Belated acknowledgements (and some apologies)

Looking back, the first 7-8 months of life in Hanoi weren't really smooth sailing, so here's some belated thank-yous to everyone who indirectly persuaded me to stick around for a bit.

Photo of Hoàn Kiếm Lake by Đỗ Huân

“I felt it was for this I had come […] to look out on a world for which I had no words, to start at the beginning, speechless and without plan, in a place that still had no memories for me.”

‘As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning’ by Laurie Lee

Hanoi, November 19, 1999 to July 19, 2000AD, or thereabouts.

Thanks to the shifty hotelier in the Old Quarter, who cashed my last couple of traveller’s cheques when banks wouldn’t. Sorry that me and Al didn’t trust you enough to stay in your hotel a second night. You did us a solid and then we checked out, even when you offered (with clear desperation) a reduced rate. As me and Al climbed into a xich lo and (very slowly) made our getaway, I made the mistake of looking back to see you deliver a look of absolute disconsolation that would have made Peter Lorrie proud. But here is your consolation! After 24 years, you have not been forgotten (mainly because you really were pretty shifty).

Thanks to the three floppy-haired young chaps – two of whom looked like they were eligible for under 13s football – working at the one-star Dong Xuan Hotel in late November, 1999. Each morning you served us a breakfast of banh mi with Laughing Cow cheese triangles, one yoghurt and a couple of bananas; in the evening you took breaks from listening to Vina Pop downstairs to fetch us bottles of Chinese beer with a disconcertingly metallic aftertaste. Honestly, for the first week or so, we weren’t quite ‘feeling at home’ as we tiptoed through the odour-whelming wet market on Thanh Ha Street (yes, I may have used the word ‘mediaeval’ to describe the scenes outside our window; not sure who to apologise to for that…) and into the Old Quarter beyond, but yiz did your bit to ease us into the mix.    

Thanks to Lien, the Carlsberg promotion girl working in an empty Jazz Bar on Luong Van Can Street for assuring us – when we were starting to suspect that we’d moved to town with zero nightlife – that sometimes there were other customers and, on occasion, even a jazz band. As a result we decided not to panic and give Hanoi another couple of weeks. If Carlsberg made tentative, life-altering decisions, they’d probably work out for the best…   

Thanks to the ever-upbeat chi Minh for welcoming us at her bia hoi, which in those days was just a bare-bones, grubby ground floor beer-joint on Dinh Liet Street. You took a shine to every dusty traveller-turned-temporary resident (no matter how badly dressed they were). I suspect more than a few folk might not have stuck around Hanoi, if it weren’t for the friends they made at your place and that’s thanks to the ‘ấm cúng’ atmosphere you generated. You handed a social life to us on a plate. But sorry about the time our combustible pal B. didn’t realise the wet towels and peanuts weren’t complimentary and threw a hissy fit thinking he was being fleeced (for about two and half dollars worth of Vietnamese dong). It was his birthday party. And he made you cry. 

Thanks to M.T. for giving me a job as a teacher even though I had zero experience. I only got the gig because another teacher had crashed his scooter (and broken his leg) the night before I called the school to see if they needed teachers (one man’s misery is another man’s fortune and all that). Thanks to any experienced colleague who explained English grammar rules to me very slowly and clearly like I was one of their slower students (which I kinda was) and the Scottish guy who told me (helpfully) that a polka dot tie on a striped shirt made me “look like a fucking optical illusion”. 

Thanks to the real estate agent for giving me a glimpse of a car-riddled future by taking us in an SUV around town to tour various strangely furnished houses. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to feeling like a foreign diplomat or World Bank executive in a developing country. You probably don’t remember this, but from the options you presented, me and Al selected 79 Mã Mây. I spent the next six months stubbornly mangling the pronunciation when trying to communicate with xe om (moto-taxi). Hey, 16% of the time, it worked every time. Al more sensibly wrote our address in felt tip pen on the back of his school bag, so he would just give the xe om a twirl and point, as if to say: “Who’s got two thumbs, doesn’t speak a lick of Vietnamese, and lives at 79 Mã Mây? That’s right – this guy!”

