Hanoi 2nd Weekend

I love it here.

It is without a doubt the most mind-blowing geographic, cultural, whatever experience I have ever had in my life.

I thought I'd have more time to write, but the reality is that by the time I get back into the room for good at night, I'm saturated and exhausted, and I have a lot of trouble finding words.

It could take me years to tell the story, so it's a good thing that I've taken approximately 1,000 photos, no exaggeration. I've had major camera trouble, technical difficulties, if you will, so it's a good thing I brought my two alternate point and shoots. I am so irritated with myself for not bringing my film camera. I could have shot so many rolls of black and white film, and I love the lens on my little old Canon Rebel. Ah well. I'm going to go today to the lake district, where there are approximately 25 camera stores, all of them selling a wacked out hodgepodge of camera equipment. There's a lens I saw that I thought was overpriced but it turns out it's really not, so hopefully I can get some decent shots with that for the rest of the time here.

In one of the more surreal moments of my trip, yesterday walking back from the "Maison Centrale", which was the nicey nice colonial French name for what we call the Hanoi Hilton (John McCain's flight suit and everything there, yo)....

AND NOW I HAVE MEMORY LOSS. I got interrupted while writing that paragraph above and I have no memory of what I was going to indicate as a surreal moment of my trip. How insane is that?

 

Ah, I remember. I stopped into what can only be described for our purposes as a Vietnamese version of Best Buy, named Kim Nguyen. Nguyen was a dynasty and everyone's name here, so it seems. I guess they could all conceivably trace themselves back there, I don't know. In any event, I was the only American in the store. It was two stories of remixed techno music (80s, naturally), security guards, hostesses in the long Vietnamese dresses that resemble kimono but aren't, not quite. They didn't have a lens, of course, but it was the most riveting display of electronic mayhem that I've ever seen in my life. My video of it is really bad, because security was actually keeping a pretty good eye out, even outside, where they were managing a ten-car parking lot - unheard of here, to have parking spaces.

I have had so many of these incredible experiences already. Some of them lasted 30 seconds and some a few hours, hard to always say. The trip to Ha Long Bay was not wonderful, strictly because I was still so sick. Staying in a clearly communist block hotel room was quite odd, I have to say. Very militant, and a pushy desk clerk demanding my passport. There are very few reminders of where you are politically unless you try to engage in a more formal transaction like that, or see some of the imagery on the signs hanging in city squares and whatnot.

I was one of two students who got to visit Hanoi National University the other day to address a room full of first- and second-year journalism students. That was just phenomenal. I loved every second of it. The undergrad girl who went and I thought that we were just along for the ride, but it turned out to involve a room full of university students with cameras who smiled nonstop and clapped every time we opened our mouths.

"Blog, blog, you have blog? What is your url?" They were hovered around us in clusters. A reporter from the local tv station was there. They gave us  monstrous bouquets of flowers. It was amazing. And in the city, there are approximately ten young women who have my e-mail address so they can ask me about the US and how we study journalism. None of them have written so far but I hope they do.

The pollution here is unbearable. Everybody smokes, it seems. They smoke while you're eating, they don't care. The boy who makes breakfast downstairs smokes after he drops off your plate (toast, just toast thanks.) The endless motorbikes spew exhaust. I've learned to just step into traffic. The family joke of my childhood of "Laurie Anne, why don't you go play in the traffic?" when I was bad or just minding my own business and someone thought they were a totally funny comedian is actually coming true.

I saw a crate of dogs in front of a restaurant on the way to HaLong Bay. The special, I believe. That made me cry. Plenty of people keep dogs as pets, though. They hang out on the concrete in front of storefronts and shacks. Chihuahuas, oddly. The Vietnamese mutt is about 35 pounds, a terrier sort of dog, with really small ears and a compact body.

People do everything on the street here. They clip their toenails. Eat dinner. Get their hair cut. Sell endless pineapples. Talk shit. Wash nuts and skin fish. It's a totally street-based culture. It's so interesting to watch. I should be nicer about taking photos with permission I guess, but I've gotten obsessed with street shooting since I've been here. Some of my favorite shots ONCE I CAN GET THEM DOWNLOADED (filled up the hard drive, eek...) are blurred and off-center, a conical hat and flowy pants, a bicycle with rusted chains and a basket full of flowers. The beautiful and the filthy co-exist oddly comfortably here.

The streets are devoted to particular kinds of goods, like mini-garment/diamond/gold/meatpacking districts in NYC, although the goods are much more specific. There's baby street, with diapers and clothes for kids, fake flower street, Chinese lantern street, (I think - everything is red and gold and hangs from your ceiling or your wall) wine street, you name it there's a street for it. Oh, and shoe street. Thousands and thousands of sandals and track shoes and boots and stiletto heels.

"Madame, you buy? Motorbike one hour! Madame, madame, madame."

I got caught in a crush of people in the rush hour yesterday, guys hawking books out of boxes (always the same ten volumes or so, Lonely Planet guides and fiction and nonfiction about the American War), a roasted corn vendor, endless motorbikes and carts that carry fat Western tourists. And I thought I was going to explode for a second. The sound and the color and the crush were just too much. It was the first day I'd really walked through the city on my own, which is unusual for me. I'm not used to this many people in my group, and I can't say it's my favorite way to travel. But I made it through to the next corner, shaking my head and saying "No thank you, no, no taxi, just walk, no, no no, no thank you," and somehow there I was in front of my hotel.

These are the moments that are hard to explain that I know I'll never forget.

The people are beautiful here. My pictures aren't really capturing what I see in the faces and the eyes. So many Vietnamese have told me, smiling, that the war is over, that the American view of them isn't correct as they understand it, that they forgive and forget and move on. That they are a culture who looks to the future. Collectively, I see this, and in so many individual faces and words both translated and in halting English I hear it. I don't think we understand how it is that we go out into the world thinking ours is the big picture, oftentimes. It's so not. I had no idea before I came here and I have scarcely more than that now. It makes me feel better to have tried, though.

Sitting in a coffee shop yesterday using a wifi station, I spotted a couple from the US or Australia or somewhere white people live. They were each holding a baby. It took me a minute to realize that they were Vietnamese twins, and they likely adopted them. It was a pretty powerful thing to see. Gave me hope.

Last night we had a traditional dinner at our translator's house. I loved it. I feel so strange being in the linguistic minority. It's hard for me, because I'm usually so face and foot-first into conversations that it's quite frustrating not to pick up on either the context or the specifics of a conversation. It drives me kind of crazy. But it's also good because it teaches me to sit there and absorb, pay attention to my surroundings and know that I don't need to know everything.

You know, except when the man sitting across from me noticed my roots growing out - I know he did - and asked Hoang what was wrong with my hair, that it was different colors. That I made him translate. I had an appointment to get my hair done before I left, and it just so happened that when I was in the middle of dealing with my dog's second-to-last emergency vet visit

By the way, as far as that goes, wow is it hard to feel sad about something that's happened 10,000 miles away. It's not as easy to detach from it as one might think. It's really easy to get distracted by the mad rush of activity I'm in the middle of, but the thing is that when I get in the shower, that seems to be a trigger for tears. Weird.

Today I have to go back out on the highway again, and Lord give me strength because I really don't want to. I'm trying to stay upbeat about the work and I feel good about the information I've got, but it seems that more is needed.

There are two more days to fill, and really the one thing I can safely say is that is absolutely no problem at all.

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