(14): Hanoi Day 3: Friday - You ain't got no job, you ain't got shit to do

(*) i woke up early b/c of a combination of zee germans leaving for halong bay / the heat / early morning announcements. the early morning announcements were loud talking done through speakers set up throughout the street on the equivalent of a utility pole. supposedly it is only the news blared over the city streets, however i have a sneaking suspicion the announcements include "work is happiness", "efficiency is godliness", and "through work all things are possible". this is the day kristan is to arrive.



(*) i read about 100 pages, and i got fully going to head out to meet kristan at about 11am. i left to go to ho chi minh's mausoleum, where both myself & kristan agreed to meet at half way around the world. an interesting note: we had planned this entire trip with me in chicago & him in los angeles. and being that both of us are basically, "eh, fuck it" when it comes to planning outside of our day jobs, we figured this would be interesting. it was. i got to the mausoleum at around 1. the mausoleum was closed. of course. note to others: the mausoleum is closed on fridays.

---------> this is how vietnamese individuals sleep on benches.



---------> get a haircut at your local sidewalk barber shop. and by shop, i mean, the guy has a chair and some scissors.



i took a rest stop atop the stairs to the museum and started writing / catching up on my journal. it ended up with me making friends with a driver who grew up outside hanoi. he is 31 years old. his teeth consisted of two layers - a good white top row of teeth, and a brown nasty bottom row of jacked teeth. there was also a group of 7-8 asian tourists who stopped to admire my writing in my journal. it was odd to be the focus of someone's amazement. what's even more, it was not the way i looked or the color of my skin, but the simple way in which i wrote words. they stared at a page of just plain written english with complete amazement. i shook hands with a few of the individuals. i had to find a place to piss, so i walked to a convention center where i found a visually pristine, but odor-filled pisser. too much information, perhaps, but it was written in my journal.

(*) i walked around post-urination, and saw a few embassies and clothing stores. i got back to the mausoleum at around 2:30. expecting to wait another hour, i was shocked to see a tall white guy with some local individual pointing at me at the end of the block. it was THE KRISTAN. not how i expected to meet him - not as hollywood as i had envisioned, but amazing still to meet your friend 1/2 way around the world. makes me laugh at the childhood saying of "you digging a hole to china?"

the craziest portion of this story is that the local individual who was pointing at me next to kristan, actually helped kristan find me. this is how absolutely in tune vietnamese hustlers are with their surroundings. apparently, kristan was meandering around the mausoleum with no real focus of his energies. the local had seen me sitting on the museum's stairs an hour or so earlier, a half block from the mausoleum. kristan's newest tour guide, the pointing local, had seen Kristan wandering and came up to him and stated that the person he was looking for (me) had just been sitting down in front of the museum. insane. the eyes of vietnamese big brother are everywhere. just a lesson.

(*) kristan and myself walked back to the hostel, hand in hand, merrily skipping along our way. ok ok. so we weren't skipping. we discussed our different recent adventures. as i directed us back to the hostel using my ridiculously on point navigational skills, i happily watched myself enjoying kristan go through the shell shock that is walking through asia for the first time, on top of walking through vietnam for the first time, all sprinkled with the experience that is walking through hanoi for the first time. he had to wipe drool off his face at several times.




we stopped at the "jasper hotel", just for the hell of it to check the price for kristan. we then returned back to the hotel, where they had a double for kristan, alone, for $8. although extremely expensive for hanoi vietnam (seriously), we figured if at any point we lost contact with zee germans, we could split the room for $4.

he showered, and his jet lag continued as we walked out into hanoi. i walked him through the old quarter with its shops stacked on top of each other. we also stumbled upon an outdoor market where fish and snakes were being sold. i punked out and did not buy snake. to my adoring fans, i apologize. i did not buy a snake and then drink its blood. our travels also took us around the lake.




(*) i brought kristan to mama's. we ate at the same child table as another vietnamese family. our travels brought us back to the hostel where we met up with zee germans & rufus. rufus lead us in a charge to eat, again. this time we dined on "bun ga". kristan & i drank the beer i had accidentally bought a few days ago while i spent my last day in china. the bun was good, minus the peanuts. peanuts always ruin meals. plus, i was too full. but what was my loss, was rufus' gain. he cleaned up everything i did not. and, i kid you not, after this eating, rufus left for more food. kristan, zee germans & myself made the more appropriate and intelligent choice by choosing to consume more, not food, but liquid. we went to dragonfly.