Apologies to the landlords of 79 Ma May, who lived on the ground floor. But, I mean, in our defence, how were you to know we’d be spilling in the door at random hours through the night (night after night), riding the scooter into the shared hallway, just to maximise the noise? We’d especially like to apologise to the man of the house for calling you ‘Mr Miyagi’ behind your back (in fairness, with the scraggly beard, you were a dead ringer for him, but yeah, pretty racialist I suppose). We’d also like to apologise for being the most inauspicious of tenants and having no money during Tet in 2000 AD and, thus, I assume, ruining the ‘Year of the Metal Dragon’ in one fell swoop, simply by walking in the front door on ‘Mùng 1’ (New Year’s Day) looking broke and, in terms of cross-cultural awareness, utterly ignorant. You probably couldn’t believe your (bad) luck…

Thanks to F. + T. at Le Maquis bar for allowing me and Al to eat and drink on credit when we were broke. I wish I’d kept our accumulated bill when it was finally presented to us: 72 Croque Madame? 45 ham and cheese baguettes ? 232 bottles of Halida? Just enough to pull two (very) thirsty and hungry Irishmen through …

Apologies to the roaming chewing gum and postcard seller Thu Anh for the time me and Al were unable to buy some chewing gum, as we normally would have done. It was just after Tet and we were so broke that (I kid you not) we were actually sharing a plate of fried rice and a single glass of bia hoi by St Joseph’s Church on a misty and melancholic winter’s evening that might have felt poetic if we had set some money aside to survive Tet (we had no clue the city would close down for two weeks) – and/or if we just had a stereo (to be continued). But thanks for sticking around to cheer us up. I can still picture you skipping towards us on Nha Tho Street. A beanie on your head. A grin stretching from one ear to the other. Delighted to see your two favourite Irishmen (possibly the only two in town). We have never forgotten that moment and we wonder where you are now (feel free to add us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Threads or BlueSky. Anything but Twitter).  

Thanks to the young local entrepreneurs, who copied every album ever recorded and sold them in shops on Bao Khanh Street. It’s too bad some of history’s most famous albums didn’t fit onto the compact discs but maybe, for just one example, the White Album could, and should, have been three songs shorter? (I vote for Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Don't Pass Me By and Revolution 9 to be snipped). But seriously, all this (bootlegged) music helped us through some of our leaner times. As Al used to say “I seriously can’t live without music, we need to buy a CD player…”

Thanks to the guy at the second-hand stereo shop on Dien Bien Phu Street for selling us a second-hand stereo, which was probably a perfectly good second-hand stereo, though we never found out, and a thousand belated apologies for telling you now that we didn’t trust you when you clearly explained (even with the aid of a hand-sketched diagram, vigorously underlining some voltage figures and illustrating the risk of explosion with flames) that we also needed a converter (which he would sell us as well) as it was a Japanese stereo that could only handle 100 volts. I regret to say now that we assumed that you thought ‘these lads clearly came down in the last shower so I’m going to make them buy something they absolutely don’t need and then go drink beer with my pals and toast their stupidity!’ Indeed, I regret to inform you now, we thought at the time: “nice fecking try mister!! But [fend! counterpunch!!] we did NOT come down in the last shower!” So imagine the eggs on our faces after we triumphantly walked home, and then less triumphantly plugged in our new second-hand stereo, which was probably a perfectly good second-hand stereo, only to see a brief flash of light pulse through the socket and then smell the fried circuitry as it wafted into the humid air, and realise what you were trying to tell us with your fairly adept Pictionary skills …. ¹ [I don’t want to throw Al under a bus but that footnote is worth reading].

Thanks to the steroidal Mr. Đ² on Hang Bac Street for patiently showing me how to ride a clutch motorbike (a Bonus) and letting me loose into the motorised masses – I can imagine you looking on, as nervous and hopeful as a father who has just put his son on a bicycle and pushed him along the path for the first time. ‘Go on, son! The world is now yours!!! Go to it!” It was touch and go, if I’m being honest, but I made my way around the corner and didn’t crash (that afternoon). And I would soon realise that once you had a motorbike in Hanoi, everything changed. The city shrunk. Everything felt connected. You could be anywhere and everywhere, at any time, day or night. For absolutely no reason, you could ride across town, feeling in sync with Hanoi’s hypnotic rhythms. And, better yet, if the town ever did close in on you, once you had wheels, you knew you could wake up in the morning and just escape, riding down one highway or another, through the paddy fields beyond the pale, and into the hills…

Thanks to Cafe Quynh, Cafe Lam, the Secret Cafe (which was never much of a secret), and every other old school cafe in town for being such wonderful places to sit, read, write, daydream and while away an afternoon. Thanks to the Kangaroo Cafe for the pint-sized ca phe sua da you served and the eggs on toast that got Al through the day (pretty much every day). Thanks to C.A. for running a bar (GC) that played decent techno and clubby tunes. Thanks to J. at the R&R for having a bar with a decent selection of rock and roll CDs (sorry, but I still don’t like the Grateful Dead and I probably never will). Thanks to R. and his team at Tandoor for saving our souls on Sunday nights with curries and garlic naan (sorry, that we didn’t play cricket and couldn’t help you beat the Pakistani team). Thanks to J.R. at Moka Cafe when Moka Cafe was cool, and thanks to all of his customers who left the crossword in Bangkok Post for us to finish, and everyone who didn’t steal the New Yorker. 

