Single White Female in Hanoi Read online

  The students are well-behaved and the lesson material is not bad. In fact it’s a standard course book from Cambridge University Press in Britain. The tape-script, although degraded by being a poor quality reproduction played endlessly on a poor quality machine, is an amusing dialogue between a London policeman and his Sergeant. The bobby explains how he successfully nabbed two criminals. During the playback, students take notes on how, where, and why the criminals were apprehended. The students score very high, and I’m impressed.

  Towards the end of the lesson, I spend some time helping one young man who’s struggling.

  ‘Excuse me teacher,’ he says. ‘What is a criminal?’

  I chastise him for not asking me earlier, and turn to the class.

  ‘Who can tell Hung – what is a criminal?’

  There’s complete silence. Students look down nervously hoping I won’t notice them.

  ‘Is a criminal a good person or a bad person?’ Eyes roll up to the ceiling in an impersonation of deep thought. I wait. I try collaring a few individuals. Nothing. Not a single student in the room knows what a criminal is.

  I’m beginning to learn that the sole objective for many of these students is to finish the textbook. Learning stuff along the way is incidental. As long as the correct answers have been pencilled in, signalling completion of the chapter, the students are content. On the occasions where I illicitly abandon the book and teach a proper ‘integrated-skills’ ESL lesson where the students have fun and learn stuff, they complain about me afterwards.

  After the class I find Natassia in the staffroom. Neither of us has had breakfast and it’s nearly lunch-time. At my suggestion, we head to the Nang Tam vegetarian restaurant – the place Yvette and Khai took me to in my first week. I’ve become hooked on their eggplant fritters. It’s the soft morass of eggplant inside the crunchy oily batter and the way they dissolve in your mouth leaving just a teasing memory of a flavour. In fact, what I’ve become hooked on is monosodium glutamate. I contact my doctor in Australia and ask her.

  ‘Gillian, is MSG really bad for you or did it just get a whole load of bad press?’

  ‘Are you sensitive to it?’ she asks me.

  ‘Nah,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t worry about it then,’ is the advice. And since that day, I never have. Monosodium glutamate is my new spice.

  Over lunch, I wince to the background muzak of Madonna tunes arranged for synth and strings with a Latin feel, and other unforgivable renditions of bad pop songs. Natassia finds this amusing. In fact, I notice she giggles easily and laughs at my stories. I’m liking her more and more.

  ‘Why do you notice the music so much?’ she asks me. I consider this.

  ‘Perhaps because I’m a musician,’ I suggest.

  ‘Wow! A musician!’ she says, to my delight.

  The eggplant fritters have arrived with a large salad full of coriander and tofu-skin. We eat in silence for a minute. I notice Natassia is poking at a piece of beanskin with her chopsticks and there’s a frown on her perfect forehead.

  ‘Everything okay?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m reading a book about culture shock,’ she says. ‘I think it’s what I am suffering from.’

  I cock my head, wondering what she could mean. Since she left her native Switzerland she’s spent six months in India, three in Pakistan and a further three travelling China.

  ‘You’ve been in Hanoi for six months.’ I tell her. You spent six months in India, for god’s sake. How can you have culture shock now?’

  ‘The person who wrote the book says culture shock has stages, and around six months is a big one,’ she explains.

  ‘Six months!’ I exclaim. ‘That’s ridiculous. As far as I know, culture shock sets in when you get to a new place, then it wears off …’ I shrug. ‘ … when you get used to it.’

  ‘Well,’ she shrugs back. ‘That’s what this book says. It says this is when the enthusiasm starts to wear off and some things can start to become … I don’t know, but it describes what I’m feeling.’

  ‘What are you feeling?’

  After a long pause, she shrugs and says ‘I can’t describe it yet.’

  The conversation dies away, but this snippet of conversation stays with me, and will return to haunt and humiliate me over and over.

  On the street outside, after the meal, Natassia and I smoke and wait for passing xe om drivers.

  ‘Have you had any romances here?’ I ask her.

  ‘Yes. I have.’ She doesn’t elaborate.

  ‘With Vietnamese boys?’

  ‘Yes. There were two,’ she says.

