Textick

Saturday, 17th December, Sunny Hotel, Hanoi, 8:05pm

Well, considering I spent all of yesterday curled up in bed, only leaving to vomit and feel generally sorry for myself, I don’t have much to add. Actually that’s not entirely true; we did heaps and heaps of stuff today, so I do have a bit to report, but yesterday was a write-off . I stayed in the hotel and snoozed, while James went out to a prison for American POWs and wandered the streets taking amusing photos. He got a little sad, though, having to spend the day by himself. He wanted me to come out for dinner, but after I cried and said “please don’t make me” he went out by himself. I slept and slept and slept, and then James and I both slept, and then he had weird dreams and I woke up and he had to talk about his weird dreams to ease his troubled mind, and then we both slept again.
This morning we got up bright and early, a little achy from having overslept, but also because the mattresses in this hotel are sucky. Actually, this whole hotel is really weird. There doesn’t appear to anybody over 25 working here (although with the Vietnamese, who can really tell?). James and I decided that it’s like some rich Vietnamese couple bought this hotel, then gave it to their kids to manage. All the staff are like arrogant rich kids, wearing skivvies and spending all day on the internet that’s supposed to be for us. And there’s this one guy in charge of the tours, who has harassed us endlessly about booking tours. So annoying! Our room is fabulous though, but between the room and the street, it’s a bit much. James is more annoyed with the rubbish staff than I am, though, but only because he’s experienced more rudeness than me. Oh, and thanks to everyone’s favourite avian flu, no place is serving eggs. So the “free breakfast” here is only bread and jam. I was so angry this morning because I was feeling quite sick still, and I asked for some fruit (there were bananas available the day before) and the guy said, “we haven’t been able to get any fruit today” and I just snapped “what do you mean you can’t get fruit?? People walk around with fruit hanging off their shoulders!!” (and I wasn’t exaggerating. Everywhere here women walk around with grapes, bananas, pineapples, etc, in baskets hanging from either end of a bendy bamboo stick). About five minutes later, a plate of bananas appeared before me. I was just so shitty because eggs and chicken are not the only breakfast alternatives; everywhere else we’ve been have also offered noodle soups and pancakes.
So after getting cranky over the lack of breakfast choice, we caught a taxi to Uncle Ho’s mausoleum. The whole experience was…surreal. There were more armed guards than I could count, both in the standard olive green and a stark white. First we had to drop off all baggage, then James’ camera, then we walked in pairs up a plastic red carpet marked by guards with bayonets. If somebody talked, or had their hands in their pockets, or looked goofy, the guards pulled them aside and grunted warnings to them. The walk around the display cabinet was short, a u-shape with a clear view of Ho Chi Minh, resting peacefully in his glass coffin. The body itself was strangely waxy-looking, and it didn’t look at all real. James asked later if I thought his organs were still in there. I guessed that they were. Everyone we spoke to afterwards had the same “yeah…that was weird” reaction that we did. It was just surreal. Not incredible, just strange. The fact that you and fifty million other tourists are looking at a thirty-five year old dead body.
The Ho Chi Minh complex closes at 11am, so we rushed through the other exhibits, then walked to the Temple of Literature. It was similar to other pagodas we’ve visited, except that there were grimy wells of heavenly contentment or something.
We came back to the hotel for a nap and a movie, after eating lunch in a café that overlooked the city.
At about four, we headed out to see the water puppet show. Water puppets are a traditional Vietnamese art that came about as a form of entertainment during the flood season in the country. The show was great; we got more expensive seats, but got a free CD as well. The actual positioning of the seats was pretty crap, though, so at least we got the CDs. It was music, a little bit of Vietnamese dialogue, and lots of splashing. The funniest thing was how bored the musicians looked with the whole show. None of them smiled once, and they played the music with blank-faced detachment. Plus, there were two guys sitting in front us who looked exactly like a young Ricky Gervais and an older Stephan Merchant (but they were sitting separately to each other).
Afterwards, I had an amusing conversation at a restaurant when I was trying to ask whether or not the salads are washed in distilled water. After a few minutes, I discovered the key word was “clean,” not “wash.” The restaurant was very tucked away and sweet, and we had delicious meals. Then we had a beer at a local Beer Hoi bar, which is a curb-side drinking place that sells keg beer for .10 cents a glass. And they’re not small glasses! We squatted on tiny plastic stools and got yelled at for moving the stools to far to the left. Across the road was a Caucasian guy in army pants (there are freaky amount of people in army pants here), swaying on his stool and talking to nobody.
We saw a lot of funny people today. I shall list then below:
- A woman bent almost in half, her back hunched up, shuffling along with a walking stick.
- A woman sitting in the gutter, leaning against a car, drinking beer. She called out “hello” and gave us a toothless grin. James said “Do you think she called her one tooth “Chopper”?”
- A man wearing a Man U shirt three sizes too small for his beer gut, a bald patch, and who was eating a steak that was still mooing.
- A “Special Forces” couple, both wearing army pants and jackets, with large biceps and an unnecessarily aggressive appearance.
- A hawker who tried to sell us grapes, and when we said no, she kept insisting, and we started laughing and saying “no” more, but she just more eager and even put the grapes down and tried to make me sample one.
- A book-seller that James wrangled down yesterday. James bartered his little booty off, so much so that the bookseller remember him today and was like “you!” and they both had a good laugh about it.
- A tour group of semi-retired French couples wearing blue-tooth earpieces to hear their guide. James gave me permission to put arsenic in his coffee if he ever turns into one of those kinds of tourists.
- An older man with knee-socks and a pipe.
- A woman writing something in a notebook that had everybody around fascinated. One sleazy man with gold jewellery looked over her shoulder for ages, and another man took photos of her as she worked.
- A man pissing on a gate surrounding the Temple of Literature. He was so drunk he had to rest his head on the wall in order to pee in pathetic spurts.

Tomorrow we’re going to spend three days and two nights on Halong Bay. I can’t wait to get out in fresh air!! After being sick, the pollution and cigarette smoke of Hanoi is just too much for me. Oh, and speaking of how crappy the service in our hotel is, the staff haven’t turned on the light in the corridor outside our room. I reckon they don’t even know we’re here! And they rang me last night at gone 10pm to ask if we were staying another night. When I said we were, they sounded disappointed. I was like “whatever” and hung up. At least Halong Bay (should) be relaxing!!

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