inklingfair It’s been more than a week since the Dakila girls (plus Miko, honorary Dakila girl) landed in Hanoi, but my leg muscles are still aching from our Monday bike ride. And because it’s a Sunday and I haven’t yet: (1) finished my Digibak for PWDs presentation (2) gotten a massage (3)anything to show Dylan tomorrow yet, I’ll sum up.
I think it was around March or April last year when Nitch texted to say there was a Cebu Pacific sale for Hanoi, and I thought – why not? So we booked round trip tickets – me, Mich, Leni, Ayeen, Nitch, Miko, and Marge – and forgot all about it. I didn’t even pack properly until Saturday (the flight was 10 that evening), and foolishly ignored Ayeen’s weather report: 25 degrees C, average. I packed two pairs of sandals, one light jacket, shorts, sundresses and barely-there blouses. At NAIA-3, Marge said that the temp was 14 degrees and I half-panicked, almost buying some thick socks and overpriced shoes (good thing I didn’t – it was just 19 when we landed).
The first night we landed was spent scrambling for some Vietnamese dong (no one in their right mind sells dong in Manila – and all money changers were closed in both airports) and a taxi (we paid something like P120 each, which wasn’t bad for a 45-minute ride, on hindsight) and a place to crash in the Old Quarter (Nitch forgot to book the first night – good thing the night manager had a friend a block away who had available rooms).
I barely changed out of my travel clothes that first night. The next morning, everything was covered in a light mist, and we decided to have a pho breakfast the way pho breakfast ought to be – on a sidewalk, with very unhygienic bamboo chopsticks, lots of rooster sauce, lemon, and fried bread. Best breakfast of the year.
We walked around, stopping at every propaganda shop we could stop at, where Mich and Leni bought half of all the rice-paper posters. I got three: “Raise more cats to protect the crops” (because – hey, cats!), “Industry in the service of agriculture”, and “Interkosmos” – with Vietnamese and Soviet cosmonauts. Very 1980s scifi. We stopped at a tiny sidewalk coffee stall and had “weasel coffee”, sunflower seeds, and pistachios. Dinner was at Gecko, a cramped but interesting little restaurant, which we later learned dotted every other Hanoi street like mushrooms.
The evening was more interesting – Mich, Leni, and I were craving a massage, so we combed nearby streets. There were two massage places: one (expensive) fancy organic spa, and one cheap but clean place with an LED lit sign advertising “Foot and Body Massage”. The LED and the surly-looking guard at the entrance should have tipped us off about the sort of massage they were offering, but the receptionist was friendly and normal-looking, and our feet were killing us, so we all signed up for the “body massage”.
Then everything started going the way of a badly-directed porn flick. My masseuse was a pretty, petite girl wearing what looked like a cross between a hot pink ao dai and a tennis dress three sizes too small for her. She started running her hands over my legs, which felt okay but not really therapeutic, then she straddled me and her legs were disquietingly smooth and alarm bells started to go off. She kneaded my back whilst – er – rubbing against me for an uncomfortable few minutes until I slightly turned over and asked her, very politely, to please just give me a plain massage, no fancy tricks. She complied, thankfully, and the head and neck massage was actually quite good. I left a small tip, and she left the room to let me dress.
Leni and Mich weren’t as lucky – I got a novice, I guess. Their “therapists” asked for large tips (they only gave as much as I did, though). We reconnoitered at a pizza place for something alcoholic to calm our nerves, and reflected wryly on the signs we should have paid attention to: (1) no respectable massage place would offer beer and have cigarette trays in the massage rooms (2) LED signage (3) well-lit but labyrinthine passages to the rooms (4) Only TonTon’s offers real massages at that low, low price. Lesson learned.
Back at the hotel, we were met with another unpleasant surprise: Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum was closed to the public the following day, and we had booked everything for the city tour. Nitch caved to the manager’s “thou shalt tour or pay the 50% cancellation fee” but Marge demonstrated her film-producer arguing-fu and cancelled our tour without breaking a sweat. We rented bikes for the next day and booked the same tour from the agency across the street for Tuesday instead.
Monday. Ayeen, Nitch, Miko and I scored helmets from the market and played dodgem with motorcycles and Vietcabs all morning. Nitch mounted a tiny video camera on her shoulder and caught us riding through picturesque streets and around West Lake. We had lunch at a charming little hole-in-the-wall cafe, Hung’s Kitchen, and bought several packs of weasel coffee and sunflower seeds before heading back to the hotel. Leni and Marge spent the morning just shopping and found a sidewalk seafood place where we had the most delicious clam soup and garlic buttered squid in the history of time.
Tuesday. Duc, our tour guide, brought us to Trấn Quốc and One Pillar Pagoda, then Ho Chi Minh’s palace and mausoleum. Ayeen was stopped outside the gate for wearing shorts, and we had to rig her up with a jacket and sarong so she’d be let in. About a hundred people were queued outside the marble cube housing Uncle Ho’s preserved body, and TV monitors everywhere proclaimed minute-by-minute air quality conditions inside the tomb. He looked eerily as if he could stand up any moment and berate the four stationed guards for not cremating him decades ago. I bought Ho postcards to mail Patty, Ian, and Ribi outside – though I doubt any of them have reached their destinations yet.
I think Hoa Lo (Hanoi Hilton) was by far the most interesting part of the trip. There were rooms dedicated to the women political prisoners, and the photos were heartbreaking. There was a hall recreating a room where the prisoners were put in stocks, a tiny isolation cell with cold stone walls, and a guillotine. We all left the gatehouse in a somber mood – even the hot coffee and bahn mi we had afterward couldn’t quite shake the chill.
The Temple of Literature cheered us up a bit – stone turtles with the names of the learned on their backs, stories about the four holy creatures of Vietnam, the friendship of the turtle and the crane. I left a few dong at Confucius’ altar.
We arrived a couple of hours early at the airport, so a few of us got a (proper) massage at a cafe. The plane was delayed for about an hour, but we were all exhausted that we slept through most of the flight – I only woke up to turbulence somewhere above the Vietnamese shoreline and again near Manila. J met us at the airport and drove us back to QC in the sweltering heat. In the first few minutes of waking up in the apartment later that afternoon – in a sweat – I half-wondered if it was all a dream. Then I remembered I had about a kilo of weasel coffee and pistachios still in my bag and half a bahn mi in the toaster downstairs. I finished the last of the pistachios yesterday, but I don’t think I can drink any more coffee.
/hair of the dog
Next adventure: Pico de Loro and Bayani Challenge in March!
Photo by Raissa Lara Lütolf (-Fasel) on Unsplash
