Remembering Hanoi

I stared at Google Maps on my phone trying to decipher the Vietnamese characters and names that riddled the streets. It was early afternoon in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and the sun beat down on the macadamized roads. Heat shimmered in the humidity. Outside of their apartments, locals nibbled at their lunch and sipped beers at makeshift tables. Although the city still hummed with motorbikes and cars, it felt drowsy and slow, an unusual lull because almost all shops and restaurants were closed to celebrate the Vietnamese New Year, Tet. But the Fine Arts Museum remained open, a restored French colonial villa stocked with all sorts of Vietnamese art. So that’s where I headed with my best friend and travel partner Natalie.

I held my phone out in front of me as I followed the map. Just as I stepped off the curb to cross the street, my phone was plucked right out of my hand. It was gentle but sudden -- so casual that I thought Natalie had taken it from me to check where we were going. Instead, when I looked up, I saw a man zip past me on his motorbike, my phone in his hand.

I whipped my head to the left to keep him in sight and screeched, “He stole my phone!” My first reaction was to sprint after him, as if I could ever catch up. The locals on the street barely glanced at me and continued with their day. Clearly, they had seen it all before, and often. Stopping abruptly, I squinted after him as he reached the end of the street and took a right, forever gone. There was no point in chasing him. I walked slowly back to Natalie whose face was pale and resigned. “All right, let’s do this again,” I sighed.  

Yes, we were robbed in Vietnam. And, we were also robbed in Bali the week before. In the span of six days, we each had our phones and wallets stolen, including almost all of our cash and every credit and debit card. It happened to Natalie first -- and you might think I would be more careful after that. I mean, any traveler knows to be alert while exploring a new place. Yet here we were, after months of traveling, as careless as an amateur. But the robbery is not the focus of this story -- it was the aftermath that was more absorbing. Natalie and I were traveling through Southeast Asia with nothing to rely on but each other, with our eyes as the only lenses to capture the moments.

 It was incongruous, this mix of privilege and lack. People thought we were crazy to be phoneless, and to be fair, we felt a little crazy too. We’d been down to one phone -- mine -- and now it really struck us how dependent we all are on this tiny tech we have in our pockets. And to be traveling around Southeast Asia without phones and with hardly enough money for meals to last the rest of the trip, we felt violated, confused, fragile. Oh, and dumb. As Western tourists, we had a role: eat the food, see the sights, take the pictures. Now, we didn’t have the props to play the part.

Even our very first experience in our next destination, the equally history-rich capital of Hanoi, entirely revolved around our non-phone status. The airport shuttles into the city weren’t running because of Tet, so we piled into a group taxi van with a bunch of other travelers, mostly consisting of couples on backpacking trips. Natalie and I got separated – she was sent deep to the back of the van while I squeezed next to the driver in the front.

“Where are you two staying?” The woman sitting behind me asked. We had chatted earlier as we waited for the bus. She and her boyfriend had been traveling for months around the world and had just ventured into Southeast Asia.

“One sec’. Let me show you on the map,” I replied. Reaching into my overstuffed bag, I pulled out a crumpled map that was soft, creased, and torn on the edges from wear. I worked to unfold the map, grazing the girl cramped up close next to me, and turned around to show the woman. I had circled our Airbnb in pencil. Her eyebrows went up into her hairline as my large map practically shrouded her.

“Oh! Old school!” She said before breaking out in laughter with her boyfriend. I laughed with her because, at this point, the whole situation was truly hilarious. I explained the robbery stories to them, a story I perfected more and more each time I told it. They couldn’t believe we had been traveling for weeks with no phones and hardly any money.

Even as we explored Hanoi – a busy, modern city overlaying an ancient civilization – we truly stood out, and not just because we were Westerners. All of the locals expected us to have the technology they did: smartphones that buzzed, took pictures, answered questions, and guided us around the city. As we wandered the bustling streets, an older woman walked up to us wearing a broad brimmed Vietnamese conical leaf hat. Her face was lined, her skin loosened by age. She carried a pole on her shoulders with baskets full of ripe bananas hanging from each side. The bananas spiraled outward along the lip of the basket. Holding out the pole and gesturing for us to take it from her, she intercepted us.

