New Year’s Eve, and in turned out to be a busy day, but it started pretty slow. We were pretty tired from the day trip yesterday, so we slept in an extra hour or two. We had thought ahead and arranged to meet Hain for a party that evening, so we had the day to ourselves.
Kuniko mentioned that the toilet was broken, and when I went in there to look at it, I was expecting to just seat the valve and let the tank refill. But, the toilet was plugged up. I called down to the desk and asked them to fix it (again) and they said they would send someone up. We waited a while, and it was apparent that nobody was planning on coming up anytime soon. So, we decided to go walk around and hope that it was fixed when we got back.
Kuniko and I spent the day walking around some interesting local sights. With her trusty guidebook we made our way to a famous temple and enjoyed some time in the gardens. After looking around we got some che and then headed out to check out Ho Chi Minh’s tomb. It was Monday, and we knew it would be closed, but we weren’t really interested in checking out his waxy glass-encased body anyway. “Uncle Ho” as he is called by the locals is somewhat of a tourist attraction, and a pilgrimage for many Vietnamese all over the country. The tomb is a pretty dramatic building surrounded by several football fields of grass and open space. It was carefully guarded, and it reminded me a lot of the tomb of the unknown solider in Washington DC.
There were lots of interesting things to see in the area, so we kept on our feet and stopped occasionally for breaks to use public toilets. Pretty nasty, those. Since we were on our own and visiting a lot of pretty important sites we ran into a lot of government guards. These guys watched us carefully with a serious look on their face, but I liked that when I smiled or nodded at them in a friendly way, almost every one of them broke out into a smile. This really wasn’t limited to the guards – nearly everyone was watching us walk around and a big smile from me was often returned right away.
One of the reasons that we got a lot of attention – even more than in Japan – was that (according to my guidebook and also some personal testimony from my friend Carrie) white males accompanied by Asian women are assumed to be a customer and a prostitute. I guess I should make it clear here that the Asian woman is considered the prostitute. Kuniko and I had talked about it before and she just laughed about it and said she didn’t care, and although we did get a lot of attention it never seemed to bother her. I can say from personal experience that the attention we got walking around was even greater when Hain was with us. I don’t know what they were making of that situation. Luckily there were lots of other tourists to gawk at, so the attention we attracted didn’t last too long, and I never felt unsafe.
We started to head back for the hotel for a break, and grabbed some lunch on the way. We just walked into an interesting looking street restaurant and had fried rice with salted vegetables, and also a spicy chicken dish that was pretty good. We ate more than our fill, and then we headed back to the hotel.
We climbed up the steps to the room, and Kuniko laughed when she saw a toilet plunger sitting next to our door. I went inside and found the toilet was in the same state as when we left it. Apparently it was a plunge your own toilet hotel. I gave it a go, and in a weird coincidence of unfortunate occurrences, I started to break out in hives… likely from something I had just eaten. Anyway, it was all just too much, so Kuniko got right on the phone and started calling other hotels. I gave up on the toilet – no progress with the plunger – and laid down on the bed trying not to scratch all the itchy parts of my body.
This was probably the worst part of the trip, and still, despite how it sounds it wasn’t that bad. The hotels we called were all full for the night (it being New Year’s Eve) but our own hotel offered to give us another room. We took it right away, and it was a little smaller but the toilet worked perfectly. All was right with the world at that point. I took a nap after moving to the room, and by late afternoon I was feeling 100% better. We were on schedule to check out of our hotel in a couple of days anyway, so soon enough it would all be behind us.
The plan for the evening was to meet up with Hain and some of her friends from school and have some Vietnamese nabe soup at a restaurant that they liked. We went downstairs to leave for dinner and the staff had set up a table full of food and drinks for the guests to celebrate the new year. The manager of the hotel was there and he pushed drinks into our hands and offered us food. Part of it was probably because of our bad experiences with our room, but part of it was he wanted people to stick around for the party. We drank some (scary) wine and then apologized and headed off. I actually felt sorry for the guy because there were only a few lonely guests eating and standing around – not a very wild party.
Despite still being pretty full from lunch we headed out to a different part of town and found the nabe restaurant. Hain had invited four of her friends. Some of them were studying Japanese at school and some were studying English, so the idea was to provide them with some native speakers to practice with.
We went upstairs and grabbed a table, and the girls explained the process and when to put each item into the soup. Kuniko and I had beers while the girls had tea, and we chatted in various languages while we ate. One of the girls sitting across from me kind of adopted me and kept smiling and putting more food from the nabe pot right into my bowl. I wasn’t that hungry but the soup was delicious. Some interesting ingredients (intestines, wow) but nothing crazy. They had some super hot sauce to put in as well and I really liked that.
The students were really friendly and not as shy as the students I usually work with in Japan. I’m guessing they were more confident in English because Kuniko ended up spending most of her time speaking with them in English like me. They taught us how to say “excuse me” in Vietnamese (xin lá»—i!) and I got to practice shouting for our waiter from the table which felt really rude but got us the service we wanted.
After dinner we went to a che place and we ate even more while taking lots of pictures and talking. I’ve got to say that the attention that we got as a white guy with five Vietnamese high school girls and a Japanese woman was pretty intense. People from across the street were stopping and pointing, and the men around us looked me in the eyes in kind of a challenging way, but nobody ever said anything. For their part the girls were oblivious and caught up in eating che and talking about this and that.
After the che place we all walked out to the lake to walk off dinner, and Kuniko and said our goodbyes from there. We waved goodbye to everyone and also said goodbye to Hain for a while since we were leaving for Hue soon. Then we headed back into the old quarter to see what was happening. We stopped in at our hotel to drop off some stuff and we almost didn’t recognize it. The party was raging and music was blasting – the place was full of people and it was hard to get across the lobby to the staircase. I was glad that it was a hit. We didn’t stick around at the hotel long, and skipped the party with all the tourists to instead hit the streets and see what was going on and maybe have some drinks.
It was strange because the wildest parties were involving the tourists. The locals at around 11 p.m. started laying out tarps and sitting down on the sidewalks as families. I had expected lots of craziness, but things were getting quieter as we approached midnight. We found ourselves at a Bia Hoi place, and ordered up some cold beer. Bia Hoi is where the real drinking gets done in Hanoi. You sit on plastic stools or chairs right on the street, and the owner draws cold beer from a keg (usually leaning against a tree or building) and charges you between 2000 and 5000 dong for it. That’s around 20 cents a beer. Danger, danger!
While we sat watching the city slow down around us we noticed that many families were eating dried squid together, and when a street vendor came walking by selling it we decided to try it, too. She first toasted it in hot coals that she carried around in a metal pot, and then beat the hell out of it with a stick, and finally tore it into strips and served it on a piece of newspaper with some chili sauce. It hit the spot, and went well with the cheap beer.
That was pretty much the extent of our new year party – we went back to the hotel right before the countdown and were in bed by one o’clock. Downstairs the party was still raging, and at one point I heard what sounded like furniture being thrown around. I was just happy to have a toilet that flushed.
