He ain't heavy, he's my brother

Tuesday, 06/11/2012 – 145 A.D.

This young man turned 32 today.

In my mind he will always be about four years old, but then again he is looking pretty well for his age. It’s strange having your birthday in a far off land, I still recall how weird it was in Sydney. Would being in Hanoi be any weirder for Our Kid? I was able to get him the obligatory card, though it hadn’t been easy to locate during our What Carcass Day back in Phnom Penh. I don’t think they really do birthday cards in Cambodia, let alone with the words in English! Unfortunately the hat was not a present, it belonged to the cleaning lady.

I am fast getting used to the above views. Give me music, a beer and a balcony and I am happy as can be. Spent quite a lot of time up there last night, watching the Old Quarter quieten down. Come 23:00 it’s pretty much deserted down there, but they certainly rise early in this country. It took us a while to get going today, maybe we’re just taking things slowly because we know we’ve got three nights still to go in this city. But later on we’d have a go at painting it red….if we ever got going, that is!

Eventually we did, and we ended up at the mausoleum of that great Vietnamese hero, Ho Chi Minh. Saigon in the south may have his name, but in Hanoi they still have the man himself, permanently laid out in state, Lenin-style. There are lots of visitors who come here from all over Vietnam and many rules that must be obeyed, such as no folding your arms when inside the mausoleum. However, we knew beforehand that we weren’t going to get inside to see HCM because during October and November every year he is taken away somewhere for “maintenance”. Quite what that involves kept us guessing over breakfast – they change the formaldehyde? Check the oil? Straighten his alloys? It was a shame really, because in a slightly macabre way I was quite keen to see a corpse, simply because I’ve never seen one before. If there comes a time in my life when I simply must see someone in a cadaverous state, I’d prefer to have forewarning, rather than it be a grisly surprise. Umm, sorry for the dark tone so early on in the post!

Above is the nearby One Pillar Pagoda, so named because… This is actually a reconstruction of the original - another building knocked over by the `orrible French as they moved on out of the Nam. The guidebook says you either love or hate the One Pillar Pagoda. I thought it was okay. And it was around this time that I realised I had broken my second pair of sunglasses on this trip. Oh well, they were only ever meant to be a cheap replacement, though I’ve only had them since Siem Reap. And despite what was written on the lens in gold writing, I don’t think they were genuine D & G shades.

This is West Lake, quite a large body of water, the far side of which is either shrouded in mist or smog. We were quite a way from the regular tourist haunts and it showed when we tried to find somewhere for lunch. Hardly any English was spoken and I regret that my attempts to learn get-by-in-Vietnamese have somewhat stalled. At one place when we asked to see the menu the waitress (with a face like a smacked arse) simply threw it onto the table behind her, expecting us to go fetch – needlessly to say, we kept moving. In fact, most of the places only did drinks, no food, so by the time we found somewhere even a quarter decent, we took our seats. After ordering a rice-based dish each, the waitress communicated to us that rice was currently off the menu – she wrote down “the end” on her notepad and thrust it under my nose. Therefore we played it safe and ordered a ham and pineapple pizza between us. Now, let me take you back to September of 1996…

[James is in his university halls and has grown sick of pot noodles. Therefore he phones the local pizza delivery place.]

PIZZA PERSON: Hello, Lucky’s Pizza?

JAMES: Hi, can I get a ham and pineapple pizza please. No onions.

PIZZA PERSON: Ham and pineapple don’t come with onions, mate.

…and ever since that day I have found that person’s words to be true. Until now. What was brought before my brother and I may have had pineapple, it may have had cheese, it did not have tomato, it didn’t appear to contain any ham, but my goodness was it stuffed FULL with bloody onions! It was like the chef had an obsession with sneaking them into every nook, crack and crevice within the dough! Obviously the Birthday Boy had no problem with this, but instead of enjoying a heavy lunch I ended up with a light snack. And stinky onion breath! Yuck!

We had wanted to have a game of Shuttlecock at some point, now re-christened by us as “licky-kicky” (don’t ask, long story), but we couldn’t find anywhere private enough. Not surprising really, given that we’re in the middle of a capital city! Besides, we had to be heading back to skype our parents at 4 p.m. our time (9 a.m. UK time). There was just time for Tim to approach a woman with a conical hat and ask if he could buy one, before turning away and running off in embarrassment upon being told only women wear them.

Not really. That said, we have seen some men wearing them – Western tourists who know no better. In those cases I rechristened them “comical hats” – geddit??? We got home, spoke to mum and dad, then prepared to go out for a few drinks….or rather a few more drinks than normal. We’d done our research online as to the best places to go in the city, but first we had to pose for the traditional pre-going-out-and-poncing-about photo.

