The Nikko Hotel

We’ve been spending a lot of time at the Nikko Hotel. Not because we’re staying there, but because they have an awesome outdoor swimming pool.

Bina’s been using it as therapy to help her with her back and I’ve just been coming along to enjoy the water and relaxation. We usually go in the evening, around 8:00pm, and are lucky enough to be alone most of the time. It’s so peaceful and quiet. It’s a shallow pool made for doing laps mostly, but there’s a hot tub next to it and beautiful palm trees lining one side. We’ve been to several hotel pools around Hanoi but Nikko is by far our favorite. It’s a Japanese hotel so it’s run very efficiently, cleanly, and with great attention to design and detail. There are Jacuzzis in both locker rooms and they always give us a bunch of towels and robes. There’s even a collection of disposable razors, shampoo, and combs available! It’s like a Metrosexual’s dream locker room!

Here are some pictures of the pool. They’re very dark but then, like I said, we only go there at night. The shadowy figure you see is Bina.




There are also a couple of restaurants in the hotel and one night we decided to try one. This is a picture of my (New England) Clam Chowder and Curry battered calamari! It was really delicious at first, but the more we ate the calamari the more suspicious we became of its freshness. Bina was sick the next day.


But regardless, we love our regular visits to the Nikko. The people at the hotel are really friendly. Of course, sometimes they’re a little too friendly. One time after we went swimming I was in the locker room changing and this Vietnamese guy was standing next to me getting dressed as well. All of the sudden he starts singing “Hello” by Lionel Ritchie! It was a little creepy but the thing is “Hello” is like a modern hit here in Hanoi. (For some strange reason. Other western pop hits include Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence” and anything by Celine Dion.) Anyway, so I didn’t really know what to say or do while I was standing there naked next to this guy crooning “Hello” so I just curled up into a ball and started weeping. No, just kidding. I got dressed and left after the second chorus. Despite my discomfort he did have quite a melodious voice. He’s probably a karaoke champion or something.



So if you come to Hanoi and you want to go swimming, the Hotel Nikko is your best bet.

Coffee!

The coffee in Hanoi is some of the best I’ve ever had. They seem to pride themselves on a slow, flavorful cup of coffee that forces you to sit and relax while you dink it. I’ve had several cups of great coffee since I’ve been here and not one of them is exactly like the other. My favorite so far was at a small café called Café 129 a few blocks from my apartment. It was served in a regular size coffee cup but was only a small shot of coffee. An espresso in a big cup. Then the milk was served on the side. Usually they give you condensed milk already mixed in but this one was on the side. I was able to mix in exactly what I wanted and the flavor was incredible. I like my coffee hot so that’s primarily what I’ve been experimenting with. There are classic cappuccinos and lattes, but the hot espresso with condensed milk is my favorite so far.


Bina, on the other hand likes her coffee chilled. So here’s a small photomontage of a cup she had at this café earlier this week.

The coffee comes in a small drip container and placed over a glass of condensed milk. This picture shows the coffee already in the glass. It had been dripping for several minutes. Notice how the coffee and milk remain totally separated.


Then you mix it up.


Pour it into a glass of ice.


And voila! Ice Coffee.

Bamboo Juice

There are a couple of interesting social drinking practices that happen here on a daily basis. My favorite, and one I completely understand, is called Bia Hoi and involves drinking beer from local breweries. There are several Bia Hoi places, equivalent to western bars, but mostly you see people on the sidewalk in makeshift little gatherings around small tables and little plastic stools that sit only about 6 inches high. Different proprieters have different brews and anyone can have a seat and drink for as long as they want. And it’s really cheap. Also, the beer starts flowing early in the morning and lasts all day long, but mostly it’s an afternoon or evening ritual.

The other social drinking practice is very similar in appearance but the drink is very different. I haven’t tried this one yet but hope to soon. The truth is I can’t stand the smell of it so I’m not brave enough just yet. It looks like fresh bamboo, and until I actual know what it is that’s what I’m going to refer to it as. I hear that bamboo juice is very medicinal and tastes “Delicious” and “Nutty”. (I think you’d have to be a bit “nutty” to drink it!! harhar) but that must be what it is. Bamboo juice!

People flock to it in droves and sit around drinking it at different times of the day. It’s so popular that there are places set up right next to each other, one right after the other serving it.

