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Sen is a very posh restaurant in my neighborhood. There are always seven or eight formally attired parking valets ganged up around the front door and you can't get in without a reservation. Dinner is buffet-style (not a la carte) and here's a sampling of the sorts of items that pack crowds in nightly for the buffet:
Pregnant fish
Roasted pork stomach
Port rip
Soya curd flies salt eggs
Tomato puts oven
Fried tongue bull with black pepper
To pop rice
Noodle fever oyster
Boilt vegetable
Duck's gizzard bake
And for dessert: Mouse cream or mouse fruits….yum! I'm sure it all sounds even more mouth-watering in Vietnamese. This restaurant is right across the street from the little take-out place that boasts "you name it, we serve it".
This morning I packed up my books and clothes and, with some help from Thanh and his brother Lan, moved in a taxi to my new apartment. Thanh was enthusiastic yesterday about the availability of free WiFi at the apartment, but the paranoid in me imagines a scenario in which the next-door neighbor providing the free Wifi suddenly wakes up to the freeloaders and secures his network, leaving me cut off, or at the mercy of Internet cafes with their limited hours and collateral costs. This issue was potentially a deal-breaker for me, so I raised it as soon as I arrived. The landlady (also named Thanh) called one of her English-speaking tenants to reassure me, which is how I discovered that the recruitment officer for Language Link lives in my new building. How do you say "small world" in Vietnamese?
I still have some skepticism about the WiFi, but I also have just a three-month lease, so we'll see how it goes. While I was learning from Thanh how the propane cooker works, Thanh and Lan's sister Hanh, who arranged the deal, showed up. The four of us went with Thanh the landlady to a nearby café to seal the deal over iced coffees, and I got to know the Vo family better. They're all very smart and warm and have a good sense of humor. I'm grateful to have them assisting my transplantation to Vietnam.
I've felt on the verge of buying a motorbike for the past week, but I'm reconsidering now that Hanh has echoed Thanh's advice to start with a bicycle—just until I get used to picking safe routes through the chaotic traffic. You really have to see this traffic to believe it. It resembles nothing so much as schools of ocean fish flowing around and through each other, with amazingly few collisions. You can find major five- and six-way intersections that are essentially uncontrolled, with streams of traffic flowing continuously all day long in each direction. Drivers making left-hand turns angle across oncoming traffic well before the corner, so that when they enter the side street they're bucking the slower moving traffic along the curb instead of fast-moving motorbikes near the center. Every one-way street will have a few vehicles "swimming upstream" and when traffic becomes heavier in one direction of a two-way street, the street starts looking very one-way as drivers take advantage of any open pavement they see.
Jouke just arrived, drenched from a sudden downpour that caught her on her bicycle. We had talked about going bowling this evening with Mitchell and Sarah. (I discovered the bowling alley by accident two nights ago, when my xe om driver got lost and instead of taking me to Vincom Towers (a major Hanoi landmark whose pronunciation is pretty much the same in Vietnamese or English) headed out into the boondocks. The word 'shanghaied' flitted through my mind at one point, but this guy weighed about 70 pounds and wasn't much younger than me, so I think he was probably just suffering from a little age-related dementia. I got him turned back around eventually and was consoled for my lost time by the serendipity that led me to Star Lanes. (Yow! I hope they have size 11 bowling shoes there.)
Showing posts with label Hanoi traffic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hanoi traffic. Show all posts
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
Snake head soup, anyone?
If there's one thing that outnumbers motorbikes in Hanoi, it's motorbike helmets. A helmet law was passed some months ago and, while you might see an occasional bare head in the city, bareheaded biking occurs mainly in the countryside where policing is sparser. The helmets come in all colors and shapes, from mullet-shaped Tour de France bike helmets with a gold sparkle finish, to visored pink-checked polo helmets, to green WWII vintage Red Army helmets, to white construction hard hats. One thing you almost never see, though, is a round, skull-enclosing honest-to-goodness motorcycle helmet, with or without a visor.
