, we can't do this...AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" (as I grab her hand and drag her straight through the middle of the stream of traffic).

The same goes for food; looking back over my blog history reveals that when presented with a particularly exciting and delicious-looking bowl of pho, when my dragon-fruit is even more pink and beautiful than normal, or when I see an extra-gruesome pile of dead dogs by the side of the road, I am compelled to photograph it. I'm not sure why photographs are necessary - it's partly because just "having a look" doesn't seem significant enough to mark how interesting I think it is, and partly because I think that people at home will be interested to see it too. In England, I never really felt so compelled to photograph my porridge, a banana, or some chicken fillets in Sainsbury's.

exciting cup of tea

exciting lunch and exciting boyfriend

On Pancake Day, we had a party at our house. Pancakes featured heavily at this party. Most of the people there were Westeners, but my Vietnamese friend Long (his name means dragon!) was the most impressed by my pancakes. He told me that I'll be a good housewife, and he took several photos of his pancake on his iPhone. Since a rolled-up pancake is delicious but quite ugly, and in a badly-lit iPhone photo slightly resembles a poo, this seemed a strange thing to do - but for Long, a pancake is exciting and novel. I look just about as strange to Vietnamese people when I take photos of a bowl of soup.

I think my point is that 'interesting' often just equates with 'novel', whilst 'unremarkable' just means 'seen it all before'... I'm pretty sure that Hanoi isn't an inherently more interesting place than Sussex. The reason why I feel I have so many adventures here, why I still spend half my time walking around in wide-eyed awe, why I feel a dead dog is photo-worthy, and why I look forward to tasks such as buying vegetables and sitting on a bench, is that Hanoi still holds that novelty for me. I guess the enlightened man would have the ability to hold this child-like excitement for wherever they happened to be. I am an unenlightened man, and so I plan to spend lots of money chasing excitement around the planet, so that I can continue to be stimulated by new experiences, new people, new sights, and new foods. This is a good reason to leave Hanoi on Thursday, and head to new shores.

some pigs in a toilet; this was very exciting

It's my blog and I'll ramble if I want to

Sorry for leaving my emotional issues staining the top of my blog for so long. Lots of shit has happened, and I'm not going to talk about any of it. Instead, more self-indulgent rambling, yay.

Vietnamese word of the day: ô (umbrella). It looks like a fat man carrying an umbrella. This reminds me of a theory I read, saying that certain words look like the things they represent. This happens a lot in languages like Chinese (duh) but sometimes in English too. For example...bed, eye, poo, llama and vagina. This is a very inane theory and not one it's easy to go far with. It's not even very interesting. I'll stop now.

On the topic of things that are kind of intellectual but leave you feeling more stupid than when you started, I read a PhD thesis today, written by a Vietnamese man called Cuong Manh La. It's called, "How Virginity Enhances Masculinity: An Exploratory Study in Hanoi, Vietnam". It's a detailed study into how in Vietnam, it's ok for men to sleep around, even encouraged, but they would never marry a woman who wasn't a virgin. If they found out she didn't have a hymen, they'd probably beat her up, and she'd probably deserve it, the harlot. I also learnt that the Vietnamese consider the four female virtues to be domestic skills (Công), beauty (Dung), calm speech (Ngôn), and virtuous character (Hạnh). I am not doing very well on these fronts. The corresponding male virtues include making lots of sons, building your own house, and owning a buffalo.


Edit: I wrote this blog in a restaurant while I was having dinner, then walked outside to see this sign opposite:

Q.E.D.

I officially have only one more class before I finish this job for good. I was supposed to be working until the end of the month, but today my boss told me that they can't give me any more classes due to my "emotional issues" (quote). Err. Then I strutted around the office acting like I was really happy to be leaving, which everyone could tell was a rubbish bluff in an attempt to disguise the fact that "we want you gone immediately because you're an incompetent teacher and you have emotional issues" actually made me feel a little bit shit.

So... now I am quite directionless again. Only metaphorically directionless you understand, in the sense that I have no job, no life plan, no real ambitions. In travelling terms, my direction is south. So that's OK then.

