Single White Female in Hanoi Read online

  It may be that Nga is a despicable person, but it’s hard to prove. When speaking to anybody below her on the socio-economic scale, she screws up her face and barks harshly. But whenever we sit and chat, her voice and personality are warm and seductive, and I’m putty in her hands. Sometimes she tells me she feels close to me, and I want to concur, but at the back of my mind is that warning bell, set there by my Vietnamese friends. ‘She’s only interested in money,’ they say. I’ll never figure Nga out.

  I make a delicious breakfast with the eggplants, some garlic and herbs and two fresh brown hen eggs, fried into an omelette, and set out for my second class observation at Global.

  This time when I walk into the classroom I immediately notice the air is cool. An old air-conditioner is gasping away in the corner, unaccustomed to the strain of being turned up full for long periods. Nonetheless, the teacher is glowing under a film of sweat. It’s because of his weight problem, I suspect.

  It’s the barbarian ocelot-eater from the staffroom last night. He looks blankly at me for a second, then bellows ‘Hi!’ in a long note that rises then falls. The effect is incongruously friendly.

  I nod at him, unsmiling, and sit down. I’m expecting an hour and a half of bumbling incompetence, and I look forward to embarrassing him with my presence.

  I fail.

  I fail not only because this is a man who doesn’t embarrass easily, but also because, although his teaching patter drips sarcasm and innuendo, he’s actually a good teacher.

  During the lesson he makes the best of a particularly tedious chapter in the textbook. He’s loud and clear and appears to speak Vietnamese, although with a ridiculous Aussie drawl, so he can translate unknown words. He burps and sneezes loudly and often, horrifying the class, and strikes me as generally repulsive. But I detect a flair for comedy. In order to maintain what I hope is an intimidating façade for the barbarian, I keep having to suppress laughter.

  When the bell signifies the end of class, I nod again, begrudgingly, and stride out of the classroom. But he catches up with me in the staffroom.

  ‘Are you that new teacher with the TESOL certificate?’ he asks me. He’s got the kind of impossibly strong Australian accent that flings around between head and chest voice, so that some words slide up into a falsetto, like a teenager with a breaking voice.

  ‘Maybe.’ I watch a mischievous smile form on his face.

  ‘You’ll be regretting all that effort in the fullness of time.’

  ‘Are you TESOL too?’ I ask him. He leans in closer and lowers his voice.

  ‘Depends who’s asking,’ he whispers, and glances in the direction of Owen. ‘I think I said I was that other one – from Cambridge University.’

  ‘CELTA,’ I supply, amused.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, dismissively. ‘Hey, I’m Zac.’

  Zac’s still at university in Australia. He’s finishing an Asian Studies degree and has been learning Vietnamese and Chinese. Now he’s studying Vietnamese at a university in Hanoi on an exchange program.

  Within a few days, I’ll be forced to admit the dawning possibility that this guy, who’s a self-proclaimed racist, anti-environmentalist and former gun-nut, who can’t live a day without meat, who has a volatile hatred of Vietnamese men, is a teetotaller who has made a career out of being as controversial, as belligerent and as provocative as possible, is going to become a part of my life.

  Strangely, over the next year, as some of his female friends and his sister turn up in Hanoi to visit him, I’ll come to discover that the women he surrounds himself with tend to be well-educated left-wingers.

  On my way out of Hanoi Global College, I’m accosted by a petite young woman in a blue ao dai.

  ‘Miss Carolyn, please can you come back here at seven forty-five this evening for observe another class?’ she says, in a breathless little-girl voice.

  The young woman’s name is Lan. She’s high up in the staff hierarchy, and is the main interface between the Vietnamese administration and the outside world. She’s the perfect person for the job: captivatingly cute, patient and unfailingly polite, she conveys the impression that the college has everything under control.

  I take the long way home, past Nam Bo. I want to make sure the homeless woman is there, because at four o’clock this afternoon, Ralph and his doctor wife are coming over and I’ll be bringing them to meet her.