As it was Tim’s birthday, it was Tim’s choice where we ate, drank…and whatever else we got up to. He’d picked out a small restaurant called Gecko a few buildings down from our hotel for an evening meal. I’m afraid that once I saw the menu I committed the cardinal sin and ordered a hot cheese, chicken and bacon baguette, i.e. Western food. But Ho Chi Minh did it taste GOOOOOOOD!!! Once it was down we headed for the corner of Loung Ngoc Quyen and Ta Hien in the heart of the Old Quarter. At first we didn’t find it so, with the twin pressures of bladder and thirst on the attack, we ducked into a nearby Irish bar. In fact, the only vaguely Irish thing in it was a tiny beermat behind the bar in the design of the Irish flag. Apart from that it could have been any other kind of bar in south east Asia. And, as you can see from the picture below, I was really firing up for a big night at this point:

We eventually found the road with all of Hanoi’s supposedly best bars on, or maybe just the most popular. Or maybe just those mostly frequented by tourists like us. The ones we visited were okay, but nothing fancy. Then again, this was no Khao San Road like in good old Bangkok. Things seemed a tad more civilised and there was no chance of being invited to a ping pong show, which was kind of a relief. By the time we reached the final bar at the end of this strip (we didn’t go in `em all!) we were feeling pretty merry and lost in 1,001 conversations about everything and nothing. Suddenly we heard a siren in the alley, followed by a loudspeaker. Glancing over our shoulders, we saw the police striding sternly into the establishment. Uh-oh! What is this – some kind of raid? Our passports are currently at the Indian embassy! How much are we going to have to bride them with? And what are we doing wrong in the first place? Play it cool, Grayboy, just be polite and give them no trouble. Suddenly the barmaid comes over and clarifies the situation – it’s simply gone midnight and all the bars in the Old Quarter have to close up at this time. Seems they’re quite strict at enforcing this rule. I worryingly grip the top of my bottle of barely touched Biere Larue and ask, “I can take this outside with me, can I?” She says I can (with the concealed subtext of “Just get going, English Boy!”)

[Danger lurks in dark shop doorways...]

I'd done my research and knew that there was one place in Hanoi that stays open past midnight - Bar Phuc Tan in the area known as...errr, Phuc Tan. Okay, so this place had a bit of a trashy reputation, but at this point I wasn't bothered by that, just fancied a nightcap. And I guess curiosity killed the cat (if only it would kill the rat as well!) We knew where the Phuc Tan area was on the map and had a semi-vague idea of where the bar was, and it wasn't too much of a walk. However, we had to cross a large flyover which acted like an unofficial divider between the Old Quarter and Phuc Tan. There were no footbridges across, so initially we were a bit stumped. Then we noticed a couple of shady characters, picking their way through various holes in the walls, so we did exactly the same, keeping our distance behind them.

I have no idea what Phuc Tan is like by day, but by night it was pretty damn grim. Gone was the warmth and charm of the Old Quarter, this place looked like it was still recovering from the war, make that a series of wars. The first streets were virtually deserted and eerily quiet, but also badly lit, so it was difficult to see what (if anything was lurking in the shadows). Obviously I’d had a few cheeky beers by this point, but it’s times like this that you suddenly find what alcoholics refer to as “a moment of clarity”. This was not a place for two foreigners to be wandering blindly around. The guidebook had described Hanoi as “a dangerous city by eastern and western standards”, but during the three days we’d been in town I hadn’t felt threatened at any moment. To be honest, since I’ve been travelling there have only been a few moments when I have been slightly concerned for my safety and all of those were way, way back in the USA. But Phuc Tan was different and I found myself striding more confidently than a drill sergeant, with shoulders held as high and wide as was physically possible, and my “come near me and I’ll smash your face in eyes” fixed firmly forward. After a few minutes of aimless wandering, people started taking an interest in our presence, calling out, “Hello!”, which they normally do, but now we would rather they didn’t. A dishevelled old woman sitting on the floor asked us where we were going and I replied, “Phuc Tan Club.” She turned and pointed down the alleyway beside her, intimating it was just down there. We both craned our necks around the corner and realised we couldn’t see the end of the alley, nor could we hear any music. “Yeah, cheers,” I said with big smile, not caring if she understood me or not, “we’re gonna walk around for a bit more and then we’ll go down there.”

We never went down there. Instead we decided to knock the nightcap on the head and went back across the flyover to the Old Quarter. Sense of adventure is one thing, but I believe the reason we’ve got so far on this trip without being too badly scathed is because we do know when it’s time strap on the old sensible head. The hard partying until dawn would have to wait until another time. Besides, Tim had enjoyed his birthday sufficiently, even though it wasn’t technically his birthday anymore so it didn’t matter what he thought - normal service resumed!

Phuc tan? Phuc that!