An older policeman approaches and the crowd parts for him. VC dips his head reverently to the man and backs away. Tall and lanky with a tinge of gray in his hair, the senior officer asks me where I’ve been. I tell him that I’ve traveled by bicycle across many countries to get here. We talk briefly, the crowd hanging on every word. His name is Thang and he is in charge of security at the station. I tell him of my intention to bicycle south back to Saigon. He smiles, saying that it is a good pursuit.
“Is your family from the South?” he asks me.
“Yes, sir, my mother’s side. My father is from Hanoi.”
“Ah, you’re here to visit your father’s roots,” he observes, approving. Then, unexpectedly, he extends his open hand to me. “It is all a new life for everyone, no? North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, Viet-kieu, and Americans are all good people. It’s all in the past. No ill feelings, no?”
I accept his hand, my mouth hanging open. “Yes, no ill feelings. Thank you, sir.”
“Welcome to Hanoi.”
“Thank you. I’m glad to have made it.”
He nods to his subordinate, who promptly returns my papers with smiles of goodwill. I bid them good-bye. VC and I walk out the gate. Shyboy is waiting for us around the corner. Shaking his head in disbelief, VC grins and sighs, “Wow!”
I shake hands with both of them and ride into my first Hanoi sunset.
The wide boulevard paralleling the tracks is full of Vietnamese men in army fatigues. Most are obviously no longer in the armed forces despite the fact that they are still in uniform. There are soldiers astride motorbike taxis. Soldiers pedaling cyclos. Soldiers sitting and drinking in cafés. Suddenly very nervous, I go directly to the first inn I see and take a room. I ask the owner about the soldiers in the street. She chuckles and says almost every male over sixteen has served in the army. Many wear their uniforms as a sign of patriotism, but mostly because the uniforms, often sold as army surplus, double well as durable work clothes. I heave a sigh of relief, amazed that there is still so much fear of the North Vietnamese Army in me. I drag my bike and luggage up three flights of stairs, toss them into the eight-by-six-foot room, lock the door, and beeline to the toilet. The organ meat and raw herbs I ate on the train are doing a number on me. At least I am off the train, I keep telling myself, as my innards faucet into the toilet.
My room, a deluxe suite, has “hot showers” provided by an electric heating tank, which takes half an hour to make three gallons of lukewarm water. It hangs from the ceiling like a water reservoir of an old-fashioned toilet with a long pull cord for flushing. Operating instructions are in Arabic. I take a shower fully clothed, a habit I picked up as I biked up the California and Oregon coasts. It is the fastest and most efficient way to get both body and clothes clean with the least amount of water. I soap the clothes, peel them off, soap myself, and as I shower I stomp on the dirty clothes. By the time I’m through, all I have to do is rinse out the laundry once, wring and hang it up to dry.
After dark, I wobble downstairs to the com-phon kitchen next door. Com-phon is the Northern style of “commoner’s cafeteria.” Down South, it is called com-dia, rice plates served with entrees on the side or “poured” over steamed rice. Here, a buffet table—a dozen plastic basins of food, some steaming, some cold—adorns the front entrance, announcing the day’s bill of fare to the dusty street. A man fans away the flies with a piece of cardboard. I point out my dinner to him: bitter squash stuffed with ground pork and mushrooms, a small pan-fried trout, melon soup, a piece of fried soybean cake filled with eggplant. He notes my order on a pad, nods me inside, and scoops out servings onto little saucers.
I duck into the dark, dingy dining room. Sided by low benches, seven coffee tables form a single long board running the length of the corridor-like space illuminated by three dim light bulbs dripping from bare wires. A dark layer of grease and soot from cooking fires skins the wall. Leprous white patches glow where the plaster recently peeled off. The ceiling, stringy with cobwebs, sags ominously. It is early for the dinner crowd so only half of the seats are taken. I sit down at the end of one bench and cannot find the floor with my feet. Bones, napkins, cigarette butts, vegetables, and sticky rice cover the concrete. I nearly jump as a furry body brushes my leg—a small dog patrolling the ground for scraps. I’d heard these cat-sized dogs with the pointy muzzles are excellent mousers. They also make pretty good eating according to Bugsy.