(*) while looking to get to dragonfly, we had to stop at "minh's jazz lounge" for kristan to piss. while there, i was feeling generous and bought 4 shots of jack for 210,000 dong. that is what they call in vietnam "ripping off a tourist". although this is nearly 2 full days to a traveler, i retreated back to my chicago days in which 4 shots for about $13 and no need for a tip really is not that bad. after the shot, our group left, and we walked through the night market - basically clothes and fashion with amusement type food.

---------> while walking through the night market, which was basically shops set up on addison outside of wrigley field and addison being closed off to all vehicular traffic, i noticed an odd occurrence - construction. at midnight. construction at midnight utilizing jackhammers. these vietnamese construction workers were ripping up sidewalks right outside of people's homes, with jackhammers, at about midnight. if that happened at my apartment in chicago, i would throw a shitfit.

in vietnam, nothing. just the usual.

(*) after weaving in and out of traffic of human feet - we took off to dragonfly. we got there just in time for 2 for 1 happy hour of Halidas for 15,000 dong. we played foos. i ran out of money and went with sabine to find an atm in the darkened streets of hanoi. the first atm did not work. the 2nd atm machine worked. although the 2nd atm machine was odd in that i had to walk up 4 stairs to get to the machine. one of the odder atm machine placements i've seen in my life.

i attempted to learn german on the walk back with sabine. at the end of the night, nobody was working at the bar - all were dancing in a circle trying to get thhe tourists involved. crap music. it was at this point, i felt like i was at kam's. however, one of the kids / tourists who loved it was the 16 year old kid with the white popped collar. oh tourists are so entertaining. we destroyed at foosball that night. as we would for the next few nights.

(*) the bar closed at midnight. oddly, i was able to leave the bar with a drink in my hand. the bar emptied out into the street. despite it being a friday night, eerily enough, no one was out on the streets. the streets were empty and the shops were closed, minus the frickin motobikes. it seems communists and socialists tend to shut things down a bit early before the rock n roll music too fully corrupts their youth and chaos manifests itself through mischief. we would later learn, this is absolutely true.

sabine got a free ride down the street on the motorbike of a vietnamese girl we had met, named "ni". we're pretty sure she only talked to us to try to get us to go somewhere at the end of the night where her & her friends could jump us, take our money, and beat the hell out of us. i think we made a smart decision with this one. we went down town to the main intersection, and after being engaged in drunk conversation to see what the best club is, we chose to head back to the hotel for the night.

(*) the walk home was uneventful, minus us being completely lost. thankfully the yellow bakery sign saved the day yet again. whenever i was lost in hanoi, i would continue to wander in circles until i found this particular yellow bakery sign. this sign would eventually become a physical manifestation of eternal salvation. once i saw that lovely yellow awning, i knew how to get home, and at the same time, became instantaneously excited to lay down and rest my weary bones. i'll always have a special place in my heart for that sign.

we entered the hostel with bodies, once again in a hotel i was staying at, strewn across the lobby in cots & a fan going and doors unlocked. we went upstairs. i entered kristan's room for something. sabine followed,. i got whatever that something was. jokingly, kristan spits the following line that will live in infamy:

i'm not saying anything, i'm just saying - there's an extra spot in my bed.

and with that, we all passed out.

---------> the world is too large to settle. period.

(13) Hanoi: Thursday, I Think

(*) woke up at 7 am or so b/c i fell asleep in the sauna and woke up in a pile of sweat. the first night staying in the hotel, we opted to go without air conditioning. this was a ridiculous mistake on our part. i thought i couldn't breathe when i woke up. quite literally, i was gasping for air. and may i mention the only reason we went without air conditioning was because it cost an extra $1. haha.

unable to return to the hopeless euphoric rejuvenation that sleep never is, i went downstairs to e-mail. after a while, martin awoke to join. we decided breakfast @ the hostel: bread, butter, jam, tomato, and cucumber slices for 10,000 dong was our best play. at an extra 10,000, a large water was given to us. although the water was cheaper on the outside, it was worthwhile as induced by our laziness. roy, our israeli friend, threw down 15,000 to get eggs, plus what we had ordered. talk about balling.

we talked about loans, the army, tuition expenses.

(*) i checked my e-mail to make sure kristan's story about leaving 1 day after they said b/c of visa and possible standby issues in korea was still true. it was.

