Day 14. Vietnam Diary – Hanoi

Cubed blood, B-52s, WOAH that was close

Day 14. Friday 31 May 2024

I don’t know what time it is. My mobile is off, my watch is set aside for when I next need to be time-aware (Monday, for my flight) and there’s no clock in the flat. It’s approximately 11:00. This is very late for me not to have been out. I got out of bed at 05:45 and opened the balcony door. Torrential rain. I felt pleased not to have to battle with my desire to make use of the cooler, quieter morning by going out versus trying to be more go-with-the-flow and staying in bed longer, then reading or writing. I find it hard to not get out and about when on holiday.

I got up at 7-very-ish, got partially dressed (ie just a kaftan rather than what I’d wear out) and set about making myself a phin coffee for the first time. I knew the ground coffee in the flat was too fine but I did make a semblance of Vietnamese coffee, complete with condensed milk. The only food I had and fancied was one mangosteen and a very fancy Oreo chocolate cookie I bought last night for 55k vnd from a bakery with excessively fancy and fairly odd sweet and savoury pastries.

The mangosteen had gone over. It was too hard to cut into and the inside flesh was no longer brilliant white. I tried a bit. It wasn’t off but it wasn’t how it should be.

I only have my two-ish-inch pen knife and I knew it wouldn’t cut through the mango I bought yesterday. I made a cut around a third next to the stone. To my surprise, like with an avocado, I managed to twist the third off. Oh my, the mango smell. I’d normally cut into the mango flesh to make cubes, fold the skin and remove each of the cubes. It looked so soft … surely I couldn’t just spoon out the flesh. I had a moment of joy as I spooned out the entire third. It wasn’t fibrous, the skin didn’t break and the flesh came out easily – not quite like butter but pretty close. Memorable. The same with the other side. As for the middle section with the stone in its midst, I easily pulled off a ribbon of skin and scraped off the fruity flesh. I then ate off the stone, no stringy fibres and no need for dental floss. Again, to reiterate, sublime, memorable.

The coffee, less memorable, though drinkable. I had the Oreo cookie. That was amazing in an “I really shouldn’t be having something this rich or sweet for breakfast” kind of way.

I sat out on the very covered balcony to write (something else) and read. The light and relative coolness from the rain felt good, but low, hard, woven chairs don’t do it for me.

It’s stopped raining, at least for a while. I feel like I should go out. I don’t need to go out. I came here in part because I wanted to read and write somewhere different. This is the first time I haven’t gone out first thing. [I definitely seem to repeat myself more when handwriting than typing] It’s OK. I’m not being lazy. I’m not letting anyone down. I’m not even wasting time. I really need and want to allow myself not to feel a necessity to always be doing something. Or whatever it is that I feel needs “doing”.

Since I’ve been writing and editing from home, which is unpaid of course, I’ve sort of realised that my sense of – what? Worth? Purpose? Meaning? – comes from earning money. Because my writing is not (yet?) earning me an income, I seem to give it less meaning and importance when it comes to talking about it and justifying my time spent on it. I know that’s wrong; it’s massively important in terms of doing it because it’s the one thing I really, really want to do. It is important, hugely important, and trying to find an agent and writing the best book I can is my number one priority. I want to be published, I need an agent, I want to make a living from writing books. [I like to think my novel-writing is a lot more coherent and structured than this diary]

It’s really hard though, and disheartening that the biggest hurdle seems to actually be securing an agent. I have no feedback and I do not know how or what isn’t working. It’s frustrating and demoralising but I need to keep going with my submissions to agents. [Since writing, I have actually had some agent feedback and I now have a much clearer idea what I need to do next and I have renewed hope that I may even find an agent by reworking it and making a better story – all excitingly positive but a lot of work to do. I reiterate that nothing about the sloppy style of this blog, I like to think, is reflective of my fiction writing]

Throughout the writing/editing/submitting, as with being on holiday, I feel I should be doing more. Far too much more. I need to be realistic. I don’t know what standards I’m aiming for or where they’ve come from, this feeling that I ought to be busy all day.

Did I mention before that I chatted to a Kenyan lawyer in an egg coffee café in Saigon in my first week? I probably did. She asked what job I did and I told her I was a stenographer. When I explained the work, she realised and said she was a lawyer so should have known. I’d been hand writing in this book when we spoke. She said she’d thought I was a writer. I told her that’s what I was trying to be. We had a short but insightful chat. I explained that I felt I was “just writing” rather than “a writer” because nothing has been published. She argued for my being a writer for having written five novels. She had a valid point. But I still think I need some kind of validation.

As I get older, I feel increasingly burdened by guilt. From all kinds of directions. It can be suffocating. I feel guilty now for being on holiday and spending money. I barely earn anything at the moment as I’m only occasionally stenoing. Guilt. Guilt. I am spending an unexpected inheritance and savings from having worked since I left university. I feel guilty for not doing something more – more what? More worthy? But I wanted to use at least some of my inheritance to make my life better, to give me opportunities to do things I couldn’t otherwise have done. I desperately needed to stop stenoing, to try to heal my knackered hands, wrists and arms. I had also long ago checked out of stenography, mentally let alone physically. My friend Paul’s generous legacy – wrong word – has given me that opportunity. I want to see it through. I’ve actually written two novels in that time, though the most recent (the fifth overall) is the one I’m most proud of. It’s currently called Infinite Possibilities but if it is ever published, I imagine it will have a different name. I feel a need to get some kind of validation, ie to be published. But these days there’s the extra layer where you almost have to first secure an agent. At least that means you are then trying to get published with someone else’s help. But you’re still on your own trying to get it noticed and out-there as the agents are seemingly the gatekeepers to the publishing process.