  I ponder this for a moment.

  ‘But one was a wergin,’ she adds, germanically.

  I want to ask more but a xe om driver has materialised at the kerb, calling ‘woo-ooh’.

  ‘Do you think Hanoi could be a romantic city?’ I ask her. It has mostly struck me as a tough, unforgiving place.

  ‘Definitely,’ she smiles. ‘Hanoi is definitely a romantic city.’

  I focus my gaze towards the end of the street. I notice for the first time how the enormous trees on either side form a leafy arch, through which filtered sunlight casts shifting patterns on the commuters teeming below. I notice the yellow, misty quality to the air, the preponderance of young people, often coupled on motorcycles. I think of the lakes, and of the sunset gatherings at their edges. I realise that Hanoi is a city of young lovers. Optimism seizes me and I experience a great twinge of excitement, wondering what this city has in store for me.

  Romance, I hope.

  Peasants with pitchforks

  It’s late afternoon, the following weekend. I get in the compound gate still panting and find Zac at my door.

  ‘Hi,’ he says, perkily. ‘I was just passing by … ‘

  He looks at me a little more closely. ‘Caz? Are you okay? You look a little unnerved.’

  ‘Peasants, with pitchforks,’ I mumble, struggling to get my key in the door. ‘Baying for my blood’.

  ‘Ah!’ he coos, victoriously. ‘Welcome to Hanoi.’

  ‘I think I’ll be staying clear of the Old Quarter for a while,’ I reflect, as we climb the stairs to my living room.

  It started a couple of hours earlier, not long after noon, in the Old Quarter at ‘An’s Place’, my latest Internet haunt. The place is dirty, diabolically hot and fantastically cheap.

  I bump into Alexa, a sweet-faced Kiwi girl I first met there a couple of weeks earlier. She arrived in Hanoi only two days after I did, also looking for work as an English teacher. Today she tells me she may have found work, at an English school east of Hoan Kiem Lake. She has an interview tomorrow. But she’s still staying at a cheap hotel nearby and looking for share accommodation. I realise how lucky I am to have my apartment. This time we exchange phone numbers. A new friend perhaps.

  There are a couple of routine emails in my inbox. My father has had some problems with Internet banking and some other problem to do with tax that’s too complicated for me to follow.

  In the doorway, an old man hoicks and spits. Behind him a shoeshine boy is hustling for business. He’s threadbare and looks no older than nine. Unavoidably I think of Hien, homeless and fatally ill.

  ‘Sorry Dad,’ I write back. ‘I am forget my English and no longer understand these word bank and tax.’ He knows I’ve never understood these words.

  Alexa has gone, and now I too settle the bill, and head out into the blistering air in search of a xe om.

  The xe om drivers hang in gangs on street corners. Among members of any one gang, there seems to be no competition at all. While one driver negotiates a price with a customer, the others stand around and join in, pushing for higher fares. It’s possible they pool all fares.

  Catching a xe om in the Old Quarter is notoriously difficult. The drivers here make their living off tourists not locals. This means they expect any foreigner to pay six times the normal asking price. I stand my ground because I know my price for a trip home is fair. A local will bargai
n down lower. Usually the driver will accept this fare when he realises the customer knows the system.

  But today the drivers I find are torpid with heat and beer, lying across their saddles in the shade. I persist, and eventually one strains to raise his head.

  ‘Hai muoi nghin dong (twenty thousand dong)’ he offers.

  I laugh and go to walk away, but I’m blocked by a new driver. He’s young – perhaps nineteen, twenty – and very edgy. His hair is long and dull and there’s a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, which is frozen in a sneer. In the style of street-toughs, he’s folded his T-shirt up over his chest to show off his abs – which aren’t bad, as it happens.

  ‘Muoi lam nghin (fifteen thousand)’ he shouts in my face. I tell him ten thousand and go to walk away, but he blocks me again. I repeat my price, hoping he’ll give up – I don’t like him. But he persists, and eventually agrees. Problem is, the sneer has degenerated to something nastier – something without a name, and I feel nervous.

  He fetches his bike, straddles it and removes his T-shirt entirely, tucking it into the back of his pants. His torso is decorated with tattoos, suggestive of a stint in prison.

