While I wondered aloud on Facebook where to head for our Hoi An honeymoon a friend made a suggestion.
The place she mentioned was literally 20 times more than my budget.
When I hinted that this was a little out of my price range, she persisted. The suggestion being that a honeymoon was a time to “splash out”.
The truth is, at 20 times less, I already was paying more than usual.
I don’t write this to illustrate how poor I am. I’m not. Not even by expat standards. Not if the classified ads on the New Hanoian site are anything to go by – half drunk bottle of whiskies for sale. Old mosquito nets, one spoon etc.
But I am slowly becoming aware of people being able to afford the kind of prices that normally have me thinking…just who pays that?
In many cases it leaves you making mental calculations as to just how much people must earn. Either it’s invariably more than I imagine or people are benefitting from other income streams.
For the Vietnamese, differences are even more extreme. Rolls Royce, Hummers and Aston Martins are all to be seen on Hanoi roads. And yet to me most businesses here appear, at least outwardly, to be failing.
Empty restaurants filled only by their own over-staffing. Empty shops strewn with sleeping shop assistants. Tourist stalls where thick dust on half the stock is a tell tale sign of literally nothing being sold.
Not to mention those Old Quarter shops selling only knitwear which don’t consider diversifying through Hanoi’s forty degree summer.
I can understand poverty here. It’s the wealth I don’t get.
People are paying $1,000 a night for hotel rooms and they’re staying for a week. People I thought of as contemporaries by age, background and, so I thought, earnings are springing for long-haul business class airline seats.
If I can just about understand how they’ve made enough money to afford nice holidays – I can’t understand how they’re wealthy enough to take so much time off from earning it.
Meanwhile many expat families regularly seem to Sunday brunch at five star hotels at $35 a head – champagne included.
People visit chocolate buffets.
I’m way beyond being sensitive over displays of wealth in a developing country and yet…a chocolate buffet almost seems like you’re rubbing it.
I shall eat till I am sick…and I shall eat only chocolate.
None of this is a complaint. The creation of wealth is how this country will grow and more people will be rescued from the most hideous poverty.
But I find myself increasingly unable to understand wealth here.
Violetly Happy
When I first ate this, only about a month ago at an Old Hanoi do, I wondered how the hell I’d never tried it before.
Violet rice with yoghurt, served with crushed ice. It’s among the most tasty foods I have ever eaten in Hanoi.
Since then I must have eaten it a dozen times, our regular supplier being this place of wonderment and sweet things.
I’m assured, but I’m not sure I can actually believe it, that the rice is naturally that colour. My suspicions being aroused as a result of it tasting vaguely Ribenaish.
Normally they sell it to us all bagged up complete with a separate bag of ice. Last night though I perched myself on a plastic stool and spooned it in. There I was, big 39 year old me, smack bang in the middle of a dozen sweet-toothed Vietnamese teenage girls. Back home that might be odd enough behaviour to get me arrested.
What’s it taste like? Well like a more subtle version of blackcurrant and yogurt. The rice is not remotely starchy. Not especially sticky either, just juicy.
Oh and it looks a lot less attractive when it’s all mixed up. See below.
Hanging on for the wedding, the honeymoon and the sea
There’s been a thought that’s been going through my head for some weeks now.
I just want to jump into the sea. I just want to jump into the sea.
Proper sea with waves fringed with big breezy beachy expanses you can walk on.
I can blame my utter lethargy on no end of reasons – setting up a new business, planning (and more stressfully paying) for a wedding but looking around, this is just an end-of-summer Hanoi thing. I can see it everywhere.
For those of us that didn’t get away it’s like we’ve sweated as much as we can. Like lost minerals can no longer be topped up with electrolyte. Dehydration headaches are now only being lessened by paracetamol, not cured.
Each friend suffering similar tiredness is prescribing different cures. A big night out. A holiday. Leaving altogether.
I just want to jump into the sea.
A typically down-t0-earth Aussie friend in Hoi An says finding a place on the beach for our budget will be like “pushing shit up hill”, but we’ll find something. It has to be on the beach. It’s all about the sea.
Today I looked on as my beautiful girl spoke to the wedding venue liaison (pic above) about what we want and what they could provide. I took a walk around the place and thinking about the wedding suddenly left me all choked. A happy, but tired, feeling.
Returning to the house I looked at the last of the savings and made mental calculations. She won’t let me overspend on this wedding – but at the same time, it’s true what they say, it’s only once. It should be everything she deserves.
Business will settle. Vietnam will turn 1,000. Our wedding will be beautiful. We will depart on our honeymoon.
Then, in Hoi An, we will hold hands and rush like newly wed lemmings into the South China Sea.
Green, white and blue
Facebook, business and Facebook business in Vietnam
This picture started life on my new business website but I thought it deserved a wider audience.
A large ad referencing Facebook. That’s Facebook that is blocked in Vietnam. On the outside of a Hanoi police station.
Odd, though somehow, very Hanoi. More thoughts on this here.
So yes, there is now a business website with its own blog. And the new business is now named OMIH Media. This is as a direct result of Elliott from the New Hanoian repeatedly asking me if I’d had any more thoughts about what I wanted to call my business. He’d make a vague face when I shrugged and said “Our Man in Hanoi”.
“I suppose you could always use just the initials,” he replied in a way that suggested he thought I’d be a fool not to.
He had a point. Something more “grown up” was needed and OMIH Media was born. I had no problem previously with the Hanoi bit but the “man” grated. It almost felt like I was saying: “Out of the way, let The Man do this for you”.
Anyway, because I wanted to keep this blog for my more rambling Hanoi musings I’ve created the aforementioned website for my business.
Personally I think RSS is the key to the social media universe. But if you like to consume your blogs with a dash of Farmville and you’ve got your head around the DNS issues then I’m finally doing the Facebook thing. Go here for the FB OMIH Media page and here for the FB Our Man in Hanoi blog page.
Please feel free to join either.
Or just keep it here. And there.
