Graham on the road: Life since February

At last – it’s over. I have now finished studying and normal life can resume.

Hanoi continues to baffle me in various ways and there’s a whole list of things to mention. I’ll go back to new year which, as you may know, was on the 10^th February this year …

At The British Council we always have a combined Christmas & Tet (new year) party. Last year I was dressed as a tree. This year I got roped into the traditional dance. We had a few rehearsals but I would say that I wasn’t totally ready by the performance. Part of my routine was to wear a mask and run around causing mischief during part of the dance. That bit came easily but I had a lot of trouble seeing out of it so I just bumbled around. Nobody noticed or cared. They loved it.

Parties here tend to consist of performances and games, with a bit of dancing thrown in. Some of the Vietnamese staff performed the ‘Hat dance’. It was lovely.

Some lions popped in to perform too.

The teachers had to perform something of course. We sang ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’, with audience participation. It went down well.

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I’ve decided to measure the weather here by how many showers a day I need to feel human. In the hot weather any trip out requires a shower when you get back in. Today is a three-shower day I’d say; it’s been raining and is fairly cool. After heavy rain we get a few two-shower days and then it creeps back up. If we hit six-shower days I’ll be staying in and keeping the aircon on.

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One thing I love about Hanoi is the multi-cultural nature of the place. Any event is likely to have half a dozen or more nationalities. I’ve been to a few functions where the common language has been French or Spanish. This caused me a few problems. Having learned at school (a while back), I can have a crack at French but made a bit of slip when I was chatting to a French girl and wanted to say ‘I love French’ but it came out all wrong as I said ‘Je t’aime’, which means ‘I love you’. I knew something was wrong as her face dropped rather sharply. I recovered quickly though and managed to get the correct version out. Think I’ll stick to Vietnamese.

Talking of Vietnamese, the language continues to confound me. Just saying hello is tricky. What you say depends on the age of the person you’re speaking to. ‘Xin chau’ (sin chow) is a general greeting but it should be modified to chau em, chau chi, chau anh, chau ba or chau ong, depending on the age and gender of the person you’re talking to. Now, if I address a woman my age or a bit older than me, I should use chau chi. However, if I use chau em, I’m suggesting she’s younger than me. I tried it at the dry cleaners, where the lady is older than me and got a smile. She was probably thinking ‘He just called me ‘em’! What a nice young man.’

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This is the local ‘wet market’ – the ‘wet’ refers to the state your feet are in after a trip there.

You can buy all parts of an animal in here – no part is spared. First thing in the morning the meat is as fresh as you could buy anywhere, but as the day wears on and gets hotter I imagine eating the meat would put me in hospital for a week.

I buy most of my fruit and veg in here though. I always go to the same lady. She’s very nice and smiley and discards anything which looks too old.

I’m pretty sure she charges me local prices too as they are ridiculously cheap (bananas 3p each, tomatoes about the same). There is something known as the ‘Tay Tax’ here. ‘Tay’ means western or westerner and this unofficial ‘tax’ is basically the markup that anyone who isn’t Vietnamese gets charged. How much Tay Tax you pay depends on your haggling skills. I tend to pay what I’m asked if I buy fruit on the street – some poor old lady has been carrying her baskets around in the heat all day, but some shop owners might triple the price and I’m wise to that now. Learning how to say numbers and ‘dat qua!’ (that’s expensive) has served me well.

The best time to visit the market is at about 11:30am I’ve found. That’s when the market ladies do their daily exercises – they put pop music on (quite loud) and start dancing around. I was a bit taken aback the first time but now just join in. That amuses them quite a lot.

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Now I’ve got the time I’m off to the climbing wall as often as I can manage and cope with in the heat. There’s no aircon in the main wall area, just fans. As mentioned above, there are climbers from all over the place at the wall – there are probably a dozen nationalities there on a busy night. It’s a bouldering wall – not my first choice but it’s the only wall in town. Bouldering is a form of climbing which involves short, intensely hard climbs up to about 4m high. It requires you to get into some rather improbable positions. There are no ropes or harnesses, you just fall back onto the thick crash mats. It’s a young person’s sport really so, having hit 49 recently, I have no idea why I’m there.

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In April I went to Cuc Phuong National Park – a protected forested area about 3 hours south of Hanoi by bus. I took a guided night hike into the forest. We were looking for wildlife but the larger mammals stayed well out of sight. However, I got within a foot of a black and white striped snake. Well, I swung my torch around and then saw it. ‘Don’t go near – it’s very poisonous!’ was my guide’s advice. I took it. I came across this thingy too (see pic below) - ‘Don’t go near – it’s very poisonous!’ was the advice. I began to get a bit nervous. Still, I survived the experience and got some decent photos.