  ‘Xin di cham (Please go slow),’ I tell him as I jump on the back. The last syllable is cut off as he pulls hard on the throttle. We take off like a rocket, on the wrong side of the road, and nearly collide with an elderly vendor selling fruit. I drive my fist into the poorly tattooed outline of a woman on his back.

  ‘Go slow,’ I say again.

  No response. He’s driving right down the middle of the road. It’s a road I haven’t seen before. It suddenly occurs to me that we’re going in the wrong direction, heading north rather than southwest. Twenty metres later we swerve crazily, dodging oncoming traffic, and get forced by traffic to our right onto a collision path with a motorcycle carrying a family of four. The driver swerves sharply and almost loses control of his bike, but his manoeuvre has saved us. It’s the nearest miss I’ve had yet in Hanoi. I’m now terrified, and start screaming at my driver in English, ‘Stop, you motherfucker, let me OFF!’

  But there’s more. By now he’s slaloming around all the vehicles ahead of us and we have a third near-collision with a cyclo, a local-style bicycle rickshaw, carrying a large piece of sheet metal. This one is so close I can’t understand how I’m still on the bike, unhurt. My left leg should be hanging on by a sinew. Commuters are yelling and shaking fists at him. I grab his hair and I growl ‘dung lai! (stop!)’ in his ear. He slows down and I literally jump off.

  We’ve come only two blocks and I’m standing outside a large, busy com binh dan (street-food stall) on an unfamiliar street. There’s not another foreigner in sight.

  With unfathomable speed, a crowd begins to accrete in front of me. Behind me, diners look up from their bowls and the proprietor, a feisty old woman, emerges from their midst holding a stick.

  The xe om driver and I have a screaming exchange, in two languages. After a minute a man to my left pipes up, unexpectedly, in English. ‘He want you pay him money’.

  I’m relieved to find an English-speaker here, because I can explain what’s happened and turn the crowd around. I’m forming the distinct impression they’re rooting for the other team.

  ‘This man drives crazy.’ I mime his handlebar technique. ‘We come only two blocks. He’s dangerous, very dangerous. I’m very afraid and I tell him stop’.

  The man speaks to the silent crowd, which is by now several people deep in all directions. There are guys with their arms around each other staring slack-jawed at me, there are shopkeepers and their families, vendors, shoe-shine boys, quite a few stray children, and several angry-looking women, who are glaring at me. In every direction, at every height, is a pair of staring black eyes.

  For a moment the whole scene becomes a tableau, as static as a snapshot. Even the usual din of the streets has faded. The only thing audible is the sound of the phrase ‘di di’ being repeated in a crone’s croak behind me.

  Finally, the driver speaks to our interlocutor, without taking his eyes off me.

  ‘He want the money,’ the man says again. His position seems non-partisan at best.

  ‘Tell him I’m not paying him,’ I say angrily. ‘Tell him he should learn to drive’.

  The phrase ‘di di’ continues to emanate from the com binh dan behind me. It’s the proprietor. I haven’t been paying much attention, but have assumed she’s on my side. Now she starts pushing at the back of my legs with the stick. I suddenly remember Khai telling me that ‘di di’ means ‘go away’.

  ‘Fuck you’ I say to the driver, to the proprietor and to the whole crowd. They’re bullying me, and I won’t cave in. The crowd parts for me as I storm off in the direction we came from. I’m looking for another driver, but for once there’s not a driver to be seen.

  About fifty metres along the road I look around and see I’m being shadowed by a mob. I stay calm. At a measured pace, I walk another half a block, then turn into a CD shop. The mob gets to the door, stops and disperses.

  The shop is well-lit and friendly. The latest Massive Attack album is booming from the speakers. With my back to the doorway, I spend about twenty minutes in there, letting the thumping in my chest ease off. I sit on a stool and leaf through the bootlegged music catalogue. I ask to listen to a few tracks through the headphones. I chat to the owners, who are delighted to hear I’m an English teacher, and I buy a couple of jazz CDs.