Thanks to the students from a Pre-Intermediate class for inviting me to drive to Dai Lai Lake one weekend. Sorry that I brought my friend D. who I hadn’t realised (until that day) had slipped back into some old bad habits of his. I remember the sight of his pale, cadaverous and comatose body on the grass as the rest of us picnicked on fruit and banh mi stuffed with gio. You all took turns trying to place scarves, shirts and hats over him so he didn’t fry in the sunshine. Of course, you were all so innocent you didn’t realise he was a junkie. One of you, the girl who always looked like you were on the verge of tears, even when you were happy, I remember you said: “Your friend must be very hard working to be so tired.”

Thanks to: Miss Q.A. for taking me for ca phe trung; Mrs. P. for taking me to eat cha ca; Miss Y. for taking me for banh goi by the church; the garrulous engineers for taking me to a giant beer hall, where every second dish was ‘good for man’ (even the corn); thanks to Miss H., the Cinderella of Cau Giay District, for taking me for mien luon, bun oc and making me home cooked meals. Sorry I didn’t turn out to be 'serious boyfriend’ material, but I’m pretty sure your policeman father didn’t mind (and sorry for not getting you back by midnight). Thanks to whoever first took me to the bit tet place on Hang Buom, which serves up a thin piece of beef that wouldn’t get an Argentinian carnivore to cross the street but, oh man, when we first scooped up that sizzling steak with the oniony sauce, some thin fries, cucumber and tomato and somehow shoved it all into a banh mi, we just knew everything would be alright.

Thanks to every other Hanoian who introduced me to countless other dishes and showed me a little piece of your city, inviting me to make it my own, which I gladly did.

Thanks even to all the nutters and reptiles that I brushed shoulders with, or got cornered by, usually after midnight, in one of the hard-drinking bars (all bars in Hanoi circa 2000AD qualified for this description). Sorry, if I put one or two of you in a short story years later but documenting the lives of strange and terrible white men in early 20th century Hanoi turned into a vocation of sorts. Thanks to the expat physiotherapist for showing me how to survive drinking in a crowded bar when it’s 43 degrees outside and the aircon… she cannae take anymore, captain — her suggestion: order a gin and tonic then stick an ice cube in each of your popliteal fossa (Matron!).

And thanks to all the Hanoians that let their joy spill out onto the street day after day, and night after night. It’s that abundant love of life that reeled so many us in on a big fat hook. But thanks also to the grumps and ‘biết rồi, khổ lắm, nói mãi’³-curmudgeons. Your frowns and frosty welcomes kept me on my toes (I am of the opinion that nothing should come too easy). 

And last but not least, thanks to whoever messed up my visa, which meant I had to leave in July, 2000, unsure if I would even be allowed back (please read my story: “To get back to Hanoi, I had to go to Bangkok” for more non-essential information). Because, sometimes you need to step outside the room to figure things out. Sitting in Bangkok, I remember realising that Hanoi now felt like a second home to me and that I couldn’t wait to go back. To be there with my friends, to ride around on my motorbike, to eat everything under the sun. To see what happened next.     

Enjoy the story? You can make a payment via Ko-Fi or direct via Paypal below.

1. The ‘Stereo of Woe’ story continued: After weeks of the two of us playing games of German wist, and smoking the city’s cheapest cigarettes to the sound of silence, Alan eventually got paid and found some guys that repaired old electronic gear, somewhere near Dai Co Viet street, who said they could fix the stereo; after returning some days later and paying what he figured to be way too much, he stomped home in a huff, thinking: “I know that guy ripped me off but fuck it, at least I have a stereo again because I can’t live without music, I really fucking can’t….” and didn’t he clean forget about the ol’ converter thingy and go ahead and plug it in at home and blow it up all over again…     

2. Incidentally, anh Đ. was christened Mr Lucky by M. at the Kangaroo Cafe. When I asked why, M. replied (while twirling his moustache): “Have you seen his wife?”)

3. A line made famous in the 1936 novel Số đỏ (Dumb Luck) by Vũ Trọng Phụng. Literally, “I know already, so annoying, talk forever”, a catch phrase of a grumpy old sod.