I ate Hanoi.

Here are some tales of my past weekend trip to Hanoi (which happened coincidentally during Hue’s second flooding this season. shucks.)

I’ll be selective about the details I give about this trip, so even though it’s long it shouldn’t be too painful.  It looks longer than it should too, because I put in several pictures throughout the post, so unless your picture dyslexic and it takes you long to read pictures too, I don’t actually know what to say to you?

The purpose: Accompany my friend Tuân as he travels to Hanoi to take the GRE’s (Yes, you can take the GRE’s in Vietnam…) and also to visit Sarah Tran!!!

Here's Tuân playing with his metal slinky on the bus.

Mode of transportation: Sleeper bus. Though we were some of the first people on, I miraculously chose the smallest, most claustrophobia-triggering bed.  I wish I was only exaggerating, but it’s true- there were two back beds that ended up being on a slope and were shorter than the rest of the beds on the bus.  The old, middle school “back seats’ for the cool kids” rule of thumb has finally been sucked on until it’s eternal pruney stage.

Five minutes after we started moving, Paris By Night: Celebrity Dancing blessed my eyes on four television screens, two of them in the window reflection.  I was surrounded.  I consciously decided to shut my eyes after watching two Vietnamese people do a 50’s-sock-hop-boogie-woogie-swing-dance… I just couldn’t do it. haha

Paris by night strands!

We got there a little before 6:00 a.m.  Neither of us had a map and it seemed like we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere.  or Hanoi.  They sound similar, yes?  Anyway, no matter what bus you’re riding on in Vietnam, you’re destined to get swarmed by motorbike drivers the second you get off.  I mean, motorbikes are the most popular mode of transportation in Vietnam, so logically if drivers see a tour bus, they’ll attack like a pack of zombies.  Do zombies come in packs?  Anyway, they’re called “xe ôm’s” which literally translates to a “bike hug” (!) I’m not joking, that’s the literal translation.
So, you’ll often hear “Xe ôm, không?” over and over, asking you if you need a “bike hug”… over and over.  We walked by a big group of them (motorbike gang, if you will?) and they all asked us “Xe ôm, không?” “Xe ôm, không?” “Xe ôm, không?” (your brain shuts down at this point) “Xe ôm, không?” “Ôm, không?”
?!?!?!?!
What?  Someone just asked us if we wanted a hug. Tuan runs away. I have a deep, hearty laugh.

One of my biggest goals for Hanoi was to have my favorite dish.  Needless to say, I surpassed any expectation of fulfilling this goal and 15 minutes after getting off the bus, we were at bánh cuốn nóng stand.

They’re translated as “Rolled rice pancakes” but this doesn’t give justice to the deliciousness they secretly hold (I make it sound like I’m eating a cavern. great.).  The filling inside these cakes are made of minced pork mixed with thin-top mushrooms… and “Jew’s ears.” I had to look this one up:
(Auricularia auricula-judae is commonly known as Judas’s ear fungus or Jew’s Ear, the name from which it derives the “judae” in its scientific name, or as the jelly ear fungus. It was said that Judas hanged himself on an elder tree, which is the origin of the name.) Don’t knock it until you try it!  Here’s a crazy picture:

Auricularia Auricula Judae.

bánh cuốn nóng!

This shows how deliciously soft they are.

We walked for two hours straight, relying on Hanoi people’s shouting, I mean directions.  We finally ended up at the center lake- Hoan Kiem.  Here we saw this:

This cop came and yelled at this couple sitting far out on this tree. I caught all the action.

What a thrilling scene. Good job law enforcement.

Afterward we met up with Sarah Tran from VIA, and I wanted to venture to my favorite Hanoi park, Lenin Park.

Sarah and I squeezing in between angles

We got to the 2,000 đong “public park” (they just started charging admission for this public park, which is strange haha) only to receive some dream-crushing news.  Waterball is closed.  Forever.  If you guys remember that one amazing picture of kids playing in a plastic blow-up ball on a lake from my study abroad blog- that was Waterball.  People basically climbed into a plastic ball, then they would blow it up, seal it somehow, and then push you out on the lake to roll around (it had a string attached so you couldn’t go far.)  I’ve never felt so excited/upset in such little time (about such an absurd subject?)  It was my dream to go back there and finally “Waterball” and now I’ll forever remain waterball-less.

waterball. over.