So then I feel guilty about being here and not working. It pains me not to write “working” with speech marks because I don’t see it as working because it’s unpaid. Would I think the same about voluntary work?

I’m going to read a bit more, then maybe venture out. The sewage and toilets in Vietnam are not robust enough for loo paper. I have been in this flat since Monday and the bins haven’t been emptied. I did ask where refuse went but the Google Translate answer makes no sense. So I’m planning to detour to one of the few places with bins, the lake two blocks away, and chuck out my toilet paper bin and the other bin – now full of rotten fruit remains.

When I walk in Scotland or London, particularly in the remoteness of Scottish Borders where I mainly live, I talk to myself and work through a lot of issues, with writing in particular. I’ve realised I don’t here, I’m just focussed on everything around me. I did need that break from my head’s workings.

I’ve eaten the last mini doughnut (do we still spell it like that or should it be donut? Or is that just the American way? A doughnut seems so much more substantial than a donut). I really do fancy something savoury now though.

You know sometimes you want to eat but you can’t settle on anywhere so you keep going and then realise you’re really hungry and you can’t find anything or anywhere that appeals … except for that first place you looked at but dismissed as “surely something better will come along”? Today, I went into that first place and had bún bò Huế (delicious beef and rice noodle broth from Hue) and it was perfect and cheap and delicious. [I did kind of wonder why the broth in this very, very tasty dish had a reddish tinge. I wanted to make some when I got back to the UK. I will not be making it in the UK. The broth is made from a variety of beef and pork cuts and the red is from cubes of blood. But honestly, even knowing that, I would still look forward to eating it if I went to Vietnam again. Maybe I’ve ruined it for anyone reading this, but erase it from your memory and just know that you will likely only ever eat it in Vietnam, so get slurping; bún bò Huế is utterly delicious. Incidentally, bún is rice noodles, bò is beef and Huế is where the dish originates from]

I am in another surprising cà phê. It’s called Annamoi and isn’t the one I was heading for. The café I’d planned to go to looked like a chain and I could see novelty-coffee signs. This one is a surprise, like many others, because I thought it was small. It isn’t. The till is on the first floor. It’s huge. The Het (surely that means “hot”) coffee menu wasn’t non-Vietnamese-friendly so I did a Google Translate photo. Fortunately, that meant I didn’t order salt coffee. I have instead ordered what I hope is hot Vietnamese phin coffee with condensed milk. The menu did not suggest that’s what I’ve ordered as Dong Ba is also Dong Ba in English. Apparently. Hmm.

I’m very near the railway line, the other side of Hanoi station this time, and beyond that is a long street called P. Kham Thien. It’s a long street and, before the August Revolution, it was a famous entertainment area. On 17 June 1929 at number 312, a group of 21 people discussed and founded the Indochina Communist Party, a precursor to the Vietnamese Communist Party.

However, on 26 December 1972, hundreds of people and homes were destroyed by B52 bombings.

Six days previously, there had been news that the US was planning to resume air raids on Hanoi and a few other parts of north Vietnam. The streets became deserted and shelters and fortifications were made. As Christmas approached and the Vietnamese had heard the Americans would stop bombing so they could celebrate Christmas, and, as the big lunar new year celebrations in Vietnam were less than a month away, people returned home. What little I’ve read and photos I’ve seen, it was devastation and carnage. Generations of families were killed.

I have no idea of the accuracy as I’ve only read a few different online sources, but for twelve days and nights, US planes dropped more than 20,000 tonnes of bombs onto Hanoi, Hai Phong and other localities. On the night of 26 December 1972, 9,932 bombs were dropped. Nearly 2,000 houses were demolished on P. Kham Thien, 283 people were killed.

I did learn quite a lot about the Vietnam War for my American Studies degree at university but I have very limited recollection. In Scotland, I live near Lockerbie. Whenever I mention Lockerbie, people almost always make reference to the terrorist plane crash tragedy. I feel sad that Vietnam has always been closely connected to “war”. It ended 49 years ago. However, I like that, although I have visited a few war sites/museums here, Vietnam is about so much more.

It turns out that “Het” doesn’t mean hot. But I did have a very nice iced coffee with possibly condensed milk. Either way, it was very nice. I don’t think I’ll get a hot coffee out today.

I find myself sitting outdoors with a tasty passionfruit juice, mere inches from a railway track, the middle of which is largely covered with pieces of wood, some covered with fake grass or carpet, and old doors. Apparently, a train is due in 15 minutes. I wasn’t convinced, but now big gates just outside Hanoi station have been opened. Tables are still in the middle of the tracks. I suppose there will be bells and warnings. I’m at the P. Kham Thien junction, so the other side of Hanoi station to my previous train viewing. There’s a very different vibe this side. I much preferred the other side. The other side seems to have embraced the money-making element more than this side.  A lot more buildings here are still three or four-storey homes rather than homes with cafes and businesses at the front. There are some persistent and elderly female touts down here. I went to the supermarket nearby – call to arms, shouts, goings on, tables being moved at great speed …

Bloody hell. The train along this stretch was OMG A LOT closer than (A) I expected or (B) the last place. The train was mere centimetres away. And (C) faster than I expected. I read somewhere that prior to 2017 there weren’t any cafes in these train alleys. A lot of people who lived along the tracks worked for the Vietnamese railway. Then in 2017 tourism went crazy and people started going there and residents realised they could make money. Impressive entrepreneurship. Apparently, the area is sometimes closed for tourists because someone does something idiotic. It sounds like if there are more incidents, the walkways will be closed to non-residents. I’m really glad I visited (for three trains. Each experience different – the trains in the other direction were taller and slower). I suspect it will close one day.

I had no idea that last train would be so unbelievably close and fast. Very exciting. A man sitting opposite whooped when it had passed, a real “bloody hell, that was exciting” kind of whoop.