I'm starting to feel like a resident out on the streets. I'm sure some of the locals recognize me on sight now even if I don't know their faces yet. What makes the biggest difference is my relationship to the traffic. While I recognize that the anarchic Vietnamese way of swarming through the streets like schools of fish is quite dangerous (a judgment attested by a very high rate of traffic fatalities), I also see that accidents occur much less often than you'd suspect after watching the chaos for just a short time. Hanoians don't want to crash and most of them have developed considerable skill at avoiding crashes. Knowing this makes it possible to lend a little trust to the "system" and, while not abandoning prudent vigilence altogether, at least find the courage to step out in front of a hundred oncoming motorbikes with a fair certainty they're all going to miss you…this time.
I went looking for the Hoang Ngoc Hotel yesterday because it was one of the hotels I considered booking before I arrived. When I saw it was only 10 feet wide I was intrigued enough to go in and ask to see a room. The hotel was actually quite beautifully designed and built, with efficiently laid out rooms, clean modern bathrooms, and built-ins of dark tropical hardwood. The quality of the place didn't tempt me to switch hotels, as I would have to pay almost twice my current rate for half the space. I was inspired, though, to start checking out other hotels in the neighborhood. I've learned that my hotel—at 20 feet wide—is one of the widest hotels around!
I ate dinner at a restaurant called Oriland. It was ordinary by Oakland standards, but extemely hightone for this neighborhood: booths covered in tasteful fabric, embossed beige wallpaper, full bar (Bailey's, Hennessy, Cointreau…), piped in samba music, electric fans, and a terrace shielded from the street by huge potted plants.
I would have pegged it for a tourist trap except I was the only Westerner in the place. I suppose these places also cater to wealthy Hanoians, of whom there must be a sizeable number. I get the impression from what little I've seen that neighborhoods here are less segregated between haves and have-nots than in the US. Apparently Vietnamese who come into money don't move to a better neighborhood. They just fix up the place they're in. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.
Anyway, here's what was interesting about Oriland: When the samba album finished, somebody put on the Best of the Beegees. That was followed by a rousing rendition of the William Tell Overture. I don't know what Vietnamese music sounds like because I haven't heard any yet. Here's another interesting thing: I had the curry chicken with steamed rice and it was really good. It came with a bowl of soup, a side of steamed celery, and some carrots cut up to look like roses. With dinner I had a tall beer, poured into my glass by the very attentive waiter with the bow tie. My bill, including the beer, came to $3.50. As is the custom here, I left no tip. Back home, $3.50 in a place like this would have got me a beer and an scowl from a stiffed waiter.
The beer I had was a Ha Noi, a local beer, obviously. It cost $1.20. For $1.32, I could have had a Heineken—or for $3.30, a Corona. I watched a Vietnamese customer drink 3 Coronas: conspicuous consumption, Hanoi style.
Also on the menu: fresh lemon juice with milk. Does this sound right to anybody? Maybe it was just a loose translation like the one I saw yesterday: "Wide selection of 6 dishes to fulfill your lunch with joy." On my way home from Oriland I passed JQK's, a squalid little eatery with one of those backlit signs with pictures of food that have faded until they look most unappetizing. JQK's slogan was "You name it, we serve it." I believe them. I haven't looked at a Hanoi menu yet that didn't mention either snake head soup or pig's trotters.
I'm starting to feel like a resident out on the streets. I'm sure some of the locals recognize me on sight now even if I don't know their faces yet. What makes the biggest difference is my relationship to the traffic. While I recognize that the anarchic Vietnamese way of swarming through the streets like schools of fish is quite dangerous (a judgment attested by a very high rate of traffic fatalities), I also see that accidents occur much less often than you'd suspect after watching the chaos for just a short time. Hanoians don't want to crash and most of them have developed considerable skill at avoiding crashes. Knowing this makes it possible to lend a little trust to the "system" and, while not abandoning prudent vigilence altogether, at least find the courage to step out in front of a hundred oncoming motorbikes with a fair certainty they're all going to miss you…this time.