We went downtown and got us some 3,000 dong beers from the famous tourist bia hoi intersection!  Four corners of bia hơi kegs with chairs set up like a movie theater so you can enjoy watching(/feeling) incredibly close traffic whip by you when you’ve run out of things to talk about.  Tuan didn’t have a beer, so it was just Sarah and I and mere moments after we finished our beers, the old fresh beer keg lady yelled at us “More?” We looked at each other and decided slowly (not in a rush) that we didn’t want anymore and continued on with conversation.  Literally 10 seconds later, she comes up to us, extends her arm out, and says “Six thousand!”  We kind of laughed uncomfortably, payed her and were like “Ok… I guess we should get going…”  As we got up, we heard her say in Vietnamese “…3 people, but only 2 people get beer… and they want to stay and just make conversation!”  Haha, these are the things you pick up on if you know Vietnamese.  This was a topic for many meals afterward.

Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about Hanoi people from this example… it’s just that, well, Hanoi people are rude.  hahah.  Hey, this is my blog, right?  I can write that.  I mean, people who can’t understand Vietnamese can sort of feel their pushiness, but if you can understand the language, you can generally hear and feel a certain tone that Hanoi-ans speak- very straight-forward/no-games/very unhelpful.  Who knows, maybe it’s just directed to non-Hanoi natives… or at least, the unfamiliarity of the accent’s loud, sharp, clearly-enunciated syllables definitely is a part of it- it just sounds like they’re yelling at you.  Anyway, let’s just say I had about 8 rude encounters over 2 days, and by the end of the trip, Tuân was afraid of Hanoi people and would actually go as far as avoid speaking Vietnamese with them.  I came back to a video store to return some non-working DVDs without a receipt only because the lady that worked there said I didn’t need one and could return them “easy-goingly” with a bright, bright smile— but when I got there, she sneakily tried to pull out all these rules out of her butt saying I couldn’t easily return them and I just interrupted her, stared at her coldly, and said in Vietnamese: “Maam, You really shouldn’t say that. That’s not what you said yesterday.”  …Then she got uncomfortable and let me at least exchange the movies. haha.  I love Hanoi- it’s certainly beautiful and I’m obsessed with its scenery, but sometimes it sure does get cold.

That night, Tuân went home and went to bed at 930 like a good Vietnamese citizen, and Sarah and I stayed out until 2:30. woops.  We took a motorbike to downtown and headed to the night market first.  I had my first roasted chestnuts ever in my life.  They were pretty good.  I never liked nuts, but I’m becoming more and more accepting of them.  Only nuts though…  You put a fig in there somewhere, or god forbid, a *raisin*, I will do one of them freak outs.

I was also thinking about buying one of the night market’s bountiful supply of briefs.  I’ve been toying with the idea of wearing briefs in Vietnam for a while now, because here it makes sense- when tailors paint on your… I mean, sew your pants, it’s easy to get sweaty in the pants in all of this heat, which is very uncomfortable.  Sometimes I don’t think Vietnamese guys wear anything underneath judging on how tight some pants are.  The only thing is that briefs are actually kind of expensive.  Yep.  Briefs = a luxury item.

After going to a few bars with another VIA volunteer, Benson, we walked down the quiet, empty streets of Hanoi around 2:00 a.m.  It brought back so many memories of my month living there for my study abroad program two years ago.  I always loved how all the streets were canopied with trees that had branches stretching out across the roads, and so even at night when the lampposts would turn on you’d be walking underneath outlined, intricate shadows and patterns.  As we neared the lake and were just talking about how we should find a xe ôm soon, a man synchronously woke up and shouted for us over our shoulder.  We turned around and like long-lost friends, we greeted him with enthusiasm upon discovering that he was our xe ôm from earlier in the day (Very bizarre and ironic- there’s hundreds of xe ôm drivers and we managed to run into one we knew).  We rode three people on a motorbike again, (this time asking him to drive slowly and carefully so that Sarah wouldn’t feel the need to acquaint herself with the road), asked him to find us some food (Sarah got some guava, I got a fatty Vietnamese meat-spread sandwich. good, Hy.), and as we were turning on the road to her place, what sounded like a rabid, mutant dog came running at us from behind the corner.  It was growling and got so close to us so we both gasped, which made our xe ôm driver think we dropped something so he slowed down some more… but he luckily accelerated just in time to miss the bite.  We were so close to uniting with our wolverine friend actually 10 seconds away from her place.  This was the video game segment of my trip.

So, the next morning, we woke up at 6:30, also known as my prime time.  We had some phở Hanoi (not as good as the South ), sent Tuân off to school with a bagged lunch (walked him to the bus, which was kind of cute) and then we both fell back asleep for an hour.  When we woke up, we took the bus into the city and did the following: sinh tố măng cầu (custard apple fruit shake) bánh cuốn nóng (those rolled rice-pancakes again), đậu hũ sôi (boiled tofu with sugar water- a desert),  cà phê nâu đá (which is essentially a tall, Saigon coffee), trà trân châu (bubble tea!) bánh mì (Vietnamese baguette) and bún chả.

bánh mì in front of silk.