  She’s there, in her usual daytime position, observing the chaotic activity around her with lively amusement, fanning herself with a large, broken bamboo fan. She beckons me over, smiling broadly and reaches for my arm. I crouch next to her and she fans me too, then reaches deep into her plastic bag of possessions and offers me a small bag of chilli salt. I accept the gift gratefully. My Vietnamese is still virtually non-existent, so we’re unable to communicate at all. I want to tell her that I’ll be back later with a doctor.

  For the next few hours I’m restless. I’ve now spoken twice to Ralph by phone, and had a month-long email relationship with him before my arrival. I’ve gathered he’s a lugubrious, self-absorbed man, but I have absolutely no mental picture to go with the voice. I’m itching to know what the guy looks like.

  Soon after four, on hearing a motorcycle, I look down into the compound from the Juliet balcony off my bedroom and I see a stunning, if austere, Vietnamese woman walk through the gate holding two crash helmets, followed by a vision on a motorcycle.

  I get an aerial view of a smooth bald dome, shining with sweat, set on a rotund body. The sides of the dome, around the ears, are set with tufts of dark hair. The head is pear-shaped, giving the man the cranial dimensions of a gerbil. Coke-bottle spectacles complete one of the most remarkable views of a human being I’ve ever seen.

  I call out and they look up.

  ‘Where can I put my bike?’

  I point to all the other bikes lined up in the compound.

  ‘But this isn’t safe – the gate is not locked’.

  It takes me some time to assure Ralph that the formidable Ba Gia and the men from the shop next door guard the compound.

  Upstairs, Ralph sits down heavily on the bamboo couch in my living room. He removes his glasses, pulls out a handkerchief and wipes the sweat from his face for a long time. Then he begins a long speech about the appalling standards of Vietnamese drivers.

  His wife is seated beside him. She says nothing. Even with the stern expression she wears, she’s show-stoppingly beautiful. Her jaw-length hair is thick and shiny, her skin is luminous. She has a strong face, with smooth-lidded Chinese eyes and large bow lips.

  I pour them each a glass of my new home-delivered water, which comes with a label boasting ‘100 per cent foreign-owned!’, then we head off on foot up to Nam Bo, where, among the huddle of homeless, we immediately find my friend, smiling and waving in my direction.

  Tina talks to her for a while and looks at her arms, which are just sticks. I begin to feel awkward, out of place. Too white, too tall, too rich. I look away towards the roaring warp of the intersection. The humidity has knocked the air into a distorting lens on the strange reality around me. Motorcycle tyres seem to be spinning a centimetre above the road and the noise of the engines is ebbing and flowing in rhythmic waves. It occurs to me that I might be in danger of a sudden and humiliating outburst of tears. Eventually Tina turns to face me and confirms my rising suspicion. The woman has advanced tuberculosis.

  ‘You must be careful when you talk to her,’ she warns me. ‘Do not breathe in, try to turn your head away.’

  ‘Can you ask her name? What’s her name?’ I say to Tina. My voice is thickening and a sensation of pepper is taking over my face. Tina and the woman exchange a few more words, then she tells me the woman’s name is ‘Hien’.

  Hien means ‘good-natured’. Hien has been well-named.

  Tina tells me Hien is unable to eat most food, as it gives her diarrhoea, but I could buy her a piece of fruit each day. I blink a few times, but the pepper is now moving in a subcutaneous stream – travelling down
wards from the bridge of my nose and into my sinuses. It burns hard, and finally the first tear shoulders its way out. I swallow and clamp my teeth together, but the dam wall has ruptured. It’s poor form to cry over someone that’s still alive and smiling and in front of you, and furthermore, I have no desire to cry in front of Ralph.

  So, as the floodgates open, I retreat into the supermarket, where I sob for a few minutes. I know that stories like Hien’s abound in Hanoi, but it takes the one person with whom you foolishly forge a personal tie to tip you over.

  On the way home, Tina tries to comfort me. ‘I have seen people in this condition survive for up to six months,’ she says without a trace of irony.

  I’ll speak to Ralph one more time on the phone, and again thank his wife. I’ll never see them again.