The cook-waitress spreads out my meal before me and serves me a bowl of white rice and a cup of hot tea. The food is simple and good although not as fresh and hot as I’d like. I’m hoping it’ll end my long bout of diarrhea.
Stuffed to the gills, I waddle back to my room, looking forward to a full night’s sleep. I string up the mosquito net, flip on the ceiling fan, turn out the light, and go to bed, happy and thankful that I’d made it to my father’s que, his birth village.
Hammering at my door pops me out of bed half an hour later.
“Open up!” cries a man outside. “This is the police. Open up!”
“One moment,” I say, searching for my pants. I peek through the window shutter and, sure enough, a uniformed cop and the motel’s receptionist stand at my door.
I unlock the padlock and open the door. “Is something wrong, Officer?”
“I’d like to invite you downstairs for a discussion.”
“Huh?” It still hasn’t occurred to me why he’s here. “Excuse me, Officer, but I’m very tired and I was sleeping. Can’t this wait till tomorrow?”
“I’d like to,” he enunciates each word firmly, “invite you downstairs for a talk. Please bring your papers.”
We sit down in the office with the hotel owner, a woman in her fifties. We wait uncomfortably while he inspects my visa, travel permits, and a passport photocopy.
“You cannot stay at this hotel,” he says, returning my papers.
“Why?”
“You are a foreigner and it is unsafe for foreigners to stay here.”
“No one told me that when I checked in and paid for the night’s lodging.”
The owner smiles apologetically. She speaks first to the cop in a sugary, submissive tone that surprises me: “Officer, if I may explain …” He nods and she continues, speaking as much to him as to me. “We are ignorant of the rules. We never had any foreigners stay here before, and we thought that a Viet-kieu is just like a Vietnamese. We apologize for this inconvenience. We will refund your money.”
I can’t believe what they are telling me. “I was sleeping! You want to kick me out at this hour? Where am I going to go?”
The cop seems unperturbed. “I’d like to invite you to Hotel Cuu Long. It’s not far.”
“The big hotel down the street? I can’t afford it. I’m broke.”
“It is not expensive,” he assures me. According to the inn owner, a room at Hotel Cuu Long goes for at least fifty dollars. I am paying five dollars here.
“You will be safer and more comfortable there.”
“I’m comfortable here!”
“The street here is very dangerous. Crimes are rampant in areas near the rail yard. We are ten kilometers from Hanoi. The streets here aren’t as safe for foreigners.”
“And you want me to go into the street at ten o’clock at night?” I scan his face to see if he is serious. “I don’t even have a map of the city.”
A smirk tugs the corner of his mouth, but his patience is wearing thin. A hard edge comes into his voice. Apparently, he isn’t used to having his orders questioned.
“I order you to leave the premises. You will stay at the Cuu Long Hotel tonight.”
“I’d really rather not.”
“You must. If you don’t, I will have my men remove you from your room,” he says, meeting my eyes evenly.
We sit regarding each other for a minute. He rubs his hands together and rises to his feet. The matter is final. “I will be back in half an hour with my men. You must be ready to leave the premises at that time. You will be escorted
to Hotel Cuu Long.”
After he leaves, I ask the owner if the cop is serious. She sighs. “Well, Brother. I’m very sorry for your troubles. Someone must have seen you going next door for dinner and reported you to the police.”
So the feeling of Big Brother watching me is justified after all. Suddenly, it feels Orwellian. A little claustrophobic.
“You see,” she continues, “he was expecting a little token of … cooperation—a few dollars.” She pauses, embarrassed at having to remind me of the mechanics of police protection. “If you had given him a fivedollar tip to have him keep an eye on you, he would have let you stay. Since you didn’t, he’s going to make you stay at the expensive hotel. They’ll pay him an ‘introduction fee’ for bringing them your business.”
“Thank you for telling me, Sister. I’m not sticking around so he can have his kickback.”
In five minutes, I’m downstairs, packing my wet laundry into my panniers. The owner refunds my money and gives me directions to Hanoi. The streets are dangerous at this hour, she warns. Be careful. I thank her, flip on the headlight, and pedal to the city of my father’s roots.
The wide boulevard is unevenly lit; burnt-out lampposts leave hundreds of yards between bright sections. Traffic trickles in both directions, as merchants and workers hurry home on bicycles without headlights. Grim-faced men in soldier uniforms laze in bars. I feel their eyes on me. People here do not wave, smile, or point as they do in Saigon. Northerners simply stare.