This was my baby bún chả that I’ve been longing for… oh, the tastiest, marinated meats you’ll ever find in Hanoi.

bún chả MEAT.

It was the best end cap of a trip.  That or when Sarah asked “So, do you need some silk or something?”

Hanoi silk stores are plentiful, but it sounds insane out of context.

I almost forgot!  On the way back, I slept like a baby.  It was only until 2 a.m. that I woke up because I had to go to the bathroom.  I waited until 3 a.m. until I couldn’t hold it any longer.  So, unexcited-ly, I climbed down from my top sleeper and used my monkey agility to climb over sleeping people on the floor, without disturbing the people on the lower/top beds either.  It was a fun game: being surrounded by sleeping people and only stepping/holding on tiny edges of beds… like the lava game you used to play when you were a kid, only this time the lava wasn’t carpet.  Instead it comprised of several old, sleeping Vietnamese men with far worse consequences if you mess up than starting over from “behind the line.”  I made my way to the bathroom, and oh god. So it started. I stepped into the bathroom only to discover the whole floor was wet.  I gave the benefit of the doubt and was saying to myself, “Okay, Hy- it’s probably just water.”- but then I could smell what it was.  I didn’t even think about wearing shoes, because they made us all put them in plastic bags when we got on the bus.  So at this point, I said to myself “What the hell, can’t do anything about it anymore.  Just suck it up and go to the bathroom. You’re already here”

So, I went to the bathroom and moments later the light turned off.  I stayed calm, peeing in the dark, and standing on a mat soaked in pee.  I decided to wait until I was done before trying to turn the light back on. (The whole experience sounds like a meditation exercise.)  After literally two minutes, the light magically turned back on, but then I couldn’t open the door.  i do this a lot in my life.  By doing, I mean purposely getting trapped in bathrooms.  I’m just not that lucky with difficult doors.  But, I think I handle the reoccurring situation very well and never make it a big scene trying to shake the door open.  I usually try turning the knob/handle every single direction, but calmly and collectively, and do it quietly so that no one realizes I’m having a hard time.  If I take too long trying and think there’s someone outside waiting to use the bathroom, I flush the toilet again to buy me some more time.
After another 2 minutes, still standing on a pee-soaked mat, I got it open, gave a big sigh of relief, and quietly crept up the steps.  Just as I thought the nightmare was over, I must have leaned on something in the dark because the side automatic slide door rips open, abruptly creating the noisiest wind tunnel to the road.  And then I saw a sandal’s silhouette blow out the door.  The person sleeping on the floor closest to me woke up and in his Hue accent said some gibberish to me, probably something along the lines of “What the hell are you doing? Are you insane?” So, at first I pretended not to hear him and I just stared at the open door watching the open road go by, mouth wide open, actually shocked at what just happened.  I just lost someone’s sandal.  …And then 15 seconds later, it closed.  I said to the guy “I didn’t do that. It just happened…”, didn’t give him any eye contact, and then quickly climbed over him to my bed pretending I was just too sleepy to be concerned (but in reality, I just had the most insane experience on the bus.)  I took off my socks, threw em in a bag, cried myself to sleep, and haven’t thought about them until this moment.

Here’s Tuan playing with his metal slinky on the bus.

Paris by night strands!

everyone shoves to the buses here.

Banh cuon nong!

This shows how deliciously soft they are.

I caught this traffic cop as he was putting his cell phone away. Also, notice the filled-to-capacity bus in front of him.

traffic at 6 a.m.

Hoan Kiem Lake!

Hoan Kiem man and lamppost!

names.

Hanoi’s beauty trees.

a centered student.

This cop came and yelled at this couple sitting far out on this tree. I caught all the action.

What a thrilling scene. Good job law enforcement.

Banh mi. mmmM.

waterball. over.

Lenin park columns. lovely.

And the Vietnamese bike/skateboarding gang is still there. They waited for me, after two years.

muted crumble pie.

art students. woo

Sarah and I squeezing in between angles

I didn’t hide my body very well.

That man on the boat. art students.

the night market.

I spy a back rub.

Something is weird about this setting.

MORE BANH CUON NONG

Nice view from one of the oldest coffee shops in Hanoi.

This is too much food.

Bun Cha MEAT. We each had a bowl of this much meat. insane.

Auricularia Auricula Judae.

OH GOD, Here’s a special treat for you who have made it this far. Consider this your boon.  READ IT, IT’S AMAZING:   Vietnam might ban small-chested from driving!

~ by Hy Huynh on October 29, 2008.