(*) i'm not sick yet. yay.

(*) sabine planned our walking day trip. on our way to the first place - a temple - martin and i went postal with my camera - running through a pair of batteries in little less than 1 day. i suppose that's also the result you get when you buy things off the blackmarket. even though they are technically in a proper store. here is a smattering of the pics i took. i call this collection "everyday life in an absolutely unusual world".



man welding. outside. on the sidewalk.



multiple forms of balance.



flowers.



foot.



public gambling.

-----------> everyone in the world should be forced to drive scooters, except for industrial uses. this would infinitely increase fun, while linearly decreasing pollution.

(*) the first stop is the temple of literature. built about 1000 a.d. maybe 600 a.d. 3 things were instrumental in its creation. small ponds, red lanterns, turtles. few group photos. heard local traditional vietnamese musical performance. we then left.

here are 3

border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5124693156872829170" />

so that's what you call turtles in vietnamese. or english. or, wait. what?

href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4Zhjv-orFaSWmQOAX1fscmiPyWB-Xxj7cOsrfaX46-OM7zfgEnvbzWigrJgrC91_Lyr1CmUZX3WQDTaxcg5Pguk0Z2O9z0eKegie0ZQ31NtH-hH6yqMYRTn1kheas35UKkY6AShyphenhyphendJSjq/s1600-h/Asia+288.jpg">

the vietnamese version of mr. grinch. my sister's retarded dog.



me. with stereotypical asian tourist greeting sign.

(*) we ate @ KFC - the trendy restaurant which serves fountain drinks in a glass, uses pseudo plates and offers modern seating. sabine & martin were really enthusiastic about the whole kfc experience. their jollility amused me. surprisingly enough, the kfc itself wasn't that bad. the bathrooms were miraculously clean. its amazing how clean bathrooms can get when a country really utilizes its cheap and massive labor force.




(*) next, we hit the quad of ho chi minh's mausoleum & museum. the mausoleum was closed. we passed out under a tree for a while. as there are not too many parks or places to rest in hanoi without a constant stream of noise being funneled into the park, this was a welcomed difference from the urbanity that was hanoi. here are hipster pictures.



martin & sabine taking an interesting perspective picture



tree. an awesome tree. but a simple tree nonetheless.

(*) we then walked into 2 lakes / parks - we had to pay .25 cents to the woman at the gate, who we are pretty sure did not work for any city park governmental office and instead merely took & pocketed the money. the closest we've come to peace & quiet, were these 2 lakes / parks. i've never heard silence so deafening before. we got to see depressed peacocks & monkeys that were in utterly despicable cages in the park: both lacking clean water and clean sanitation. i thin the vietnamese attempted to create a very mini zoo in the middle of these parks, by erecting several cages for several animals. but it was the most depressing thing i had ever seen in regards to animals. these animals were not happy looking animals.

we saw 2 rifles & 2 levers behind the remnants of what appeared to be a firing range. 8 year olds trying to hustle and get money off one of us through either pity or pickpocketing. the park was not gorgeous, but was pretty because of the veiled attempt given to ensure quiet peace.




(*) afterwards, the group made our way back towards the hostel. after a bit of confusion, near the tail end, we scored the location of our hostel at about 3:30 pm. martin & i returned to the place of lunch yesterday for a 2nd attack. we unfortunately did not receive the hot sauce, we only got hot sauce served with our meal, but it was still delicious. then we went DVD shopping. i bought 2 dvd's - Coachella music festival & Miles Davis live. we walked back to the hostel to get out of my drenched shirt. i checked my email.

(*) after my shower, we had 20 minutes to get to the firebreathing motherfucking water puppets. we were lead by the irritated comptroller sabine. with sabine in the lead, we got there jackie joyner kersee style. except no one died in the end b/c of heart failure. 20,000 dong got us the 2nd to last row. if you ever have a chance - go see firebreathing motherfucking water puppets show. the voices were hilarious, the musicians were talented, and the actual play itself was light hearted and, for no english spoken in the play - it was entertaining and cultural.

(*) the show ended with me, rufus & the germans having our chairs forced knees into our stomachs - they were not constructed for lanky westerners. we stepped out into the night. rufus was hungry - so we stopped at what i deem "mama's place". it was the best ambience ever. it was a literal road side cafe. we ate on the american equivalent of the sidewalk, inches from the bustling street, all while on plastic small child like tables & chairs. we ate pho ga which is basically a bowl of noodles with chicken. i also ate hot peppers that were small, and bright hues of red and orange. they were not only incredibly tasteful, but they were incredibly hot.