  Just before 7.30, I head out into the rush-hour traffic for my third class observation. I hope this one will actually prepare me in some way – I’m still at a loss to understand how the system works at this place. No one has shown me a curriculum. The only textbooks I’ve seen so far are bootlegged copies of a series published in Texas, written to help migrants assimilate in their new country – the U.S.

  I’m waiting for a glimpse of something that relates to the extensive and expensive training I undertook in order to teach English. Where are the ‘integrated skills’ lessons, the ‘Presentation Practice Production’ routines, the ‘Jigsaw Activities’? Most importantly, where are the teaching resources?

  There’s one antiquated photocopy machine in the building. It lives in a tiny room full of shelves and filing cabinets containing the bootlegged cassette tapes that accompany the bootlegged books for the classes. The photocopier breaks down and is fixed on an hourly basis by harried Huong, the most valuable member of the Global team. Plagued by acne and by all the other staff members, she’s responsible for all lesson materials, which also include a fleet of eleven cheap cassette players. At any given time, at least three of these are out of commission. Only Huong knows which ones.

  While the other girls on the staff sit around filing their nails or watching abysmal Vietnamese soap operas on the TV in the reception area, Huong is quietly keeping the place operational. The judicious placement of an elastic band or an unfolded paper clip can coax another day’s use from the most recalcitrant machinery. Whenever something really has to be done, her name is yelled along the length of the corridor. She’s the scapegoat and the trouble-shooter. Nobody admits it, but without her the whole edifice would crumble into a heap of plastic parts, elastic bands and paper clips.

  Whatever class I was supposed to observe tonight has been cancelled. Instead I’m told to head upstairs where I find myself in a class of teenagers being taught by Natassia. I apologise to her, sigh, and take a seat near the back of the room. This time, however, she laughs. Mentally, I amend ‘demure’ to ‘cute’. It will be some time before I realise what every male expat in Hanoi already knows: she’s the hottest European woman in town.

  There’s a very peaceful atmosphere in the room. Natassia comes over to my desk and suggests this class might enjoy a little session about Australia. ‘Maybe, if there’s time at the end of the lesson,’ I tell her.

  It never happens. Ten minutes into the lesson, Lan appears in the doorway and beckons me into the corridor outside. A teacher hasn’t turned up. I’m needed to teach a class.

  Excitement. Natassia and some of the class members wish me good luck. Lan leads me downstairs.

  Before I can say ‘could I see the lesson plan?’ I’ve been shoehorned into a steaming hot classroom. Twenty or so small children are bouncing off the walls. Lan leaves me standing at the front of the room for a minute while she fetches a textbook. The book has no instructions in it, just pictures of things beginning with a certain letter with the word printed underneath. For example: ‘H’ – Horse, House, Hat; ‘J’ – Jam, Jelly, Jet.

  I take them by force. I make them sit quiet as church mice, all attention on me. So far, so good. I say ‘hello’. They all yell ‘hello’ back.

  I write my name on the board. Making maximum use of gesture, I say, ‘This is my name. What is my name?’

  Complete silence.

  I try again. No one moves.

  On the third effort, a student volunteers: ‘What is my name?’

  ‘No,’ I say with a rising tone. I speak slowly, stressing every syllable. ‘A question. I ask you – what is my name?’ I jab my finger towards my name on the board.

  The class repeats in unison ‘What is my name?’

  It dawns on me. These kids have learnt by repeating everything they hear. They don’t understand a word. I feel my shoulders sag. I’ve got nearly an hour and a half to get through.

  But with a little more patience, I turn the corner. After about fifteen minutes they can answer correctly: ‘What is my name?’ (Carolyn) ‘Where am I from?’ (Australia) ‘How many hands/feet do I have?’

  It’s all going well until about forty minutes in. The students are in rapt attention when one cheeky little kid has an ADHD attack. For absolutely no reason, he leaps out of his seat, yelping with excitement, and runs full tilt at the door. There’s a loud krink and I watch in horror as the glass pane in the door explodes outwards into the corridor. Lan is there in a second, and the class falls to tatters.

  I call the kids back to their seats, but no doubt it looks as though I’d completely lost control of the class.

