BH1 Classic: Bring Tha' Hanoize i: The Serioiusly Jetlagged Installment

As promised, I'm digging the old Bring Tha' Hanoize (BTHz) travelogues out of the gmail and publishing them here. Enjoy. Or don't.

From: Brian Howard [wewerepatriots@earthlink.net]
Sent: Jul 27, 2004 9:54 PM
To: Subject: Bring tha' Hanoize No. 1, The seriously jetlagged edition.


Hey everyone,
Just a quick note to let y'all know that I'm in freaking Hanoi.

Still adjusting to the local time (which means that I was wide awake at 3 am and will likely be crashing at, oh, 5 pm).

The defining characteristic of this place thusfar is the heat. christ on a popsicle stick, is it hot here. I'm writing to you at 8:30 a.m. in a shirt that's soaked through with sweat (my own). I'm kind of learning my way around the city at present, and have already had tens of friendly interactions with motorbike drivers offering to take me anywhere I'd like to go. I've declined thusfar, preferring to hoof it.

I hope within a couple of days to work up the gumption to rent a bicycle and brave the chaotic byways of downtown Hanoi. The traffic in Hanoi is unworldly. There are very few cars, just a sort of constant peloton of motorbikes and bicycles swerving, bobbing and weaving through the streets. And yet, I've not seen even the slightest hint of a smack-up. Traffic moves both ways on pretty much all streets, with ill-defined lanes. But it moves pretty slowly in anticipation other motorists, pedestrians (the sidewalks are predominantly unpassable on foot, blocked as they are by, natch, parked motorbikes), and women and men toting their wares on long sticks they balance across their shoulders.

I had my first bowl of honest-to-goodness vietnamese pho (noodle soup), and was summarily underwhelmed. The bowl I had was chicken pho (pho ga) that — Kate and I both agreed — was sorta bland. Kate says she's yet to have a bowl of pho that's knocked her off her keister (though she also admits she doesn't exactly love the stuff back home). We ate the pho for breakfast in this little hole-in-the-wall eatery where we perched on tiny little plastic stools that were barely a foot off the ground at a table that was maybe a foot and a half off the ground. I'm no towering specimen, but even I felt a bit like Tom Selleck's Jack Elliot in that quintessential West-meets-East folly Mr. Baseball. While the pho has been something of a letdown, the coffee here has not disappointed. Thick, dark, and sickly sweet, it is presently powering me through this maiden installment of BTHz.

It's also taken a bit to get used to the whole currency thing here. One US dollar equals approximately 15,000 Vietnamese dung/duong. So you start getting into pretty big numbers quickly, even for a relatively inexpensive meal. I paid 90,000VND, for instance, for dinner for Kate and I last night. At first, I was like "holy shit, 90,000!" until i realized how little that actually was. (Like six bucks. For dinner. For two).

Anyway, I'd best wrap this up as it's approaching 9 and I've got travel agencies to visit. Kate and I are planning on heading to Halong Bay for the weekend, which means beach action [editor's note: I was wrong about the beach action]. (I'll be keeping my eye out for Dana Delaney, though I'm pretty sure I'm in the wrong half of the country for China Beach references to make any sense at all.)

Till next time, people.