Chalk and cheese

It's taken me six months here to find a decent gym (just as I'm getting ready to leave, go me). Whilst your average Hanoian keeps fit by doing chin-ups on rusty bars next to a lake at 5am, the upmarket expat gyms are lush but maintain their exclusivity by charging an insane amount to join (like, your first month there you'd be $1000 poorer). I've been to another gym a bit, but their treadmills are designed for 40kg Vietnamese girls, not "real women" (ha), and also I crashed my bike coming out of the carpark and now I'm scared to go back.

Someone recommended me Olympia gym on Trang Hung Dao. Unsurprisingly considering it costs 40,000 VND ($2) a go, it's grotty as hell, but luckily it's also gloomy enough that you can't really see the pubes or the sweat stains down the walls. It's got a swimming pool and a big room with weight machines and only four treadmills, one of which tried to kill me by incrementally increasing the speed without me noticing. There are lots of Vietnamese men in hot pants doing Vietnamese things such as walking sideways on a treadmill whilst beating their chests. Such calisthenic wisdom is yet to reach the West, but they must be doing something right as they're all well skinny. Upstairs from the gym, women go to do aerobics, but I was intimidated by the frantic pumping house music and didn't go up there. The gym also has a really fit assissant man working there who kept "demonstrating the equipment for me" (i.e. showing me his muscles). He was very attentive. I like this gym.

The reason I wanted to write about this was due to the conversation that followed my first trip to the swimming pool there. After a long cold winter containing few swimming opportunities, I excitedly told Dung about the pool. He said he really likes swimming, he wants to go there, etc. He said he hasn't been swimming for a long time, since he left his village... WHERE HE LEARNT TO SWIM WHILST FARMING BUFFALO. What the fuck?! Whilst I was having swimming lessons at the Taro, he was in a fucking rice paddy in rural Vietnam, herding water buffalo and eating cats. He knows that he can hold his breath for two minutes, because when he's riding on a buffalo's back and it goes underwater, he has to go underwater too. Many of the friends he grew up with are still farmers like this. I hope I don't need to say that none of this is meant in a conscending way, like "Ho ho, you mean there isn't a multi-million pound leisure centre where you come from?!" But it happens very frequently that I can't even wrap my head around HOW different our backgrounds are. I think he's fascinating.

We are going on holiday to Nha Trang, beachy town in central Vietnam, at the beginning of next month. I wanted to fly there to save time, but flying is too expensive, and furthermore it makes baby polar bears cry. So we're going to get the 24-hour train down there. Dung was like "That's ok, I really want to go on a train. I've never been on one before." WHAT! I know I'm lucky enough to have been on more flights than a lot of people, but train journeys have been a staple of my whole life - gigs in Portsmouth, going to the orthodontist in Guilford, day trips in London, that time Nolly and I went to meet a man in Eastleigh... I have never really considered this a privilege, it's just normal. How can you have never ever been on a train? And then I was like, "I can't believe you've never been on a train!" and he thought I was saying, "I don't believe you've never been on a train!" and accusing him of lying.

Most bizarre relationship EVER (also the best).

I love motorbikes

(a detailed blog post make my mum happy)

Last weekend, I went on an excursion to Ninh Binh with my friend Hop. I have been to Ninh Binh once before, but this time was a bit better because I was with a Vietnamese person who knew what he was doing. For example, last time we got on an empty bus at the bus station, and then waited about 2 hours for it to fill up before it left. This time, we took a running jump onto a bus that had already left, were pulled up by the arm by the bus conductor, and I got to sit on the gear stick box next to the driver because the bus was so rammed (WELL FUN).

Hop came to my house at about 7.45am (bleurgh) and we ate sticky rice (xôi) he'd bought from a street vendor. Sticky rice is my second favourite Vietnamese food; hotpot (lẩu) is number one. Then a motorbike to the bus station, and the fun novelty-seated bus ride to Ninh Binh city, where Hop rented a banged-up Honda Dream and we set off into the countryside. (Twice this day I had to get off and walk up a hill because the bike couldn't handle my obesity.)

We drove to Cuc Phuong park, which was a bum-numbing drive from Ninh Binh city but awesome once we got there. So much greenery, so many birds, barely any people, NO motorbike horns, and we went around driving the motorbike on little winding paths through it all. These two photos are from a cave where they found 7,500 year old relics from prehistoric Vietnamese men. I'm not sure what relics they found, but I imagine it was rice wine shot glasses and rubber flip flops.

mot...hai...ba...

this old man on the left was awesome, he sung loudly all the way up the ~200 steps into the cave, then when we were in the cave i got scared because it was pitch-, pitch-black, so he led me out by the hand with his cigarette lighter, walking like a crab the entire time. then he asked me how old i was, and whether i had any children yet - standard vietnamese small talk.

