Hanoi to Bangkok...and then some: Evan's Adventures in Southeast Asia: Home Sweet Home

Monday, September 22, 2008

Home Sweet Home

Early morning of my third day in Hanoi and I seem to be stabililizing - jet lag really bit me this time around. I managed to stay awake until 8:00 last night and slept right up until 4:45am! After a full day exploring the city in this oppressive heat and humidity, it's not hard to call it an early night, take a cold shower, and crash under the leaky a/c unit and ceiling fan. In the interest of finances, I've also got an interior room (which is just as well since it muffles the traffic noise) so unless the desk clerks outside my door are puttering, I can't tell what time it is anyway. 8:00, midnight, it's all the same to me. While I am enjoying my stay at the Bodega Hotel (high moldy ceilings and a ceiling fan that creaks and whomps like the rotor blades of a Huey - picture Martin Sheen flipping out in Saigon), I can't help but wonder what the well-heeled folks over at the Metropole - an old-school French colonial palace and one-time temporary home of Viet-sympathizer Jane Fonda - are doing right now. Probably being fed croissants and champagne under rattan fans by beautiful Vietnamese girls in French maid outfits....or something similar. My first trip to Hanoi was with - and financed by - my father. We called the Metropole home for a few days. Ahhh...those were the days.

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SIGHT OF THE DAY

A lovely little roadside restaurant in central Laos had the following items on their very tattered menu: Food Frying With Fodder (choices included Food Frying With Chicken and Food Frying With Muntjak Deer (whatever that might be). There was Food To Hit (dishes such as Hiting Melon, Hiting Papaya, or just plain Hiting). You could also choose from Fish Sour Soup - Half Cooked, Fish - Half Cooked (semi-sushi?), Fried Meat Pork, Tom Yam Cuttle Soup, Fragrant Chicken (smells like chicken!), Fragrant Pork, Roasting Muntjak Deer (aha! it's deer), Roasting Wild Pork, Steming Potato, and last but not least, Mixed Cuttle Fish Salad. Mmmmmm.....I went with plain old Food Frying With Chicken
Roadside billboards around Cambodia imploring people to turn in their machine guns and hand grenades to the local authorities
Mole hair. Grown to incredible lengths and obviously groomed with care. I just don't get it.
Cambodian Independence Day falls on November 9th - still a few days away, but in the town square across from the internet cafe, hundreds of parade participants are out practicing their manuevers for the big day. There are they typical contigents of flag wavers, soldiers, and community groups carrying banners like you might find in any American city come the Fourth of July. In addition to regular marchers, there is also a column of probably 50 or 60 men wearing identical blue kevlar-laced outfits with minesweepers over their shoulders. They are being followed up by a dozen mine-sniffing German Shepards and their handlers. It says alot when your country recognizes the (on-going) work of its minesweepers on Independence Day.
Ok, this time it was me. When I left my room last night to head out for dinner, I intentionally left the windows open in an attempt to cool the place down. Unfortunately, I also left a light on which lured hundreds (thousands?) of little fruit fly bugs into my bedroom. When I got back the walls and my bed were crawling with them. Nothing to do but sweep them away and attempt to sleep - yeah, right. They instantly began to crawl all over my sweaty body - not biting, just bugging the hell out of me. In frustration I groped around in the dark for my bug repellant. In the half-light of the room I aimed the bottle and sprayed....directly into my right eye. It couldn't have been a better shot. I stumbled out of bed and spent the next 20 minutes under a running shower (as per the poison control directions) before returning to bed with the bugs.
As the rains continue to fall, all the foreigners in town inevitably buy up the local ponchos at inflated prices (mine was a steal when I bought it on a sunny afternoon in Hanoi!).The ponchos are all designed to be worn while riding a motorscooter - ie, you throw the front flap over the handlebars of your bike to keep your lap dry. In order to prevent the poncho from obscuring the bike's headlight, they all have a stitched in square of clear plastic that settles over the headlight. However, if you're not riding a scooter, the clear patch happens to fall right over the goods of the person wearing it.Picture dozens of tourists walking the rainy streets in their lollypop-colored ponchos...with their crotches properly protected and proudly exposed.
Vendors in Hoi An - particularly those promoting their tailor shops - have developed an efficient tactic for stalking their prey - me. Women (so far it's always been women) prowl the streets on motorbikes and pull along side of you, whether you're walking or riding your own bike, engage you in a little small talk and then make their pitch. It threw me for a bit of a loop the first time it happened at 30km per hour. They've all been nice enough and eventually throttle down when they realize that I'm REALLY not interested in a silk suit. Once they spot another potential target they zoom off in a cloud of dust and exhaust.
Lining a stretch of sidewalk near the Perfume River in Hue, several men assemble their outdoor pet shops early each morning. Wheeling impossibly huge fish tanks into position over broken concrete, hanging birdcages and their chirping occupants from nearby tree branches, and securely leashing a few small puppies and the occasional kitten to the nearby lightposts: Open for Business!
Among the hill tribes (montagnards) of Vietnam, many of the women sport a bee-hive hairdo that would put any Colorado City polygamist to shame. Vietnamese law requires that everyone riding on a motorbike must wear a helmet. Add the two together and you get a woman wearing a helmet that is fully 9 inches off her head. Hey, at least the doo is safe!
Most of the major (and sem-major) towns that I've been to have a large radio tower built on the highest chunk of land in the neighborhood - not unusual in itself, except that they're all replicas of the Eiffel Tower.
Riding a rickety Chinese-made bike in downtown Hanoi, deafened by blaring horns, choking on exhaust, surrounded by motorscooters, taxis, lorries, and buses, I suddenly pull into line behind another bicycle, the sight of which instantly calms me. I can't see the other rider because the load strapped to the back of his bike is several feet taller than he or she is. It's a lattice-type frame on which hangs dozens (maybe hundreds) of clear plastic bags filled with water and GOLDFISH of all sizes. So there we are at a stop light, chaos all around, and three feet in front of me are hundreds of beautiful goldfish just hanging out in their snow-globes, probably wondering what the hell was going on. It made my afternoon.
A line of matching bicycle rickshaws, stretching for over a city block, inching slowly through the downtown traffic mayhem of Hanoi, each carrying a sweaty, bloated, pale-skinned foreigner wearing identical white country-club outfits. Ahhh....just like the good ol' colonial days!