Pho Ba Trieu (Ba Trieu Street)

Take your shirt off and soak it in a basin of warm water for a few seconds and then lift the shirt dripping from the water and wring it out…but only use one hand. That's how wet my shirt was when I got home today from walking down Ba Trieu Street. Raining? No, just hot, sweaty Hanoi weather.

Thanh showed up this morning to see how I was getting along. When he stepped into my room, he shivered and told me it felt too cold. I have the thermostat set to 77F/25C. Thanh thought it would be better to bump it up to within 10 degrees of the outside temperature, which has hung around 90F this week.

When Thanh asked if I needed anything, I mentioned my three most pressing needs: pharmacy, bookstore, laundromat. According to Thanh, Hanoi has no self-service laundries. Furthermore, I shouldn't trust my clothes to any laundry other than the hotel service. He insisted on calling the hotel desk to have a laundry basket sent up and soon there arrived what looked for all the world to me like a bamboo trash basket a foot in diameter, a foot deep, full of splintery ends. Besides not wanting to snag my shirts in this basket, I also don't want to pay the hotel laundry rates: 50 cents per shirt, 60 cents for a pair of pants, 15 cents for a pair of socks (no price mentioned for unmentionables). Any American laundromat would be cheaper. Maybe I can work something out with a colleague who has a washer/dryer. (If I can find one. To judge by the volume of clothing you see hanging on balconies, a dryer must be a rare commodity in this town.)

Thanh showed me on a map where there is a concentration of bookstores around the corner from the Metropole. As for a pharmacy, he repeated what others have told me—you can find pharmacies all over town, just look for a sign with a cross on it. Then he offered to take me to one on his motorscooter, currently parked out front. I felt a bit apprehensive about loading my shattered ribs onto the back of what is essentially a game of Russian roulette disguised as transportation, but all week long I've watched octogenarians and pregnant women by the score put their frail bodies on the line, so who am I to say, "Not me, I'd rather walk."

The first pharmacy we found was about the size of a French elevator, so Tranh continued toward the town center until we found a bigger one—about the size of a newsstand. I could see through the window that all the merchandise was behind the counter and that, instead of looking for it, I would have to describe what I wanted (throat lozenges, Chloraseptic spray, Gold Bond powder, saw palmetto, mentholatum…). Given that the English-speaking staff at my hotel isn't sure what "four o'clock" means, I saw at once the absurdity of my quest and asked Thanh to drop me at a bookstore instead.

I happily browsed several bookstores but bought only a street map of Hanoi, for the main reason that none of the stores carried any English language books, although the quantity of books aimed at helping Vietnamese students master English was staggering. I was worried that I'd find English teaching materials in short supply, but it's obvious ESL is a serious industry here.

In the same neighborhood as the bookstores is a famous ice cream store called Kem Trang Thien. I looked in. Picture a low-ceilinged parking garage full of motorbikes, with an ice cream freezer in two corners, a broken and empty ice cream freezer in one corner, a collection of buckets and mops in the fourth corner, and dozens of young Vietnamese milling about eating ice cream cones. This is Hanoi's answer to Baskin-Robbins.

Since I was just a block from the Metropole and starting to sweat heavily, I thought I'd stop in, cool off, have a drink at the bar, maybe say hello to the American ambassador. I stopped in, but didn't do any of those other things because I could see right away that a drink at the bar was going to cost me as much as a day's stay at my hotel. The Metropole in Hanoi is world class and no lie. More intimidating than the Plaza Hotel in NYC, or the Ritz-Carlton in SF—or, needless to say, the Plains Hotel in Cheyenne.

This brings me to the part where I walk down Ba Trieu street, my shirt hanging closer and closer to my knees as it wicks the sweat from my body. Ba Trieu is a major street, lined with a motley assortment of businesses shuffled together at random. Next to a glass-fronted, obviously air-conditioned, Western-looking art gallery or camera store with track lighting, expensive furniture, and mahogany display cases will be a gritty-looking garage where an old woman in her pajamas is cutting the heads off fish and tossing them into an aluminum pot.

Along the way, I stopped into what might be the biggest pharmacy in Hanoi—the size of a Mrs. Field's mall store. Its display window featured several gigantic jars of whole ginseng roots soaking in brandy. Except for two cases containing orthotics, heating pads, and such, all the merchandise was behind the counter. I asked for something for a sore throat and was shown three products—lozenges from Germany, a paste from China, and lozenges from Thailand. The German packaging said in English: by prescription only. I bought the cheap Thai lozenges because they resembled cherry Sucrets—24 lozenges for 23,000 dong ($1.38).

Many Hanoi stores are no more than six feet wide. I was invited into a souvenir shop that had shelves on one wall, posters on a facing wall, and between them about three feet of sidling space. At the back of the store was an open door leading to a tiny windowless kitchen. The proprietor stood outside on the sidewalk to avoid blocking access to his own store. Every thirty feet or so, an alleyway appears, always occupied by two or three entrepreneurs cutting up meat, sorting cell phones, pounding dents out of motorscooter body parts, or just squatting in the shade and smoking. A lot of cooking happens on sidewalks here. Many eateries prepare their cuisine in aluminum cookware over a charcoal fire in a big tin can set on the ground. Although half the bike riders in Hanoi wear paper masks over their mouth and nose, on any city block you'll see lots of meat and fish just hanging out in bowls, exposed to sun, humidity, and exhaust fumes. Thanh warned me not to be tempted to try any of this street food.

The moldering ochre buildings thoughout Hanoi, legacies of the French occupation, are heartbreakingly beautiful and neglected. They're strung with so many electrical wires and clothes lines, they remind me of dolphins caught in fishing nets. And everywhere you look there are motorbikes. People here seem to live their lives on the streets. There are crowds on every block, sitting on little 6-inch plastic stools, smoking, drinking beer or tea, and eating noodle soup. Every block is teeming with people. But everywhere you look, motorbikes appear to outnumber people. If Hanoi's human population is 3.5 million, its bike population must be in the millions also. Motorbikes are parked three rows deep wherever the sidewalk can accommodate them.

The girls who cashier at the supermarket are something else. In the US you can really mess up a cashier by giving her $22.26 (instead of $20) for a purchase totalling $12.21. She doesn't see that giving back $10.05 is easier than giving back $7.79. The girls at the Vincom Towers market are just the opposite. They want your small denominations and they know how to get them. Today I gave the cashier a 100,000 dong note for a purchase of 98,500. Instead of just giving me my 1,500 change, she reached out and starting pulling small bills out of my hand trying to build up a payment of 108,500 so she could return 10,000 (or some such strategy). I demurred. I took back the small bills insisting I needed them for the bus. That's how I got my first 500 dong coin (worth 3 cents). I think I might keep it for luck.

Gordon, by the way—like some cats I could name—seems to have a thing for sweaty clothing. When I got back from my trip downtown, I hung my dripping shirt on a peg beside the wardrobe. When I retrieved it an hour later, Gordon jumped from the shirt to the wall, then jumped four feet onto a table and looked at me with a guilty smirk.