  Eventually, I bid them goodbye, and they tell me to come back soon. I reach the doorway and hear a whistle. Within seconds, the crowd is back. It forms a semicircle around the doorway. The tattooed kid is in the centre of it, and there’s fury in his eyes. I realise he’s as proud as I am, and neither of us is prepared to lose face. I fear I’m about to behave badly.

  Through the translator, the kid once again demands the fare. There’s muted gabbling from the crowd. I lean into the doorframe, shaking my head resolutely, and watch the proceedings. I say nothing. The crowd is starting to break up into factions, with heated debate going on all around me.

  The kid looks like he wants to punch me. I’m counting on my knowledge that Vietnamese are non-violent by nature, resolving disputes with verbal jousts and payment rather than fists. Mostly.

  There’s an outbreak of shouting between the kid, the translator and a few of the mobsters. It goes on for several minutes. Eventually the translator turns to me. He has become negotiator as well. It has been decided that I should cough up a part-payment of five thousand dong.

  I consider the proposal. It’s a compromise for both parties. If I pay it I can walk away from here without losing face or any other body parts. I nod acceptance, but for some reason my anger has taken on a life of its own and I can’t seem to tame it.

  I pull out a pair of filthy two thousand dong notes from my wallet and hold the notes out at arm’s length in front of him as though they’re cakes of fresh steaming shit. He glares back and doesn’t move.

  ‘Come on,’ I say very quietly, waving the money in his face, ‘take your shitty money. It means nothing to me.’ Although he understands no English, my tone is clear. The kid has frozen in a hate-stare.

  I’m about to drop the money onto the street in front of him when, thankfully, he snatches it. The crowd makes a murmuring noise and begins to diffuse. The situation is resolved. The foreigner has paid.

  But my adversary is fuming. He springs to life and addresses me in rapid, hissing Vietnamese that causes the hair on the back of my neck to rise. I feel fortunate that I haven’t understood a word. He spits onto the ground in front of me, then he turns and stalks off. The CD shop owners, who were standing behind me throughout this exchange, turn on their heels and flee back into the shop.

  ‘Yeah – fuck you too,’ I scream, and head in the other direction. I walk and walk, and find myself on the outskirts of the Old Quarter, up towards the Red River. It takes me an unusually long time to find a driver. I’m looking for an older one, with a friendly demeanour. On the way hom
e I periodically check behind us to see if we’re being followed. Anger turns to shame. Surely this wouldn’t have happened to a seasoned expat.

  But Zac’s hoots with laughter as I tell him the story.

  ‘Yup – we’ll have you voting for the ‘Shooters Party’ by September,’ he beams.

  Something is rotten

  Four weeks in a new country and I already know the word for mould – ‘moc’. It sits incongruously in my vocabulary alongside ‘Turn right’ ‘Turn left’ and ‘How much is this?’

  The mould problem is probably just the downside of a climate perfect for growing mushrooms, I reflect, as I sponge the white powder off my black pants. I’ve been reading about the explosive growth of the mushroom industry in Vietnam. The country is now one of the world’s top mushroom exporters.

  Hanoi in July – perfect conditions if you’re a mushroom. Not so ideal for humans though. Humidity and pollution, both in extreme, do not form a sweet compound. Descending into Hanoi, I noticed the city is ringed by scenic mountains and for all I know, a languid breeze blows teasingly across them. But here, in the centre of the city, the languor is all mine. I’ve got the get-up-and-go of a bivalve.

  Sponge in hand, I cast my eye around the room and groan to see a small black shoulder bag I bought in Indonesia has become carpeted in the stuff. It looks like an albino version of its former self.

  I’m wondering what will happen when the monsoon breaks. Will there be a brief halcyon season of crisp dry breezes and lazy sunshine – the days warm, the nights cool and fragrant? – Or will we go directly to the nightmarish climes of winter?

  I’ve heard enough now about the Hanoi winter to be afraid. When describing it, people tend to combine the words ‘cold’ with ‘humid’ – a combination I’m not familiar with and don’t want to be. These same people talk of a frigid northerly wind that howls down from China to penetrate the thickest sweaters, through to the deepest bones. My flat, in local style, has tile floors and no heating whatsoever.