Hanoi

Hanoi is the sweatiest place I have been in my whole life.

Hotter than summers in Las Vegas. Stickier than the swampiest days in Baltimore or Washington DC. The only remotely comparable memory I can recall is the time we spent two May nights in New Orleans sleeping in an RV without air conditioning.

It's an incessantly sweaty experience. The notion that honeymooners would ever fly here with the intention of having sex is laughable. My whole head is covered in sweat by the time I'm three steps away from the hostel.

I'm writing this from my bed in our hostel on Hang Vai street, just a few blocks from Ngoc Son Temple and the lake it sits on. I believe this neighborhood is called the Foreign Quarter. It's 4am (I think that's 1pm California time) and I've been up for an hour. Hopefully we can be fully adjusted for jetlag by tomorrow. We're only able to sleep because a small fan attached to the wall is pointed on this exact spot where we are laying. Pouyan just woke up as I started writing this.

Yesterday our only goal was to acclimate and get our bearings. Having been awake since the previous midnight in Vietnamese time (or something like that), we figured that staying up past 8 or 9 would be a coup. We were asleep by 6:45pm. Oh well.

Prior to that we did spend about eight hours exploring the surrounding neighborhood. Hanoi -- and specifically our area -- is a fascinating and intense place. The heat and humidity is only one aspect of the intensity; nearly as oppressive is the sheer number of people. Humans are everywhere around us. People mill around down the streets (probably 97% Vietnamese and 3% Caucasian). Motorcycles -- thousands and thousands of them -- snake their way among the people, cars, stands, and tuk-tuks, ignoring all traffic signals and passing within centimeters of us regularly. Cars, vans, and buses lumber among this chaos like blue whales surrounded by guppies and krill.

Crossing the street is very daunting at first, but eventually we get the hang of it (sort of). Success comes from possessing full confidence that the agile motorcyclists will bear the full burden of avoiding a collision.

The streets are numerous, curved, and relatively hard to navigate. For some reason the printed names of roads on our map rarely seem to correspond with the street signs that we see while walking. Further complicating things is the fact that many roads change names after every few blocks.

The majority of establishments are retail stores or restaurants that spill out of the buildings and onto the nearby sidewalks, each with dozens of motorcycles parked in front of them. The median store width is probably 8 or 10 feet. Some shops have one lone person handling business while some have as many as ten individuals lounging in and around the store.

At most places, food costs almost nothing. The exchange rate is approximately 20,000 Vietnamese dong to one U.S. dollar, and we have found that most food items are between 10,000 and 50,000 dong, or between 50 cents and $2.50, though some nicer restaurants with AC that cater to tourists are able to charge somewhat more (four to six U.S. dollars). We did stumble upon a rather chic neighborhood filled with Chanel and Cartier retail stores that also had restaurants serving burgers and steaks at San Francisco prices, but who the hell wants to fly to Vietnam to eat an $18 cheeseburger?

Instead, Pouyan and I had dinner in the neighborhood last night. Our total for one beer, one diet coke, two orders of spring rolls, and two large entrees was 227,000 dong, or $11.35. And it was friggin' delicious. The beer we had was called Bia Ha Noi (i.e. Hanoi Beer) and both of us really like it, though every bottle we've seen has a different ABV % printed on it, ranging between 4.2% and 5.1%. We found this to be rather peculiar.

Today our plan is to see some of the city sights, such as the Hanoi Hilton and the American War Museum, and enjoy some more good food and beer. And sweat our asses off. Tomorrow we head to Ha Long Bay for three days.

(Note: for some reason this blogging app is not letting me upload photos from my phone. Sorry :/ )