(*) the plan was not to go out as zee germans and rufus were taking a side trip to halong bay early in the morning. so we went back to the hostel, checked my email, read 'atlas shrugged' and drew. got to sleep by around 11 / 11:30.

(12) Hanoi: Utter Urbanity

(*) we ended up crashing at the hostel. it was one of the top 7 showers of all time, followed immediately by the most sweat ever. but, as i had begun to learn and as i would eventually completely learn, that would be the rule of every day. vietnam is the sweatiest place in the world. the odder fact is that the local vietnamese individuals never look as if they are sweating. whereas i, as a white foreigner, would take one step out of the shower and immediately begin to sweat. by the end of my southeastern asia adventures, i actually enjoyed cool showers. not cold, but cool. which for me, is saying a lot. normally i enjoy the skin of my back being scorched off.

(*) we walked out of the hostel and onto the crazy fucking urban insanity (urbanity) that is the hanoi street. we found an atm. it worked. thank god. i took out a whopping 1,000,000 dong. yep. i have to be honest with you. i've never held that much dong in my hand in one moment. it was a lot of dong for one man to hold. granted that was a ridiculous amount of dong in my hand, but it was even more dong for one man to have in his pocket. my pocket was exploding with dong. i hadn't had that much dong explode out of my pockets before. i love dong. lots and lots of dong. i had so much dong, i did not know how exactly i should handle all my dong. i could go on with dong. but i won't. oh, and 1,000,000 dong is approximately $62.50. it was like monopoly money.

(*) we (from here on out meaning myself, sabine, martin, and rudak) went in search for food. on the way, i bought a pink Hello Kitty towel. i needed a towel, as i had forgotten to pack that during the 25 minutes i was preparing in chicago for my trip half way across the world. yep - it took me 25 minutes to pack for a month and change halfway across the world. either i am professional traveler, or an idiot. your call.

so, i figured why go half ass ridiculous when i could go full blown circus clown ridiculous with the purchasing of a ridiculous towel for 20,000 dong. which is about $1.25. at this point, i'm scoring deals all over hanoi. the first food place was too western - i.e. i think it served hamburgers and pizza. f that. the 2nd place was non-existent. i have no idea what this means, but it is what i wrote in my journal, so it goes down. the 3rd place was too expensive. the 4th place served only fish. the fifth place was similar to the 3rd. at this point, i'm thinking its almost time for me to light up a cigarette as to chain smoke my way through this food adventure. but then, there it was: gourmet salvation. it was a place with small plastic, dingy kid's chairs and tables. the place only had 3 tables. it was no longer wider than 8 feet. i ordered a steak & green peppers plate with kick ass hot sauce. the first beer i had with the meal was called "hanoi beer" - it tasted like root beer. the 2nd beer i had, was much better. here is a picture of the family as we enjoyed dinner with ourselves.



the guy on the top left is Rudak. actually, i don't know what his name was. he traveled with us for a few days. he was an incredibly intense traveler. army boots, crewcut, willingness to go up to locals and invite them to lunch/dinner that he would pay for just so he could practice learning the local language - the whole 9 yards. the top right is martin. the bottom left is sabine. the bottom right is our israeli friend roy. i think his name was roy. eh. i forget. roy, if you're out there, is your name roy?

(*) reenergized & refreshed, we headed off to the lake in the middle of the city where we quickly learned the name of the survival game - walk INTO danger. when you're crossing a street in vietnam, you quite literally have to step into danger. the thing with vietnamese "rules of the road" are, well, they don't exist. the only thing red lights mean within this cramped city is to remind you that the color of blood is red, and that is what will be oozing out of your freshly cracked spine if you do not pay attention. from what i could finally understand, only cars stop at red lights. and being that cars make up 10% of the local vietnamese commuting alternatives, red lights really mean jack shit. i chose to swear there because a word of lesser profanity really does not come close to driving the point home. if you are ever crossing a vietnamese street, you need to cross at a steady pace as the local drivers will actually drive around you. it is when you hesitate or begin to walk quicker when you throw a motorbike driver. as the motorbike driver is encompassed by an ocean of other motorbike drivers piled on top of each other, one false move by a pedestrian sends a ripple effect of possibly disastrous consequences out towards the other unsuspecting motorbike riders.

so if you ever are faced with the prospects of it being your first time crossing a major intersection or street in hanoi, take my advice: close your eyes, and slowly put one foot in front of the other until you have reached the other end of the street.