They have this machine that’s basically a giant press that they feed the bamboo through.

The juice is collected underneath and poured into glasses.

The scraps are then collected by different people from the more rural areas and taken away. I don’t really know what they do with the bamboo scraps but I imagine it’s very instrumental to some kind of basket weaving or chair making or something. The people here are really resourceful and recycle just about everything.

The Apartment.

Our apartment is awesome. Bina picked it out before I came and I couldn’t have imagined a better place. It’s amazing. I’m actually struggling day to day with wanting to explore and wanting to just stay in and enjoy the place. It’s not a big apartment but it’s definitely the nicest place I’ve ever lived. There’s a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. Then a really nice big living room area with a sofa that turns into a bed (Note to visitors!) and a balcony that is more peaceful than a religious landmark. We recently bought a couple of chairs and a table to leave out there for morning coffee or late afternoon cocktails. It’s by far my favorite place in the whole apartment. Anyway, enough with waxing poetic about the living conditions. Here are some pictures:

Traffic-rific!!

Hanoi is a wild city. It feels like it’s on the edge of modernization. It’s almost like they’ve been given all the things to be a modern city but they haven’t quite figured out how to use them yet. Because of this I feel like this is a very exciting place to be right now. There’s a great need for good graphic design yet not very many people know how to use the proper computer programs. And the traffic situation is unbelievable.

I’ve recently learned that Hanoi is a city known for its Moped traffic. I don’t remember reading this in any of the guidebooks but it’s obviously true. Someone told me that there’s an excess of 3000 new cars registered every month here yet the system hasn’t been fine-tuned enough to accommodate them all. It’s not at all what I was expecting to find here. I was thinking that Hanoi was going to be a quiet and quaint little city with an occasional surge of bicycle traffic that would be endearing and look old-worldly, but instead what I started to witness was a constant onslaught of rushing two-way traffic full of cars, mopeds, bicycles, and people, all ignoring each other’s right-of-way, totally disregarding the vulnerability of their fellow commuters, and not even the slightest hint of yielding to pedestrians. Is this what communism is about? Where’s the authority? Where are the traffic lights?

The best way to describe the street traffic here is to give you a mental image of New York City’s China Town at rush hour on a Saturday, but without any order. Imagine there are no traffic lights and no one giving a shit about anyone else. Imagine that you might be able to find relief on the sidewalks if they weren’t so jam-packed with parked mopeds and people sitting around blocking any hopeful passage through. Imagine trying to cross this mess of rushing traffic like Frogger but with only one life, jolting forward, stepping back, your adrenalin rushing as your eyes dart around for oncoming collisions. And imagine that this is what EVERY intersection is like! It’s an artform that these people have been honing from the beginning but unfortunately I think it’s getting worse. Even for them. I see accidents all the time. There’s a constant montage of horn-honking and motor revving, but no yelling and no real obvious display of aggravation. This is what’s so amazing about the whole thing; they totally accept that this is how it is and they don’t complain. Everyone looks so nonplused about the chaos and even docile when they’re sideswiped right off their bikes. Not even their expressions reveal the kind of frustration that would surely drive any westerner into an uncontrollable rage. Its rather Zen if you think about it. Like a great big living organism of trust. But maybe that’s being too overly optimistic. The streets here are scary, period.

Hell, screw the mental image, here’s a video:
TRAFFIC


I’m getting better at crossing the street every day. At this point I just start walking out into the oncoming traffic. I’ve learned that instead of looking at the flow of vehicles as one big obstacle, you have to look at each motorist individually, and cross their paths one at a time. With this approach you end up in the middle of it all using slower more deliberate movements rather than quick, bold, panicking gestures. Kind of like a dance. Not a very graceful dance, but a dance nonetheless.

Getting There is Half the Fun

On the flight from New York to Malaysia I heard an unexpected stop mentioned. Stockholm. “We’re going to Sweden?” I thought. How could it be? There was never any mention of Sweden when I bought my ticket. I don’t want to go to Sweden. I have no interest in being in Sweden. Oh well, here comes Sweden. Of course we were only there for a couple of hours so I didn’t really see anything. However the airport bathrooms were for single occupancy only, which, if that’s any indication of how the Swedes value privacy in the restroom I can’t complain. But what a major inconvenience for two hundred plus people having to use the toilet all at once. But alas, there must be a method to their madness. After all, I did witness one of their public “Smoking booths” which resembled an oversized, open-face phone booth with a small air suction vent in the ceiling. It was quite an ingenious contraption. People were standing around inside smoking away while their billowing clouds tapered off into a small fan above their heads. Why don’t we see more of these all over the place? Chalk one up for Sweden!

