Day 12. Vietnam Diary – Hanoi

Train street, spring rolls, encounter with a very official official

Day 12. Wednesday 29 May 2024

I wrote today’s date, then was told to move my chair back so the passing train wouldn’t be too close. Not a request I’ve ever had before. I had come to a café in this area to see a train. But then I discovered the timetable I’d seen was different and no trains are due on a weekday until this evening. I ate my breakfast of vegetable spring rolls (crispy, crunchy, slightly oily fingers of deliciousness) and Vietnamese coffee, asked for my bill and was told to wait ten minutes for the (08:49) train. Oh my. Then I actually felt excited. After it went past, I wanted to see it again. It was a very cool, very surreal experience. I also had no idea the driver cabins were so high up. These trains are significantly taller than UK trains. [Why did I seemingly bypass the really cool and exciting bit where the train whizzed past and I was shocked how fast and close it was and how easy it was to pinpoint where the toilets were in each carriage by the, ahem, smell?! Or how incredibly James Bond it made me feel standing so close to a fairly fast-moving train. The video I took is at the end and I think it does reflect that it was an exciting experience.]

As I was leaving, the owner told me there was another train due at 09:20. So I walked up the track and decided to stay for the next train, this time sitting on a 1^st floor deck with a truly superb yoghurt drink, which tasted of ice cream) with avocado and mango. It’s 85k vnd at Ga Dong Duong. It is cooling, delicious mango and avocado perfection.

It’s 09:18 and I’m alert for the 09:20 train. I was amazed how punctual the 08:49 was, particularly as it was within half a mile of its destination.

It’s now 10:20. I’m very hot. Guess where I am? Another café! I’m awaiting a V60 hot coffee. As usual, most people here are on laptops or with their heads in textbooks.

I had the genius idea of freezing a bottle of water, which I carried with me from frozen. For one daft minute, I regretted it, thinking I’d never get to drink it. Hahahahaha, not only was the ice enormously refreshing, the melt-water was bliss and it all melted before I got back from my walk.

I set off at 05:40 today. I know, impressive, at least for me. It was still hot and humid but a lot easier. I walked alongside Lenin Park shortly after 06:00. It was a joy to see so many people out and about, exercising and/or chatting. There was cheesy pop music blaring out and a load of couples dancing. People were doing meditative movement – tai chi? – lots of badminton doubles, jogging, sitting around and chatting. It was busy, lively and happy. A real pleasure to see. I walked past later, maybe 09:40. The park was empty.

After my double train experience (for the second one, I missed it coming into sight as I was looking the wrong way, doh), I walked back a couple of roads to a food market street I’d spotted on my way to the railway cafes. I loved, loved, loved walking down there. I’d wanted ingredients for a salad in my apartment. I bought a peeled pineapple (oh the joy of sweet-smelling pineapple), a green-skinned orange, three plums and a long, thin avocado. The woman serving helped me squeeze the avocadoes until I found a today-perfect one. I think that all came to 50k vnd (it might have been 45k). I then went to another stall and bought two different kinds of lettuce, a large tomato (felt so much less “Planet Thanet”/industrial-greenhouses for being muddy), two small cucumbers and that was – was that 45k vnd? Roughly. Then I bought a mango which smelled of mango and which was selected with squeezing-help from another trader. With permission, I took a photo of her and the man I bought the lettuces from. Such beautiful, welcoming, friendly people. I love moments like that, connections with people despite no shared language.

I used to live in Blackheath, SE London, near an overpriced greengrocer. The greengrocer is still there but I have no idea if the same people run it or if the no-touch policy still applies, but it always annoyed me how strict they were about customers not picking up their own produce, having to wait instead for the staff to select what you wanted. I know it can damage soft fruit and veg if people squeeze them, but how else can you determine if something is of the ripeness or quality you hope for? I also didn’t appreciate being chastised in a shop for picking up something I might want to buy if by picking it up I could ascertain whether it was ripe for my requirements.

I wasn’t brave enough, if “brave” is the right word, to buy meat or fish from the traders.

I’ve had about one litre of water, one phin coffee, this pour-over, a large yoghurt/fruit drink and I appear to have just reached the point of having drunk more than I’ve sweated out, ie I need the loo for the first time.

I took so many photos that the “battery exhausted” on my camera just before the train came for the second time (arriving from behind me). Every night I have been charging my camera battery. Last night was the first time I didn’t bother. Lesson learned.

Watching the train from above was a slightly different kind of excitement to that experienced as the train rattled along at arm’s length from me at track level. I couldn’t stop thinking how “easy” it would be to jump onto the top of the moving train to channel my inner 007.

My plan after this is to go back to my nearby apartment and stay there until about 17:00 ish, going out for early dinner while it’s still light but getting less hot. Sort of less hot. If it rains, there are some food stalls very close to my accommodation.

I keep seeing scooter surprises, almost none of which I have photos of. I’ve seen about twenty plastic chairs stacked up, miraculously staying upright. I’ve seen one woman with a toddler just about able to stand in the footwell, hands up around the centre of the handlebar, a slightly bigger child perched on the edge of her seat, and a slightly bigger child on the back. I’ve seen one woman with three dogs. I was behind a man who had a very young baby strapped facing his chest and asleep with the child’s head on his shoulder – bad English, it was thankfully the child who was asleep. I’ve seen what I took to be the mum and dad with a just-old-enough-to-stand young child sandwiched, standing, between them. I saw, and heard, a man somehow carrying a stack of steel poles at least four metres long (I’m not exaggerating). I have no idea how the moped didn’t topple over as they were hanging from one side only. When they rocked and weren’t completely parallel with the road, the ends would scrape along the road. The potential accidents are far-reaching. And there I was worried about not finding a taxi at 04:30 one morning.