Up ahead across the street, a night alley market is in the final stage of shutting down, street sweepers combing the gutters, desperate merchants trying to sell the last of their perishable goods to bargain hunters. I cross over to the market. Maybe someone can direct me to an affordable inn. I ask two vendors for directions, but they don’t know too much about the neighborhood. I pedal slowly down the wide alley, eyes peeled for trouble. People rush in and out of unlit stores, tidying up for the night. Their oil-lamp-cast shadows spook me. At this hour, these are the places where people are knifed for pocket change. It is almost pitch-black. Unnerved, I turn the bike around and hit a pushcart coming out of another alley. My cleat pedals jam and I keel over with a thunk.
They surround me pinned beneath my bike. Hands grabbing me. Two against one. They are masked like robbers. One arm up protecting my head, I jerk free.
A girl’s voice pokes through my panic: “Are you hurt?”
I roll to my feet prepared for a fight. She loosens the scarf veiling her face. A street sweeper.
“I’m fine. Just a little scratch. No problem. My fault.”
“Wash your elbow right away,” says the taller girl. “The street is very dirty. It’ll get infected.”
“Thanks.”
She wants to know why I am wandering around so late at night in the bad part of town. I explain and they offer to show me to an inn nearby. As we leave, she notices my concerned glance at the cart which they are leaving behind. She giggles, “Nobody ever steals a garbage cart.”
Both girls are unmarried and in their late teens. They are a fun pair. We flirt as they escort me down the dark alleys, comfortable, at home, as though they own them. The taller girl teases: “Brother, you have it all backward. You’re looking for a room at an hour when other men are looking for roommates.”
I laugh. “I’m too unattractive for any roommate. The only one that knocked on my door tonight was a cop who wanted some grease!”
They cluck and giggle, perhaps thinking I am lying. “This is the hotel,” the shorter girl announces as they deliver me at the steps. “Don’t let them charge you over eight dollars.”
They hammer the metal sheet door with their fists and announce to the doorman that a guest needs a room. They smile and leave, the tall girl sassing me over her shoulder, “Behave, Big Brother.”
The manager shows me my room. I shower away the market muck and go to bed. Just after I click off the light, someone raps the door gently. I answer it in my briefs, thinking it is the manager bringing the hot tea he promised. It’s him all right. He is without the tea but smiling an ingratiating smile. Lined up behind him against the railing of the stairwell are six beautiful giggling girls.
“Brother,” he says, “I thought you might like the company of a sister … or two. Hanoi nights are chilly.”
Early in the morning, I puff my way down the wide and flat boulevard into Hanoi under a graying sky, pedal to pedal with ten thousand workers and students ebbing into the city on creaky bicycles. Here and there, a defiant red sweater bobs, like a maple leaf, in the churn of gray work clothes, olive army uniforms, and white school dresses. After a couple of miles, I see a woman sitting on the side of the road, between her legs a tray of brightly colored rice cakes, the size and shape of charcoal briquettes—I know what they are but have forgotten the name. For practice, I haggle with her awhile and at last, as I make the prospective buyer’s exit, she calls me back and we agree on a price—thirty cents—though she seems fairly bitter about it: “You Viet-kieu are even stingier than poor students. Even they pay me fifty cents.” I grin at her, but I’m thinking: Darn, I just want one of those cakes to nibble for old time’s sake. Fifty cents she wanted. Heck, that’s like a doughnut in the States. I am gloating over my victory when she bags me ten cakes and I realize that she was saying “mot chuc,” meaning ten, and I was saying “mot cuc,” meaning one lump. Too embarrassed to rectify the problem, I grab the prize and bike out to a park, hand the ill-gotten cakes to a beggar sleeping at the gate, keeping the one morsel for which I’d bargained. The park rings a small lake called Lake of Seven Colors. I sit on a waterfront bench to eat my cake. On a little island in the middle of the lake, a young guy is flying karate kicks, the sun rising over the pink mist behind him.
