Culture deprivation

There must be a considerable number of Westerners in Hanoi. Besides the several dozen American, British, and Aussie teachers who frequent the teachers' lounge at Language Link, I often see Western faces on the street, in restaurants, shopping at Vincom Towers—students on vacation or businessmen living here with their families. Every block, no matter how exotic or third world appearing at first glance, displays at least one sign in English—"Kentuky Flied Chiken","Spicy Sexy Cell Phone", "Art Exhibitionist".

Vincom Towers is not the only upscale Western-style shopping venue in town. Hanoi Towers, looming over Hoa Lo prison (aka Hanoi Hilton), provides twenty-some floors of luxury apartments and offices over a conference center and shopping center featuring luggage, chocolates, silk lingerie, and other luxury goods. Many restaurants and bars in town cater to foreigners with menus and signage printed in English.

None of this surprises me. Hanoi is a big city and has been energetically courting foreign investment and tourism for the past twenty years. What does surprise me…disappoints me…appalls me, actually…is that apparently nobody has yet begun to cater to what surely must be a fairly large and growing demand for Western pharmacy staples like cough drops, foot powder, vitamins, and cold remedies, or for Western cultural staples like the International Herald Tribune, Stephen King paperbacks, or Billy Joel fake books.

I know, I know. You're right. I didn't come all the way to Vietnam to shop at Walmart. But if Chinese visitors can buy fried chicken wattles in NYC, why can't I find One-a-Day vitamins in Hanoi? Maybe someone will respond and clue me in. Meanwhile I've spent many hours over the past week trying to locate a reliable source of Western medications and/or publications.

Apparently THE place in Hanoi for English language books is a shop called The Bookworm. I went there. The shop is a bit larger than my hotel room and has fewer books than my storage unit in Cheyenne. I bought used copies of Chris Stewart's Driving Over Lemons and A Parrot in the Pepper Tree—true tales of an English couple's relocation to a mountain farm in Spain. But I carried them out of the shop with a sinking feeling in my heart. Somebody tell me how in the world I'm going to survive here without books?

Actually, the answer came to me while I was asking the question. In all likelihood I won't survive long enough for it to matter. Consider the following: The newspaper reports 32 new cases of cholera this month in the vicinity of Hanoi. I have what looks for all the world like a nasty spider bite on my toe, one day after I saw a spider jump a foot from my keyboard to the window ledge. I waded through a river of speeding motorbikes yesterday to get to the French Hospital, where I hoped to find French doctors dispensing Western style pharmaceuticals and medical advice in French, if not English. What I found was a hospital built by the French, still sporting its original sign, now manned by Vietnamese with no knowledge of English or French. The hospital pharmacy was a narrow safety-glass window like one at an Italian post office. With pen and paper and sign language I conveyed to the clerk that I wanted antifungal powder and multivitamins. For the latter, he had a box of Supradyn—10 effervescent tablets for $4.00. The % of RDA was not given for any of the 20 vitamins (including vitamins H, J, and S) listed on the box. As for the powder, he had 30g of something called Mycoster for $10.50 but couldn't let me have it without a prescription. He volunteered the information that I could probably buy it cheaper, without the prescription, at any street pharmacy.

Maybe I ought to just let it go. Instead of reading more books, I could write a few. Instead of treating my symptoms with Western remedies, I could seek out a Vietnamese herbalist or acupuncturist. I have to say that despite low incomes and a paucity of medical resources, these Hanoians look remarkably fit. The girls and women all—I repeat: all—have the kind of svelte figure American women sacrifice enormous amounts of money, physical effort, and anguish to approach. The men aren't muscular, but they look wiry and competent. I've yet to see a single Vietnamese person who waddles when they walk or requires help to get up from their chair. I saw an ancient woman—she looked about ninety and was walking with obvious difficulty—arrive at the hospital on the back of a motorbike.

Soon I hope to be able to report some kind of social activity. I was invited to come along to a movie downtown by Helen, a teacher from New Zealand, but didn't get back from the French Hospital in time. Maybe this weekend I'll join some of the teachers who frequent a bar in the Old Quarter with the inauspicious name of Half Man Half Noodle.