After we were airborne again I settled back into my tiny one-foot squared space and tried to relax. Once the passenger in front of me leaned back there was no room left for even the thought of relaxation. I could barely fit the thoughts of boredom and annoyance within my allotted space let alone my own feet. The check-in clerk at the airport had graciously offered me whatever seat I wanted and I said “Window”. That was a mistake. You should never ask for a window seat on such a long flight. Inevitably you’ll be sandwiched in by other people who want to sleep and will be totally unsympathetic to your restless needs for frequent visits to the rest of the plane. This arrangement was no exception. It also seemed like the ticket agent had played a practical joke on me because my window seat, although on the wall of the plane, was not next to a window. It was one of those few seats along the side that can’t afford a window due to its important positioning within the reinforcement structure of the aircraft. This compromise also means that the slight indentation you get at a window seat was gone. This precious two-inch reservoir would have been greatly appreciated for the twenty some-odd hours I was sitting there. I thought I could tough it out until we switched planes in Malaysia but to my disbelief it was the same seat. Different plane, but same seat. That’s when I knew the ticket agent was fucking with me.

Malaysia looked like a beautiful country from inside the airport. It reminded me of Hawaii. It looked hot and humid in that fresh tropical way that makes you want to get outside and be lazy. I couldn’t tell what time of day it was even though I knew it was six o’clock. Was it six o’clock in the morning or six o’clock at night? It was dark and I couldn’t remember which was more likely in this part of the word, darkness at six in the morning or at night. So I waited until the light changed. When the sun came up I re-synched my bearings and began exploring. What I found in the airport was very different from what I was seeing outside. It looked like a mall in Anytown USA. There was a McDonalds, a few lame-ass gift shops and a Starbucks. I decided to sit at Starbucks and see if I could get my computer on-line. My battery was quickly running out but I was able to find a free wireless signal that let me get online and check email and such. I had about six hours to kill in Malaysia so when my computer finally died I started wandering around again.





I found a giant candy store which puzzled me because Bina had told me that there was no chocolate in Southeast Asia. I had been smuggling a small package of precious Twix bars and wondered what she was talking about since here I was in front of one of the largest displays of worldwide candy anyone could ever find. But upon further inspection I realized that although many stores in Southeast Asia will stock M&M’s, Snickers, Cadbury, etc etc, Twix is a rare find. (Note for those planning to visit.)

At this point in the journey I was getting exhausted and quite loopy. I had been fed more times than I imagined an airline would do. There was a constant flow of beer, wine and water. There was a breakfast, then a lunch, then a dinner, then another breakfast, then, a dinner? A breakfast? Was that lunch again? What the hell time is it? What time of day am I suppose to pretend it is now? Shit, I’m so wired on coffee I forgot how tired I’m supposed to be. We chased the sun for a while and lost. But it had been perfect daylight in Sweden. Luckily Vietnam and Malaysia are only an hour off so when we entered Vietnam’s airspace it was early afternoon.

I was glad to get out of the plane. Now I had to gather my things and begin my new life in Vietnam. I was worried about my luggage because upon check-in I was told it was too heavy. I could either repack it there in the airport or pay the hefty fines. I didn’t want to stress about it too much so I paid the fines. But this left me thinking that maybe it wouldn’t make it all the way. Maybe the baggage workers would get mad at this big dumb American suitcase and throw it on a plane to Russia or something. I stood there waiting for my giant suitcase to come around and it seemed to take an eternity. I saw Bina outside the gate waiting. She was such a beautiful sight. And then my bag appeared. I went through customs without a hitch and had my passport approved easily. Then I left the gate and out into the hot humid Vietnam day. Bina hailed a cab and we were off. I had spent the past day or so in air conditioning and recycled air that I wasn’t use to the humidity and oppressive heat. But it still felt good. I had arrived easily, safely, and relatively quickly, so there was nothing to complain about. I was now a resident of Hanoi.