What Hanoi expats talked about when they talked about going to Bangkok (circa 2000AD)

Written in memory of the storied two-for-one Visa-Whopper runs to the Thai capital back in the days of yore.

TO STAY IN HANOI, I had to go to Bangkok.

Because, that’s where Christopher had gone.

To explain, Christopher and I worked at the same language centre. But neither of us were full-time.

That meant we had visas that had not, um, stood up to scrutiny.

That’s a euphemism.

What I mean is we had dodgy visas.

It was just a coincidence that we tried to renew our visas at the same time. However, it was most probably not a coincidence that both our applications had been denied. From time to time, I had been authoritatively told by the town’s finest minds (male expats sitting on barstools): ‘these clampdowns happen’.

When my passport was returned to the language centre (via a tourism agency that had a sideline in getting such visas for foreigners), I went to collect it from the one-woman-HR department powered by Mrs. Nhung.

She didn’t offer any kind of specific explanation. In my memory, she was seven to eight months pregnant and it was 2 o’clock in the afternoon and the middle of June, when everyone in the whole city would rather be fanning themselves at home.

So she cut to the chase. Christopher had the letter of invitation that ‘we’ needed to return on a legitimate visa. And he was in Bangkok. So, I had to go there, meet Christopher and go to the Vietnamese embassy, et cetera.

I don’t remember asking why there was just one letter of invitation for the two of us.

Maybe it was a combo deal she’d brokered.

I also didn’t question why she’d entrusted Christopher with the letter. In fairness, he was older than me, and more professional looking – he wore ties, knew how to tuck in his shirt; he had a neat, short-back’n’sides hairstyle that never wavered, and had his brogues polished by the shoe-shine kids outside Cafe Mai every other day. He even had a case! Meanwhile, I wore un-ironed chinos and oddly textured made-in-Hoi-An shirts. I tied ties with all the panache of a man dressing in the dark. As for my hairstyle, let’s just say it never stopped wavering.

Anyway, as I had no choice, I did as instructed — I rode my scooter to Vietnam Airlines and booked a ticket to Bangkok. I then spent the next couple of days fishing for sympathy in the staffroom but I only reeled in jealousy. “You know what the first thing I’d do in Bangkok is?” more than one person told me, their eyes already misting up with longing. “Eat a Whopper.”

You see in those days many Hanoi expats loved going to Bangkok because they could binge on all of the comforts they had to do without in the western-franchise-free Vietnamese capital. Even entering the giant air-conditioned malls with global brands and dozens of escalators (Hanoi had none of those) was a thrill for visiting Hanoi expats.

Nobody came back to town from Bangkok gushing about eating pad kra prao or multiple nights of debauchery. Because, I guess it was a given they’d enjoyed both?

So instead, when surrounded by peers, the returnees would brag about eating a Whopper at Burger King or a Big Mac at Mickey-D’s and sitting in the VIP seats at Gold Class cinemas, where they watched Charlie’s Angels or Mission Impossible II. “I was in fucking heaven,” they’d tell you, as they recounted you a tale of … well, eating a Whopper and then going to the cinema to watch whatever blockbuster was showing.

One expat I knew even came back with two Whoppers stuffed in his carry-on luggage. He heated them with his plug-in grill and wolfed them down (probably while watching pirated films on his LCD player in his Hanoi abode).

But when I flew to Bangkok (for the first time as a Hanoi expat) in the summer of 2000, I did my best to defy this singular Hanoi expat tradition and steadfastly avoided eating a Whopper. Instead, food-snooty fellow I am, I spent my days eating average green/red/yellow curries and bowls of porridge in my guesthouse or at nearby traveller cafes while sporadically checking my emails, mainly to arrange a meet with Christopher.

I seem to remember we were on opposite sides of the Khao San neighbourhood, and his side was much better than mine. On entering his guesthouse, I immediately noted how all of the guests were cool and stoned and tattooed and beautiful and I immediately wished I was staying there, too. When I asked for Christopher, a stunning Israeli woman flopped across a bean bag pointed in the direction of a downstairs room.

Inside the room, Christopher was sitting on his bed in his underwear and clearly baked out of his brains. It took him some time to freshen up and find the rest of his clothes. But when he did, he was all business — just like the Christopher I knew from Hanoi. He even had his case with him.

When I joked that ‘the dashing executive was dressed for success’, Christopher gave me a once over and seemed to view my backpacker-y attire dimly, as if I might be jeopardising the whole mission. But he said nothing. Instead we walked briskly (he set the pace) to the canal. I never had a clue where I was going in Bangkok, but Christopher did. We came to a pier where we boarded a water bus that ripped along the foul-smelling canal all the way to the Siam district. From there, Christopher once again put his head down and we walked at a clip. I could hardly keep up in my flip-flops.

But at some stage Christopher’s heels dug in. He turned his head and stared at a Burger King in the distance and said: “I’d murder a Whopper, what about you?”

I didn’t want to cramp his style. So I swallowed my principles and we went inside to eat a Whopper and fries, which we washed down with ginormous cups of cola. Christopher’s blood sugar levels improved and so did his mood. He loosened up and began to speak. He told me about his relationship with a Vietnamese woman, how she was married, but informally separated from the husband, who knew she was living with Christopher; he told me how one day, someday soon she’d get divorced; he told me how they had business plans, and how he’d been saving everything he could for years and how they would buy some land, and build a hotel on the coast in Central Vietnam, and I realised that there was a lot more riding on this letter of invitation for Christopher than little old me, and I was glad that he had it, no doubt neatly folded and carefully placed in his case.        

Nothing of interest happened at the embassy. We queued for a while then handed over our (two) passports with the (single) letter. We were told to come back in four days, so we parted ways on Khao San and I spent the next few days wandering aimlessly, trying my best to make a little sense of Bangkok, a city that defies order by nature. In the daytime, I’d walk the streets until I was on the brink of profuse sweating then slip into the enormous malls to cool off in the air-con and ogle beautiful Thai women. Wherever I roamed, I’d always retreat by TukTuk to the guesthouse before sundown and get a massage next door to my guesthouse then check my emails. Each evening, after yet another curry (red, green or yellow), I drank beers with the other travellers at the guesthouse before heading to one backpacker bar or another. In a city known for its pandemonium, even visitors quickly fall into some sort of routine.

When the three days had elapsed, I walked over to Christopher’s guest-house and knocked on his door and sure enough there he was once again in his underwear, baked out of his brains. So, I guess he had a routine, too. We then repeated our trip up the canal to Siam and marched in silence to the Vietnamese embassy, where I daydreamed about nothing in particular and Christopher chewed his nails as we waited. And waited.

But eventually we were summoned. We passed over some dollars and the passports came in the other direction. Without any fuss, we had our visas. Proper ones.

It wasn’t until we exited the embassy that Christopher literally clenched a fist and punched the air like a competitive dad who just watched his son bag a winning goal.

Because I had nothing to lose, I hadn’t sweated the outcome for a second. But Christopher had clearly feared the worst. I probably didn’t tell him I was happy for him. But I was.

“Come on — I feel like celebrating,” he said as we resumed walking briskly, this time in the direction of Siam.

“Sure, what do you want to do?” I asked, imagining how easy an ice cold Singha would go down. It was late afternoon as we strolled down a salubrious Bangkok thoroughfare. The sun was soft and golden and for the first time, I felt like I knew where we were going.

Then suddenly Christopher’s heels dug in. He turned his head, stared into the distance, and said: “For starters, I’d murder a Whopper, what about you?”

   

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