After lunch, we left the motorbike and went for a walk through the jungle to see an 'Old Tree' (the original Vietnamese definitely made it sound more exciting, I think something was lost in translation). It was pretty big and old, but trees don't excite me much. The walk was really good though, we had to scramble up some slippery rocks and walk up some rivers.

really big tree, or really small man?

In the evening, we drove back to Ninh Binh city to get dinner. Ninh Binh local specialities are thịt dê and cơm cháy (not going to tell you what they are in order to make you click on the links and turn my blog into an interactive learning experience). Cơm cháy is more up my alley, tastes even better freshly cooked unlike the packeted stuff in Hanoi, but added to the ridiculous percentage of my food intake that is made up of rice in its various forms. I reckon about 90% of my meals contain steamed rice, sticky rice, rice noodles, rice crackers, rice pancakes, burned rice, rice porridge or rice wine. I like rice. With dinner, we drank Ninh Binh Kim Son whisky (made from fermented sticky rice); then when the restaurant shut, we went to a bar which was full of old people but randomly had really raunchy dancing, pictured below. It was very odd. We sat in the corner, watched football on TV, and, er, drank some rice wine.

intense

The next day we went to some massive pagoda thing, in fact it was more like 5 different massive pagodas on different stages up a hill. Unfortunately it was some special religious day and so there were SO MANY VIETNAMESE PEOPLE. It was also too sunny. And there were pneumatic drills. It might've been nice if we'd gone on a different day, or if I hadn't got into a grump and wholly taken against it.

a lot of people and a lot of gold

Then Hop wanted to go on some boats but by that stage I was decidedly against anything that involved other people, so we ate some more cơm cháy and watched some Buddhists, and then went back to Ninh Binh to get the bus home. I went the whole two days speaking only Vietnamese (!) as Hop doesn't speak English, but frequently this meant that either we weren't talking at all, or were talking at complete cross-purposes. It's fine until he asks me a question or tells a joke...then just saying "ừ" won't do anymore, and I have to either blag or admit I haven't been paying attention.

at boat place, after i had sugar and stopped being grumpy

Now some photos from work on Monday, it was Thanh Hung's birthday :) which basically just meant their Vietnamese teacher gave them loads and loads of junk food.

Nam, so so cute

Anh Tu, also cute

MC Khai Van and Hoang Nguyen...i actually need to stop getting so attached to my students but they don't make it easy

Soppy post alert

Last weekend I went with Dung to Bac Giang province, about 120 km from Hanoi. Dung comes from this tiny village in Bac Giang called Xom Thuong, and I had to go and meet his family. He said if I went to Bac Giang with him, I would "understand everything". I still understand very little, but it was eye-opening nonetheless.



Bac Giang is in the mountains and is really beautiful - I love the Vietnamese countryside - but almost everyone that lives there is a farmer, and it's really poor. Like, a whole different kind of poor to anyone in England. The way of life is so different to anything I'm used to, and I don't think I ever could get used to it. Vietnam is a pretty weird place at the best of times, and this is magnified when the toilet is a hole with two bricks to stand on, and the cooker is an open fire. The Aga and my ensuite in Kirdford were very far away.



The visit was also made more difficult by the vast significance imbued by me meeting his family i.e. they all see me as his future wife. I had to be super-polite to everyone I met, but as soon as I feel shy my Vietnamese jams up and I can't think of anything to say, and I also feel like one big walking cutural faux pas, being horrifically rude and not knowing it. His family is huge, and they're all so so friendly, but a constant stream of new people to drink green tea with is quite exhausting.



It turned into a running joke between Dung and me, because it seemed like everyone we met around the village, Dung would say "That's my uncle". I swear he has around 30 uncles. Because Vietnamese has different words for "uncle" depending on whether it's your mum's younger brother or your dad's older brother or your mum's sister's husband or whatever, I don't think Dung had ever noticed how many uncles he had until he had to translate them all into the same word. At the end of the weekend, he said "It's ok, we can go home now, no more uncles."