  By the end of the lesson, however, we’ve covered three new pages of the textbook and they can answer correctly:

  ‘How many legs does an octopus have?’

  ‘How many legs does a snail have?’

  ‘How many legs do I have?’

  At first I get the impression Lan doesn’t believe me when I tell her this, but I soon realise it’s just that she doesn’t care. No one cares, as long as the teacher, or anyone for that matter, has signed that the class has been taken and a few pages of the textbook covered.

  I sign the teacher’s book. In the space provided, I proudly note which pages of the textbook I’ve covered, and the additional language I’ve taught.

  My career as an English teacher in Hanoi has begun. I was lucky, Zac tells me later. During his first class at Global, a kid vomited on him.

  Ten green bottles and

  a pound of flesh

  I’m sitting at a table laid with a starched white tablecloth, salt and pepper shakers and silver cutlery. Piped classical music emanates from invisible speakers. Several uniformed waiters hover nearby, ready to take more orders for tea, coffee and iced water.

  It’s likely they’ve been specially trained in the dos and don’ts of serving wealthy foreigners, but today their training has failed them. They want to look impassive, solicitous, but their mouths have fallen open and they’re staring at the fat man.

  Zac doesn’t seem to notice. He’s in the throes of supreme pleasure. The air-conditioning has dried the sweat on his forehead, and surrounding him at the table is an all-female captive audience to entertain, impress and shock. Best of all, the food, which is the work of a world-class chef, is unlimited.

  We’re at our first ‘all-you-can-eat’ buffet lunch at Hanoi’s five-star Daewoo Hotel. We met up in the lobby at 11.30 this morning.

  Sitting opposite me, Natassia is immaculately dressed in straight-legged pants and a cream-coloured, embroidered sleeveless top. Her shoes and handbag match, and her full lips are glazed with red lipstick. Beside her, Zac is sporting a pair of pale green gym shorts and an over-sized, sweat-soaked maroon-coloured T-shirt.

  We’re now into our fifth or sixth helping. We alternate savoury dishes with small serves of desserts and cups of tea or coffee.

  The aim of this game is to outsmart the management by eating more than US$9 worth of food. The decision to pay this amount, surprisingly, was Zac’s. He read a newspaper ad for the half-price Sunday buffet lunch and rallied the troops. On his recommendation, we fasted for sixteen hours before arriving.

  ‘Normally, I’m really ti
ght with cash. I like to spend as little as possible. But I reckon this is a worthwhile expense,’ he tells me. ‘I think we should do it once a month’.

  I’m not about to disagree. I thought nine dollars was a bit excessive, given the prices outside on the street, but I’m in gastronomic heaven. The buffet includes a whole range of gourmet vegetarian food, the likes of which I never expected to see in Vietnam.

  At the Asian stand, I’ve piled my plate high with Singapore noodles, chilli tofu and eggplant, fried jasmine rice with lotus nuts and buttery broccoli. At the Japanese stand I’ve filched pickled ginger and wasabi. Over on the European side of the dining hall, I’ve helped myself to possibly a quarter of a kilo of French Brie and piles of exotic salads, over which I’ve poured whole cups of creamy salad dressing. Between platefuls, I linger over a few slices of mango with sorbet from the dessert table.

  I think I’ve reached the break-even mark and, incredibly, I’m still in action.

  Zac, on the other hand, has doubled or even trebled that mark. Later he’ll say he reckons he ate over a kilo of meat alone, and I won’t challenge the claim. It’s owing to his show-stopping gluttony that there are now several staff members gawking at him from their post about two metres from our table. I can’t tell whether they’re impressed or disgusted.

  In between dissertations on which Vietnamese staff members at Global have the best breasts, Zac is expounding the virtues of capitalism with the fervour of a recent convert.

  ‘I’m not proposing a better system,’ I say, ‘but there’s a hell of a lot of very poor people in America that don’t seem to be reaping much benefit from capitalism.’

  Zac fixes me with a withering stare and starts nodding. ‘You’ve fallen for a complete myth,’ he says, feigning pity. ‘The beauty of capitalism is that everybody gets richer.’