I went looking for the Hoang Ngoc Hotel yesterday because it was one of the hotels I considered booking before I arrived. When I saw it was only 10 feet wide I was intrigued enough to go in and ask to see a room. The hotel was actually quite beautifully designed and built, with efficiently laid out rooms, clean modern bathrooms, and built-ins of dark tropical hardwood. The quality of the place didn't tempt me to switch hotels, as I would have to pay almost twice my current rate for half the space. I was inspired, though, to start checking out other hotels in the neighborhood. I've learned that my hotel—at 20 feet wide—is one of the widest hotels around!
I ate dinner at a restaurant called Oriland. It was ordinary by Oakland standards, but extemely hightone for this neighborhood: booths covered in tasteful fabric, embossed beige wallpaper, full bar (Bailey's, Hennessy, Cointreau…), piped in samba music, electric fans, and a terrace shielded from the street by huge potted plants.
I would have pegged it for a tourist trap except I was the only Westerner in the place. I suppose these places also cater to wealthy Hanoians, of whom there must be a sizeable number. I get the impression from what little I've seen that neighborhoods here are less segregated between haves and have-nots than in the US. Apparently Vietnamese who come into money don't move to a better neighborhood. They just fix up the place they're in. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.
Anyway, here's what was interesting about Oriland: When the samba album finished, somebody put on the Best of the Beegees. That was followed by a rousing rendition of the William Tell Overture. I don't know what Vietnamese music sounds like because I haven't heard any yet. Here's another interesting thing: I had the curry chicken with steamed rice and it was really good. It came with a bowl of soup, a side of steamed celery, and some carrots cut up to look like roses. With dinner I had a tall beer, poured into my glass by the very attentive waiter with the bow tie. My bill, including the beer, came to $3.50. As is the custom here, I left no tip. Back home, $3.50 in a place like this would have got me a beer and an scowl from a stiffed waiter.
The beer I had was a Ha Noi, a local beer, obviously. It cost $1.20. For $1.32, I could have had a Heineken—or for $3.30, a Corona. I watched a Vietnamese customer drink 3 Coronas: conspicuous consumption, Hanoi style.
Also on the menu: fresh lemon juice with milk. Does this sound right to anybody? Maybe it was just a loose translation like the one I saw yesterday: "Wide selection of 6 dishes to fulfill your lunch with joy." On my way home from Oriland I passed JQK's, a squalid little eatery with one of those backlit signs with pictures of food that have faded until they look most unappetizing. JQK's slogan was "You name it, we serve it." I believe them. I haven't looked at a Hanoi menu yet that didn't mention either snake head soup or pig's trotters.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Touchdown
I expected the 12-hour flight from SF to Taiwan to be a night from hell, but it proved otherwise. I mentioned my broken ribs to a flight attendant who saw me struggling to lift my laptop case into the overhead compartment and in return she mentioned—offered—an empty row of three seats next to the mid-cabin lavatory. I raised the two middle armrests, gathered up all three complimentary pillow and blanket sets, and fashioned myself a cushy chaise longue on which to stretch my legs and elevate my feet while keeping my torso in a mostly upright position. I made it through the 12-hour flight without Vicodin, without alarming my neighbors with pitiful whimpers and groans, without suffering a fatal blood clot, and without flopping about the cabin in a desperate search for relief from restless leg syndrome. In fact, I slept a great deal and arrived in Taipei rested and practically painfree.
The computer at the boarding gate at Taoyuan Airport in Taipei was printing out passenger lists and flight manifests on a tractor-feed dot matrix printer, but otherwise Taipei's airport looked like any big city airport—with fewer stores and restaurants, maybe, but more potted plants. There was even a shelf of potted plants in the "Man Toilet".
The three-hour hop from Taipei to Hanoi was uneventful. I sat next to a Hungarian couple and we were served dubious cuts of pork over gummy overcooked noodles garnished with a hardcooked brown egg—brown clear through except for a dark green yolk. We arrived at Hanoi in a warm drizzle that didn't obscure a flat green landscape brimming with lakes, ponds, and puddles. The temperature was around 80F, but the atmosphere was like your bathroom when somebody has just finished a hot shower.