I have walked miles today. It was cloudy for quite a while, which made it a lot easier. But for the last hour or so, since leaving the second train café, I got too hot.

I’ve had no more funny turns since the Hue day. My rash has almost gone.

Time passes in strange ways when you’re away from home. I’m heading home on Monday night. Seven nights here seemed a long time but I only have five nights left. If I’m up and alert soon after sunrise again, I’ll go out. There were quite a lot of food and coffee places open this morning. The comparative “coolness” was welcome. My end destination was about an hour or more to walk, Chùa Trấn Quốc, Hanoi’s oldest Buddhist temple, located on a small island with a distinctive pagoda. It quite often features as the one picture of “Hanoi”.

I knew the temple wouldn’t be open when I got there (07:30 opening time) but I was fine with that, I just wanted to see it and I had read that it gets busy, which I wasn’t in the mood for, and you also have to pay, which I object to for religious buildings. The temple was open when I arrived at 07:15, just for a few people who struck me as being regulars, and no tickets required. I had a genuinely blissful ten minutes wandering around this oasis of calm. Such a beautiful place with an amazing feel – probably more so for there being almost no one else around and it being so early.

En route, I saw a selection of huge and impressive government buildings and the very bright and cheery yellow Presidential Palace. And Ho Chi Minh’s enormous mausoleum. There were a lot of people around the mausoleum and park in front.

I’m never sure about taking photos of government buildings. The palace clearly displayed “no photo” signs. I took a few photos of the government building opposite the mausoleum, impressive architecture. There were of course uniformed guards around the building.

I had had to resort to using my fabric hat as a sweat-dabber, having last night washed all my sweat cloths (I’d hung them in the rooftop, covered drying area out of sight of my apartment). As I finished taking a photo, I carried on and noticed a guard walking towards me. I realised he was probably going to ask me (in Vietnamese) to delete my photos. He walked straight past me. A few seconds later, as I was continuing to walk, I noticed my sweat-dabber-hat was no longer in my hand. I turned back to retrace my steps and saw the guard bending down to pick up my hat and start walking towards me. He never spoke. We walked towards each other again and he handed me back my hat. I was touched. I don’t know how he’d have got it back to me had I not turned round. Kind man. It’s probably good he didn’t know it had been used as a sweat-dabber rather than a hat.

Time to go back “home”.

It’s good to be in a gently air-conditioned room. There’s no direct sunlight in this flat, indeed only one window. That is a good thing, obviously, in this kind of climate but I do feel disappointed to need to turn on a light whatever the time of day. I have a balcony with no view (back of ramshackle, low-rise, stacked-up towers like this) but I like that there’s outdoor space, to walk into and appreciate how much easier it is in the cool indoors.

I’m already getting the odd niggle about a return to normality. But I’m not home until Tuesday so it’s premature for thoughts like that.

I am enjoying exploring and getting to know tiny areas of a country unfamiliar to me. I definitely feel like I’m having a break and a pause from the things I worry about when I’m at home. I like that every day is an adventure, even just going for a walk. I’m enjoying not doing any chores. I like cooking but it’s also really enjoyable not doing any cooking. I haven’t really been eating three meals a day here and it’s good to eat when I see something of interest rather than just because I notice it’s, say, lunch time. That said, I’m lacking enthusiasm to go looking for dinner tonight.

When I planned where to go this morning (last night), I did my usual thing of trying to see how much I could fit in. It never feels like enough to “just” go out to a pagoda. I still haven’t just let myself wander aimlessly without a purpose or destination. Agh, I just wrote that then thought I could look on Google Maps for somewhere to head for dinner … I’ve stopped WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, which has been great. But I’ve checked email at least once a day, which is fine. But Google Maps is what I’ve mainly used on my mobile.

Gah, I’ve just had a few absentminded picks at my manicured fingers. I’m going to sit on the balcony, cut my nails even shorter and use the buffer sponge I brought with me. Every now and then, having short, shiny nails prevents me from picking and chewing my cuticles. It’s a dreadful habit.

It’s now later. I have three new pens and another notebook. My handwriting is with different colour pens. This is a new green-black pen. Nice. I have become even more pen obsessed than usual out here.

I had a glorious 17k (60p) coconut ice cream for pudding this evening. Oh my. So darn good. Even the thin, crunchy cone was good.

Dinner was a bit of a miss. I ordered bánh xèo from a Da Nang restaurant. I got confused when I was presented with a massive bowl of at least six different leaves, a pot of rice paper, a fish sauce dip and a probably-peanut dip. Then the bánh xèo. It was a beef and prawn dish. It was very oily, I think how it should be (the second and third ones I have eaten, in Hue and Hanoi, were also oily). It was the Saigon ones I really enjoyed. I’m kind of done with them now. There’s a nothing-taste to them. I had no idea what to do with 16 rice papers, how much – oh, there were pineapple and cucumber sticks too – to put in or how to eat it. The lime juice I ordered, however, was lovely, with sugar syrup (at a guess).

Prior to that, I’d gone to the pen shop, which was upstairs from a gorgeous, largely-English-language bookshop. I went up the narrow stairwell and seemingly into someone’s living room. A glass door off that room led to a sort of shop selling mainly Japanese pens and stickers. All a bit surreal as a man was sitting in the living room looking very much like he was working from home.

My plan tomorrow is the market, which is open 06:00 to 18:00, to stop in at a hair salon to see if I can book a cut (!), a long-standing traditional coffee shop and the post office. I’m not sure what to do about the storms that are forecast.

I actually have an appointment with my hairdresser in London a week today, but I found this salon online and figured it might be fun. It doesn’t take that long to grow hair out … I just want another relaxing Vietnamese-style hair wash.