“No, thank you!” Natalie and I both said, waving our hands, but before we could keep going, she heaved the pole onto my back. The weight from the stacked bananas tugged at my shoulder. I was impressed she held this all day! The woman smiled and started to laugh, prompting us to laugh too. Natalie and I looked at each other awkwardly, not sure what to do next, before the woman gestured for us to take a picture.

“Oh, we don’t have a camera!” Natalie told her.

“Phone?” She demanded. Natalie looked at me and giggled.

“We don’t have phones!” Natalie replied. The woman looked at us both, totally bewildered, and then promptly took the pole off my shoulder, turning away to find some more tourists. We didn’t know this at the time, but the local Vietnamese often offer to take a picture for modern compensation. We didn’t have phones to take the picture, and if we had, we didn’t even have money to give her. Here we are, white, Western, privileged tourists without the most basic accouterments to play our roles.

We are a generation of digital natives. Yet, we couldn’t rely on recommendations. We couldn’t rely on online research. No Lonely Planet; no Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown; no New York Times. It was solely up to us to explore Hanoi one lost step at a time, a privilege in itself. Even now, as I recall our time in Hanoi, I automatically reach for pictures, but we have almost none. Yet the city is still vivid in my mind, every cheap meal is delicious in my memory, each pagoda, cathedral, and museum just as lively. I remember even the smallest details.

I remember the Old Quarter’s thirteenth century streets weaving in and out of each other to form a maze of a city. A reminder of the ripe history, elegant French colonial architecture stands cheek by jowl with ancient, narrow Vietnamese houses and shops that are stacked in a game of Tetris. Tiered pagodas, too, pop up in the middle of all the chaos. Speeding by, people on scooters, bikes, and tuk-tuks flood the streets, creating a constant, inescapable hum alongside almost rhythmic beeps and honks.

I remember the serenity of Hoan Kiem Lake in the midst of the bustling Old Quarter, a welcome pause. We walked the entirety of the lake. Fog rested above the water and swirled in the trees while fountains spit out water from the middle of the lake. Families swarmed to celebrate the new year. Dressed in their finest outfits, the children wore fluffy, colorful skirts and tutus and fancy, vibrant ties. They held golden, helium filled balloons shaped like animals and cartoon characters, a treat for the New Year. Surrounding the lake were thick trees that dotted the sidewalk and reached at the gray sky. The branches were almost bare from the incoming autumn season.

I remember infiltrating the weaving streets to look for some food. A left here; let’s try a right. We decided as we went. Chic boutiques next to crowded cafés next to local food stalls lined the street. No open space. We hunted for the most authentic place, judging them by how many locals sat at the tables. Makeshift outdoor seating clustered the middle of the streets and sidewalks. The plastic chairs, sat in by hundreds before, barely rose to my knees. A Vietnamese woman stirred the cauldron of pho that had been simmering for hours. Creating a sort of milky way, the beef broth swirled and bubbled with spices. Natalie is an adamant vegetarian, but she was going to have to disregard that for now. The woman scooped the broth into a deep white bowl and then went down the surrounding line of tubs that held meat, noodles, and vegetables. I nodded yes to every part, and she handed me a near overflowing bowl of pho and sent us to one of the tables. The meal was about 40,000 dong for the both of us. That’s about two dollars, which just made it in our budget.

I remember walking down lanes of markets. Buckets of raw, full chickens sat on the sidewalk, waiting to be cleaned, chopped, and cooked in meals. Just next door, traditional Vietnamese coffee stalls competed with modern, high-end cafés. I sipped at my coffee as I wandered – the Vietnamese combine the bitter coffee with sweetened condensed milk to create a sweet yet rich, thick drink that tasted more like a dessert than anything else. We stumbled upon a towering neo-gothic cathedral, mirroring the ones you might find in France. Sitting on the same colorful, plastic chairs from outside the restaurants, churchgoers surrounded the cathedral for mass, singing and worshipping. We stopped in a convenience store to buy a cheap beer and snack and continued to explore. 

I remember returning late at night to the place we were staying: a small room in a building just a few minutes outside the center of town that we shared with local Vietnamese. It was buried in a dark alley with tarps stretched across the top from wall to wall. We used Natalie’s indiglo light on her watch to unlock the door and shuffled up the stairs to our quaint room to go to sleep.

And I remember waking up the next morning to the sound of locals’ feet thumping up and down the wooden stairs outside our door, to shafts of sun beaming through the window and illuminating dust, to the sound of Vespas purring. How lucky we were to have another day in Hanoi.