Getting through Vietnamese customs took all of 30 seconds. A skinny boy wearing an army tunic glanced at my declaration (blank except for my name, address, and passport number), stamped my visa, and waved me through. No words were exchanged. The Hanoi airport is half the size of the Oakland airport. It has two baggage carousels. I had my luggage on the curb ten minutes after we landed.
Thanh met me as promised. He recognized me from my photo and I recognized him from his. I hadn't expected him to come to the airport in a cab, though. Because of my injured ribs, Thanh let me sit up front with the driver on the way back to town. I spent the 45-minute ride to the hotel painfully twisted in my seat so I could keep up a conversation with Thanh. As I expected, his spoken English was inferior to his written English and we both had quite a struggle communicating. Thanh is two years older than me, a physicist who lived and worked at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He now works as a scientific advisor in Hanoi.
Rain continued to fall as we rolled past flooded fields and across the muddy river into the city. The highway is grade level pretty much the entire way and, though four lanes wide, has no median—just a low cement barrier along certain stretches. Pedestrians meandered across the four lanes here and there. Traffic, moderately heavy, was maybe 55% autos and trucks, 40% motorbikes and motorscooters, and 5% bicycles. The autos were a mixture of European-style compacts, mid-size sedans, and SUVs. I'd say there were more SUVs than small cars, but that might characterize traffic to and from the international airport more than Hanoi traffic in general. I saw no tractor trailers. A majority of the motorbikes and motorscooters carried two people. There were lots of rain ponchos and it was common to see the driver wearing a large one, the front of the poncho draped over the front of the scooter and the back of it draped over the passenger who rode along, dry under the plastic but unable to see anything other than the driver's back. We passed several fresh accidents and neither Thanh nor the taxi driver even gave them a glance.
The traffic circulation in the center of Hanoi was exactly as advertised—chaotic, ill-advised, dangerous. You get the feeling, though, that in Hanoi the reckless drivers are not motivated, as they are elsewhere, by belligerance, road-rage, ego, showing off, etc., but rather by a desire to get where they're going in the shortest possible time even if it means risking their own life and the life of everyone in their path. Everybody uses their horn liberally. They honk whenever they pass someone, whenever they approach an intersection, whenever they're in an intersection, whenever somebody gets within three feet of them, whenever they get within three feet of somebody else or intend to. As a result, Hanoi sounds perpetually like a wedding couple being launched on their honeymoon by the best man and a dozen of his drunken friends.
The architecture in and around Hanoi is a charming blend of Asian and European. I saw mile after mile of freestanding four-, five-, and six-story houses, tall and narrow (12-15 feet wide), elegant, many with cantilevered balconies, covered terraces, or inner courtyards, and red tile roofs with Oriental spires and flourishes, all of it apparently unplanned development—new buildings strongly resembling older buildings in style, but no two exactly alike. We also passed block after block of cavernous sheds made of corrugated tin which looked for all the world like garages or machine shops, but in whose dim interiors could be seen dozens of cheap chairs ranged around large tables and as often as not the chairs were full of shadowy figures looking like a bingo crowd during a power blackout. I'd love to know what was going on in those sheds.
Hanoi is smaller, closer, more crowded feeling than I had anticipated, even after looking for hours at satellite images of it on Google Earth. Even the huge, elegant, expensive Metropole Hotel fronts a narrow, grimy, almost claustrophobic street. That goes for my hotel, too. The lobby is tiny, the elevator must surely have come from France, and the place has no air conditioning. Neither does the neighborhood bank, the neighborhood supermarket, or the neighborhood restaurant where Thanh and I had lunch. The lunch was good, by the way. We had sticky rice, grilled pork, grilled fish, steamed celery and salad greens, sliced cucumbers and tomatoes—as much as the two of us could eat—plus green tea and two 20-ounce bottles of beer for a total cost of about $7.00. No tipping is the custom here. Thanh says if I become a regular customer the restaurant will probably start giving me a discount.