(*) sabine is suckered into a picture with a woman carrying 2 bags of fruity + "authentic" vietnamese hat. it cost her & martin a bag of fruit. the small local scam is as such. all women wear the traditional hat featured in the far right of the photograph below of the ridiculous tourists. they asked ryan to take a picture of them, and laughing at my disdain for tourists such as these (it just rubbed myself & kristan the wrong way, and we could only explain it to you after 6 rounds of .12 Hanoi beer), i took out my camera & took a picture of them. the woman immediately said, "oh, you can take a picture of us." i told her i already had. moving on.





the women wearing those type of hats is carrying fruit on an enlarged scale lady justice hangs onto while deciding the fate of certain individuals. the one side is weighed down by fruit. they balance the scale on their shoulder as they walk around hanoi. there are certain ladies carrying this fruit which scopes out those white foreigners, such as us, wandering cluelessly around their beloved city. they stalk you, and then when the time is right, they come at you full force and insist on you taking a picture wearing the hat & carrying the scale. after you do so, they then insist equally as forcefully, if not moreso with their added ammunition of you getting a picture out of the deal, to buy their fruit.

moral of the story = if you are not hungry, skip out on this scam. if you are hungry, you can always get a serving of fruit with a side of a ridiculous tourist picture you can save for the rest of your life.

(*) kristan & myself decide we will travel to da nang & nha trang as our two cities between hanoi & saigon. this plan, like the majority of our trip, will not turn out as we first decided.

(*) and i'm quoting from my journal, "i bought 333 beer from running woman". i don't remember a woman running selling beer. "333" beer is a brand of beer in vietnam, much as PBR and Schlitz are brands of american beer. it was entertaining when kristan and myself were traveling with murtha because "3" in vietnamese = "bah" pronounced "bah". "beer" in vietnamese is "bia", pronounced "bee-ah". so when us 3 were together the first thing out of our mouths was "bah bah bah bia". this became even more entertaining after a few rounds. then after a few jacks it sounded like we had just puked their language out of our mouths.

(*) we walked around the lake at night & took a few pictures. i bought some batteries. took a few pictures. here is a small offering of both the lake @ night and an attempt to convey to you, my delightfully bored reader, what the reality of a hanoi intersection / street crossing escapade consists of.






(*) our attempt @ finding a bar lead us to "dragonfly". we did not know this at the time, but dragonfly would become our bar for the next 3 evenings in hanoi. it was a place with a foosball table. the place itself can somehow best be described half way between a crappy club and a crappier lounge with shite american pop music being played. that first night with our group of 5, we headed upstairs to the crappier lounge where the waitstaff was all but too happy to wait on us & practice their english. one thing the asian continent really does better than any other place in the world on a continuous basis, is how they deal with their customers. their customer service uber-owns all american attempted customer service. not only do they do offer you, the customer assistance, but shockingly and nauseatingly enough - they seem to actually enjoy being kind and nice to you. its quite a culture shock to my own personal experience of existing within, and interacting with, the various customer service sectors of the american economy.

up in the lounge we played "bonko", which us americans would know by the other common name "jenga". the happy hour was 2 for 1 hilada beers. i don't know who makes hilada beer, or where the vietnamese get the hilada beer, but for 15,000 dong for 2, it was a delightful deal. i had 3 rounds. talked with sabine. here is her beer infused biography:

she is a runner who tore her achilles heal, and broke her elbow and wrist. yes, she broke her elbow. i still am not sure if this is a medical possibility. she runs for a club team and wants to study sports economics. she once trained ten times a week, which she believes lead to her injury. she lives in the bavaria portion of germany, in a city pronounced the same as "foot". her city and the pronouncing of "foot" is same same, but different. its a suburb outside nurembourg. she works in nurembourg for adidas, which actually is pronounced ahh-dee-das in germany.



the chinese talker, aka rudak, left early.

here are a few pictures from the lounge.






after the boozing, we decided to walk home. the scariest / dangerous / exciting portion of traveling is walking home from a bar, wasted, in a foreign country, to your absolutely foreign home away from home half way across the world. but we got there, by the grace of god.

here is what our hostel looks like in the day.