The one thing a solo traveler can count on finding in an area crawling with backpackers and expatriates is a bargain bed for the night. Usually, the food isn’t bad either. I have no idea where Hanoi’s tourist town is, so I buy a map and meander. It is an easy task since Hanoi is a more sedate city than Saigon. The traffic is much lighter, and in the cooler air under tree-shaded avenues, the smog is more tolerable. Hanoi lives on a scale more comprehensible than Saigon. The trees are smaller, more abundant, and not so tall and tropical like those of Saigon. I stroll along the fine mansions, taking in their faded, colonial French glories, their expressive arches, French windows, and wrought-iron balconies. Every structure holds itself up proudly in a state of elegant decay. At the north end of Hoan Kiem Lake, I find six young Caucasian travelers, lurking timidly on different street corners. Backpackers, baby-faced, flushed even in the tropic winter, treading about, wide eyes eating up all the sights, the details. Their pilgrim hands clench dog-eared copies of The Lonely Planet Guide to Vietnam. Alas, I have found my home for the next few weeks.
For tourists, everything that happens in Hanoi happens in the backpacker cafés. Anything that can be had, rented, chartered, borrowed, exchanged, and bought can be obtained or arranged in them. They sneak tourists illegally across the border into China for day jaunts, book hotel rooms, lodge people in-house, serve decent Western food, sell traveling supplies, fresh baguettes, and Laughing Cow cheese, which is the staple travel food for foreigners who fear stomach bugs. They book anything. Legal, illegal. You got the dollars, they can find your pleasure.
I bum around Hanoi with Australians, French, Danes, Brits, Germans, and Americans just soaking up the culture, exploring the urban sprawl one district at a time. The city is broken up into ridiculously distinct commercial sections, guild oriented, another French legacy. If you want to buy shoes, you go to the shoe district, where thirty or so adjacent stores sell only footwear, often the same style and brand. There is a part of town for every category of goods and services: clothing, poultry, silk, jewelry, and electronics. There is even an area with shops making headstones, where dust-covered men kneel on the sidewalk chipping names into slabs of granite. Our favorite is the street of nem nuong diners. Around dinnertime, straddling the s
unset hour, the street is perfumed and grayed with the smoke of meat sizzling over coals. If you catch a whiff of this scent, you never forget it. It is a heady mixture of fishsauce marinade, burning scallions, caramelized sugar, pepper, chopped beef, and pork fat. Women sit on footstools grilling meats on hibachi-style barbecues. Aromatic, stomach-nipping smoke curls to the scrubby treetops and simply lingers, casting the avenue into an amber haze. When hungry folk flock from all over the city to this spot, they have only one thing on their mind. And the entire street, all its skills and resources, is geared to that singular satisfaction.
The days pass without difficulty. I am at last among friends of similar spirit, all non-Asian, not one of them Vietnamese. And I am happy, comfortable merely to be an interpreter. Every day, we troop off to some part of the city on sight-seeing missions. At night, we congregate for great bouts of drinking and barhopping. We splinter into smaller parties and sign up for organized boat tours in Ha Long Bay and ride rented motorcycles to the countryside. We joke, we romance each other with the wild abandon of strangers cohabiting in exotic moments. We ask about Hanoi and its people, we ask about each other. Bonding, trading addresses, and fervently believing that we will never lose touch.
29
Patriot-Repose
Uncle Ho was a Caucasian? This is news to me. But I find him encased in a glass box like Snow White. His white hair gleams with a blond tint. His face has that blushing freshness of an intoxicated Aryan. Well, maybe it is the light.
I gawk at him with the rest of the tourists, half of them foreigners decked out in Spandex, cutoff jeans, sports bras, and Birkenstock sandals, the other half Vietnamese, sweaty and hot, quietly suffering in their best Sunday outfits. For Uncle Ho’s dignity, the officials don’t charge admission to the Mausoleum, but the hourly event seethes with the subdued giddiness of a freak show. Lining the black granite corridor, scowling guards confiscate cameras and hush foreigners who seem to be in a wax-museum mood. An Australian boy, towing his father, chirps, “Are we going to see a dead man? Are we? Is he really dead?” Behind the kid, the Vietnamese visitors are doing a funeral march, barely breathing, heads bowed, not a word. Maybe they are ashamed that their leaders have put Uncle Ho on display in a ghastly tomb against his final wish to be cremated because “land is valuable and should be used for farming.”
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