Good Morning, Vietnam

It's impossible to prepare yourself for Vietnam. It's also impossible, upon arrival, to arm yourself with an eloquent response to Vietnam. I believe my own was "whoa, they actually do wear the pointy hats!" Sean's, I think, was "Dude. So many people!"

The train conductor banged on our carriage door at 6am, half an hour before we pulled into Hanoi Station, and Sean and I sat up sleepily, coming face to face with our jovial German cabin-mate, who---thanks to his chubbiness, rosy cheeks, and ringlets---I had involuntarily taken to calling Augustus Gloop in my head. (Poor Augustus Gloop, on the last train he'd been on, he'd somehow booked the wrong ticket and had spent 22 hours sitting on a hard bench, crushed in between three live roosters and somebody's incontinent great aunt. And he hadn't complained once.)

Looking outside, I thought I was in a play. That was my first thought: I am in a play---or maybe a movie, an Oscar-winner with somebody solemn and appropriate like Ralph Fiennes---and here is the stage set. It didn't look real. And yet, at the same time, it did look real, because it looked like all the pictures you'd seen of Vietnam on TV. Everything was green, all different shades of green, and everything was moving. There were cows and oxen on the side of the road, and people working in fields, and bicycles, bicycles, bicycles everywhere. This play I'm in must have an excellent budget, I thought, as our train wound through it all, the tableaux appearing on both sides. This all looks so convincing!

In retrospect, I think I was perhaps hallucinating the oxen. But once we got into Hanoi itself, and negotiated our way to our hotel---brilliant news! Vietnam doesn't have youth hostels yet!---the scenery was no less spectacular. There are motorbikes zooming around every corner, the constant call of "Cyclo! You want to take cyclo?" and old women in conical hats sitting with piles of baguettes at their feet. The air is filled with the constant sound of honking horns, one after the other after the other; there's barely a second of clear air before someone honks again. It's almost one constant honking, in fact, made bearable only by the fact that at least they honk in different tones.

Crossing the street, one has to unlearn everything one has ever been taught about not walking into incoming traffic. You can look both ways, sure, but it won't get you anywhere. And wait for the little green man? Pah! What little green man? We were terrified at first, but now we've almost got the hang of it: you give a cursory glance, and then walk straight forward at a steady pace, keeping an eye on everything coming towards you as you negotiate your way across the street. The motorbikes dodge you, rather than the other way around, and that takes some getting used to. Sean got quite depressed about it all yesterday. "It's just so....lawless," he sighed in frustration.

Our hotel is tall and impossibly skinny, just two rooms on each floor; the balcony that faces onto the street doesn't open and there's a rip in the bedcover, but the ceilings are high and the crown molding fantastic; you can tell it used to be something lovely. And for $5 each a night, it suits us fine; in the mornings, we come downstairs to a warm baguette and coffee, and afterwards we play with the owner's one-year-old son, who's just learning to walk, and whose name is either "I" or "Eye" or possibly even "Ike"; it's hard to say, and I felt a little rude asking for the third time.

We hardly ever know what the date is anymore, and sometimes we don't know what day it is either. We have a pain au chocolat for a mid-morning snack, just because we can. We go out for dinner every night, and our biggest decisions are based on whether we might want to try kayaking when we visit Ha Long Bay or whether it might make me feel like I'm trapped in an inescapable cabin of death.

All is not sweetness and light, however; we are currently embroiled in two ongoing arguments. The first is whether or not Sean pronounces "museum" as "mus-ay-um." I am of the stauch opinion that he does. I have thought this odd ever since I've known him, but have never questioned it, figuring it must just be A Connecticut Thing, or maybe even An American Thing. Recently, however, I called him on it and he objected mightily, huffing and puffing that he did not say "mus-ay-um," he said "museum," and why was I spreading such lies and slander? That would be fine and dandy had I not expressly heard him say "mus-ay-um" maybe five more times, when I tested him to see if he'd do it again. ("Sean, where should we go tomorrow? How about the....you know, that place with the exhibits? About the women in the war? What's it called again?") I have tried to tell him that there is no shame in saying "mus-ay-um," but no, he refuses to acknowledge that he pronounces it like this, EVEN AS HE DOES IT. It seems a very odd thing to lie about. Should I try to tape him doing it, do you think? I have a feature on my camera for short movies.

The second argument is based on whether or not it's okay to ask locals for directions. I believe that it is, and 98% of the time, people are more than happy to help. I have given my fair share of directions---though, in Charleston, a lot of them were actually wrong, being as I had a slight problem distinguishing left from right until my brother told me the trick last year about holding your left hand up in an "L" shape, and that helped immensely---and so I feel that the karmic circle of direction-giving just keeps spinning around.

Sean, however, is a textbook cliche in the way that he refuses to ask for help getting somewhere---"my dear, you are seriously becoming a male stereotype," I warn, "and all the pink shirts in the world aren't going to change it"---and abhors when I suggest that we ask directions. "But it just makes us look so touristy!" he protests in anger. "Right," I say. "And the camera slung across your chest, our open Lonely Planet, and the fact that we've been walking up and down this same street for the last twenty minutes make us look like regular Hanoi locals."