My hotel room is about 15 feet square with a tile floor and a thirteen foot ceiling. Queen-size platform bed with a very firm mattress. Desk with chair and Internet jack. Large mirrored wardrobe. Mini-fridge. Cable TV with 57 channels. Two bedside tables and lamps. Telephone. Occasional table flanked by two easy chairs. Private bathroom. Toilet with bidet attachment (picture the spray hose on your kitchen sink). Four by eight foot covered balcony half filled with potted plants. A six-foot wide window and a glass door that open onto the balcony. The room is clean and pleasant and is costing me about $25 a day. As an experiment, you might try sending me a letter or care package c/o The World Hotel, 137 Mai Hac De, Hanoi, Vietnam. (Don't send anything valuable or vulnerable to humidity.) I've paid in advance through the end of August and will most probably stay here until the end of September.
Did I mention the absence of AC? I'd gladly trade my bidet attachment for some. My balcony looks out on some of those terraces and inner courtyards I mentioned. This evening as I sit at my computer looking at the full moon framed in my giant window I can see lines of laundry hung to dry and hear fighting cats and mothers scolding crying children. On the TV in the corner, Val Kilmer's face is speaking Vietnamese. It's not terribly hot but it's extremely humid. I can see I'm going to be taking lots of showers..
Thanh insisted I buy some groceries for my hotel room while we were near the supermarket. The Vietnamese are no more apt to eat peanut butter than the French are, but the store was well stocked with peanut butter and I bought some, along with two baguettes which proved tougher than shoe leather. Big deal. They were only 25 cents each, and I got a package of 10 coconut cookies for 40 cents. I wanted a plastic knife for the peanut butter, but all I could find was a package of twenty. I bought the pack when I realized it only cost 25 cents.
Tomorrow I'll visit my school (just around the corner) and try to find a bookstore that sells English language books.
The computer at the boarding gate at Taoyuan Airport in Taipei was printing out passenger lists and flight manifests on a tractor-feed dot matrix printer, but otherwise Taipei's airport looked like any big city airport—with fewer stores and restaurants, maybe, but more potted plants. There was even a shelf of potted plants in the "Man Toilet".
The three-hour hop from Taipei to Hanoi was uneventful. I sat next to a Hungarian couple and we were served dubious cuts of pork over gummy overcooked noodles garnished with a hardcooked brown egg—brown clear through except for a dark green yolk. We arrived at Hanoi in a warm drizzle that didn't obscure a flat green landscape brimming with lakes, ponds, and puddles. The temperature was around 80F, but the atmosphere was like your bathroom when somebody has just finished a hot shower.
Getting through Vietnamese customs took all of 30 seconds. A skinny boy wearing an army tunic glanced at my declaration (blank except for my name, address, and passport number), stamped my visa, and waved me through. No words were exchanged. The Hanoi airport is half the size of the Oakland airport. It has two baggage carousels. I had my luggage on the curb ten minutes after we landed.
Thanh met me as promised. He recognized me from my photo and I recognized him from his. I hadn't expected him to come to the airport in a cab, though. Because of my injured ribs, Thanh let me sit up front with the driver on the way back to town. I spent the 45-minute ride to the hotel painfully twisted in my seat so I could keep up a conversation with Thanh. As I expected, his spoken English was inferior to his written English and we both had quite a struggle communicating. Thanh is two years older than me, a physicist who lived and worked at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. He now works as a scientific advisor in Hanoi.
Rain continued to fall as we rolled past flooded fields and across the muddy river into the city. The highway is grade level pretty much the entire way and, though four lanes wide, has no median—just a low cement barrier along certain stretches. Pedestrians meandered across the four lanes here and there. Traffic, moderately heavy, was maybe 55% autos and trucks, 40% motorbikes and motorscooters, and 5% bicycles. The autos were a mixture of European-style compacts, mid-size sedans, and SUVs. I'd say there were more SUVs than small cars, but that might characterize traffic to and from the international airport more than Hanoi traffic in general. I saw no tractor trailers. A majority of the motorbikes and motorscooters carried two people. There were lots of rain ponchos and it was common to see the driver wearing a large one, the front of the poncho draped over the front of the scooter and the back of it draped over the passenger who rode along, dry under the plastic but unable to see anything other than the driver's back. We passed several fresh accidents and neither Thanh nor the taxi driver even gave them a glance.