This is when it starts sounding like the moral of a crap film, but even though (and possibly because) they're poor, the extended family is really awesome and close-knit. There was always people around, coming and going, and they're all so friendly and supportive of one another. It makes me feel a bit bad for fucking off to the other side of the world, because although I don't really know my extended family, my parents and brother are rad, and I should be closer to them. It's a privilege of wealth that we're able to ditch our family and go and do our own thing, but maybe it's good to stay close anyway.



On Saturday night, possibly in honour of having guests, they butchered a cat for dinner. When I asked Dung what his cousin was hacking apart (with a saw, on the ground outside the front door), the conversation proceeded as follows:



"Dung oi, what's that he's cutting up? Is that beef?"

"No, it's a tiger. Con ho, you know?"

"Khong phai. Even Vietnamese don't eat tigers. I don't believe you."

"Phai! They live in the mountains in Bac Giang. Delicious."

"It's not a tiger, Dung. What is it?"

"Ok, it's not a tiger...it's a cat. Con meo. A cat from the mountains."

"Khong phai! You don't eat cat, do you? Is that really a cat? It's not a cat. Is it a cat?"

"Really it's a cat! It's true."

"...No. It's not a cat. You wouldn't eat a cat...would you?"

"Cat is delicious."

"But there's no meat on a cat. Cats are thin. So not delicious. What is he cutting up?"

"Ok, it's not a cat...It's a man."

(I storm off to find someone who talks sense)



Anyway, turns out it was a cat. I felt bad continually turning down the meat they offered me, since it was probably a big deal to have that much meat on offer - yet another faux pas from the big rude whitey. So, after continual offers of the cat meat...I ate a piece. I got away with the smallest piece possible and swallowed it whole so I didn't have to taste it. Embryonic quails are one thing, but I'm so not comfortable eating cat. Cats-are-friends-not-food is one indoctrination I'm happy to keep.

Overall the trip to Bac Giang was fun, and I met some very good people, but I was thankful to come back to Hanoi on Sunday afternoon.

Caught singing for blood money? Don't be embarassed. Do what 50 Cent does: embrace it.

I'm evidently to lazy to write a blog post, so I'm posting an article by someone much funnier and better than me. Charlie Brooker is a genius.

Quoth the vegan

When I first got to Hanoi, drinking beer was a novelty. Six months later, and I'm going out after work for quail foetuses. Maybe if I stayed here another six months, I'd be gnawing on pig's bollocks as I watched TV. It's probably good I'm leaving.

trứng cút lộn: tasty

Frankly as feathery and veiny in the flesh as it looks in that picture, when Linh unexpectedly plopped one into my bowl of garlicky chilli sauce, my reaction was a predictable "NO. WAY." But then...well...she ate a couple, and I wanted to join in. They taste really nice, I swear they do. Like a meaty egg, and not crunchy or fluffy at all, although that depends on its age. I think technically it's a fertilised quail's egg with a nearly-developed embryo inside, that's then boiled. Does that make it sound more appetising? I ate five, each followed by a chaser of the garlicky chilli stuff. We also ate some snails and drank some corn juice (which was very yummy).

Linh says when she goes there, they can usually eat 20 quail eggs each, easily. She also said that it's the sort of place that young people like to go, especially girls, whose boyfriends go along to please the girlfriends. Which is not what you'd expect from a filthy back alley serving foetuses and snails. I learnt (from Linh's boyfriend Tuan, who showed up to please his girlfriend) how the way they're served has a scientific basis - snails and trứng cút lộn are served cold, and considered 'cold' sorts of foods, which is why they're served with lots of chilli, to balance the cold. In the South, they use Vietnamese coriander to make it more spicy. Like Yin and Yang. Trứng cút lộn are also full of protein and vitamins, and if you eat loads you'll get big and strong.

I now think that it's stupid to feel squeamish about stuff like that. Eating an egg with an embryo in it is not really any different to eating a normal egg (pretty much all the eggs in VN, and the ones from our chickens at home, are fertilised anyway), and it's also no different to eating the embryo a few months later when it's a fully-grown bird. They're just degrees on a scale, and it so happens that at two points on that scale we're accustomed to it and so think nothing of it, and the point in the middle is unusual in the West so we think it's gross. Having said that, I'm still not sure I'm ready for trứng vịt lộn, the ducky equivalent, and even more popular here than trứng cút lộn.

trứng vịt lộn: give it three months