Chance Encounters

One of my last two hopes for finding a decent source of reading material was dashed yesterday when I sought out the National Library on Ba Trieu street. Nobody was any help whatsoever—people working in the building right next door had never heard of the place. In any case, this library seems to be closed indefinitely. It's currently surrounded by a rusty, dented construction barricade. Looking for more information, I stopped a Western-looking passerby, who spoke a little English, but even better, spoke fluent French and was, in fact, French! Jean-Noel, who landed in Hanoi about the same day I did, came here to teach psychology and psychoanalysis at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities. We exchanged email addresses and will try to meet for coffee at some point. I'm hoping Jean-Noel will be able to provide a link for me into the community of French expats in Hanoi.

My one remaining hope for English non-fiction books, by the way, is the Goethe Institute, which is reported to have, in addition to German books, a few English ones. I'll go there soon, but I seriously doubt I'm going to find what I'm looking for. Maybe I'll pop over to Hong Kong and see what they've got to read. Please don't tell me I'm going to have to go all the way to Australia to fix my reading habit.

If you're a Hanoi café that wants to keep me coming back, do this: slice up a whole avocado and a whole mango on a large plate of fresh lettuce, pile slices of grilled chicken breast on top, drizzle with a creamy, orange-juice-based dressing, add a 20-ounce mug of cold, delicious red ale and sell me the works for less than $6. I don't intend this blog to become a restaurant review site—I'm just saying Moca Café has got it figured out.

Moca Café is in a warren—called the Old Quarter—of narrow twisting streets west of Hoan Kiem Lake, a neighborhood that, like mine, is a hodgepodge of air-conditioned glass and chrome places that look like Starbucks, slightly homier places with neon signs and bilingual menus, way downscale but respectable Viet shops and restaurants, and grungy third-world soup kitchens and sweatshops. On average, though, the Old Quarter is visibly more prosperous than other Hanoi neighborhoods because it's ground zero for Hanoi tourism, with a high density of souvenir shops, karaoke bars, and backpacker hotels.

I wandered into this area looking for any of the landmarks whose names I had jotted down from the Lonely Planet guidebook—St. Joseph's cathedral, The Jazz Club, a French hangout called La Salsa, Pepperoni's (a pizza joint), plus of course, the Half Man Half Noodle bar. Even without a map, ten minutes of wandering brought me to every place on my list except the last one. Before I could find the Noodle, I ran into Helen from DCV. (The teachers refer to their school as DCV—short for Dai Co Viet street—to distinguish it from other Language Link locations.)

Helen and I talked on the street for a minute or two but we kept getting interrupted by an annoyingly persistent xe om driver who wouldn't take khong (no) for an answer. To get away from him we adjourned to the nearest air-conditioned coffee shop for glasses of chilled juice and a leisurely discussion of American politics and Kiwi (i.e., New Zealand) rugby. Helen refers to her country as En Zed (NZ).

Little Gordon has a much bigger (5-inch) brother—or maybe it's his grandfather, what do I know about these things?—living on the terrace. Here's how I contribute to Gordon Heavyfoot's well-being: At night I keep the frosted window closed and the room light on so that insects land on the glass where they can be snapped up and munched. All evening long I can see Gordon Heavyfoot's white belly through the glass, creeping up and down in a most crocodilean fashion, occasionally stopping to munch a bug.