The traffic circulation in the center of Hanoi was exactly as advertised—chaotic, ill-advised, dangerous. You get the feeling, though, that in Hanoi the reckless drivers are not motivated, as they are elsewhere, by belligerance, road-rage, ego, showing off, etc., but rather by a desire to get where they're going in the shortest possible time even if it means risking their own life and the life of everyone in their path. Everybody uses their horn liberally. They honk whenever they pass someone, whenever they approach an intersection, whenever they're in an intersection, whenever somebody gets within three feet of them, whenever they get within three feet of somebody else or intend to. As a result, Hanoi sounds perpetually like a wedding couple being launched on their honeymoon by the best man and a dozen of his drunken friends.
The architecture in and around Hanoi is a charming blend of Asian and European. I saw mile after mile of freestanding four-, five-, and six-story houses, tall and narrow (12-15 feet wide), elegant, many with cantilevered balconies, covered terraces, or inner courtyards, and red tile roofs with Oriental spires and flourishes, all of it apparently unplanned development—new buildings strongly resembling older buildings in style, but no two exactly alike. We also passed block after block of cavernous sheds made of corrugated tin which looked for all the world like garages or machine shops, but in whose dim interiors could be seen dozens of cheap chairs ranged around large tables and as often as not the chairs were full of shadowy figures looking like a bingo crowd during a power blackout. I'd love to know what was going on in those sheds.
Hanoi is smaller, closer, more crowded feeling than I had anticipated, even after looking for hours at satellite images of it on Google Earth. Even the huge, elegant, expensive Metropole Hotel fronts a narrow, grimy, almost claustrophobic street. That goes for my hotel, too. The lobby is tiny, the elevator must surely have come from France, and the place has no air conditioning. Neither does the neighborhood bank, the neighborhood supermarket, or the neighborhood restaurant where Thanh and I had lunch. The lunch was good, by the way. We had sticky rice, grilled pork, grilled fish, steamed celery and salad greens, sliced cucumbers and tomatoes—as much as the two of us could eat—plus green tea and two 20-ounce bottles of beer for a total cost of about $7.00. No tipping is the custom here. Thanh says if I become a regular customer the restaurant will probably start giving me a discount.
My hotel room is about 15 feet square with a tile floor and a thirteen foot ceiling. Queen-size platform bed with a very firm mattress. Desk with chair and Internet jack. Large mirrored wardrobe. Mini-fridge. Cable TV with 57 channels. Two bedside tables and lamps. Telephone. Occasional table flanked by two easy chairs. Private bathroom. Toilet with bidet attachment (picture the spray hose on your kitchen sink). Four by eight foot covered balcony half filled with potted plants. A six-foot wide window and a glass door that open onto the balcony. The room is clean and pleasant and is costing me about $25 a day. As an experiment, you might try sending me a letter or care package c/o The World Hotel, 137 Mai Hac De, Hanoi, Vietnam. (Don't send anything valuable or vulnerable to humidity.) I've paid in advance through the end of August and will most probably stay here until the end of September.
Did I mention the absence of AC? I'd gladly trade my bidet attachment for some. My balcony looks out on some of those terraces and inner courtyards I mentioned. This evening as I sit at my computer looking at the full moon framed in my giant window I can see lines of laundry hung to dry and hear fighting cats and mothers scolding crying children. On the TV in the corner, Val Kilmer's face is speaking Vietnamese. It's not terribly hot but it's extremely humid. I can see I'm going to be taking lots of showers..
Thanh insisted I buy some groceries for my hotel room while we were near the supermarket. The Vietnamese are no more apt to eat peanut butter than the French are, but the store was well stocked with peanut butter and I bought some, along with two baguettes which proved tougher than shoe leather. Big deal. They were only 25 cents each, and I got a package of 10 coconut cookies for 40 cents. I wanted a plastic knife for the peanut butter, but all I could find was a package of twenty. I bought the pack when I realized it only cost 25 cents.
Tomorrow I'll visit my school (just around the corner) and try to find a bookstore that sells English language books.
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