Committing to Hanoi
Posted: January 6, 2011 Filed under: Christmas, England, environment, expats, Hanoi, Reflections | Tags: commitment, england, Hanoi 13 Comments »
I’ve been threatening to write a blog post on commitment for some time now.
In fact, the c-word has been responsible for the bout of bloggers’ block that has been generally slowing my output here. Perhaps it’s better if I just get my thoughts down and try to avoid worrying too much about coherency.
So this is my chain of thought: Relationshipwise I am happily committed, married and settled. Late last year I attended a couple of job interviews and they suggested that the post, while welcoming entrepreneurship, also required a certain amount of bureaucratic plodding too. My interviewer told me of his many colleagues who had served for well over a decade.
Strangely it was music to my ears. After goal-post moving employers and the miracles required from a freelancer this seemed like something I’d be happy to commit too. I was dead-tired of all the previous uncertainty. I wanted my life mapped out for a change.
Very happily the news came on Christmas Eve that I was being offered the post and I was delighted to accept. It made the holidays.
I was in England at the time, with my still-new wife, preparing for her first Christmas in the UK, alongside my family.
We’d been looking forward to being back as much as any kid longs for Christmas. We were counting days. A year of swimming through marriage, visa and work permit bureaucracy was topped with no less than three neighbours deciding to demolish and rebuild their homes. In Hanoi that’s quite normal. It’s also normal to start at 7am and work seven days a week.
It’s noisy.
I spent the last few weeks in Hanoi grumpy and with a headache that wouldn’t be shifted.
If I wanted to get home this much, was Hanoi not for me? And this wasn’t even Hanoi’s stinking summer it was late autumn’s cool freshness.
But what of my commitment to Hanoi? Was even entertaining the thought of getting out disloyal? Was it weak? Was it just plain embarrassing considering how much I’d earlier gushed my love for the place?
But more than that, was it healthy to even briefly consider leaving – albeit at some point in the future? Do you have to work at a home country just as a marriage requires effort? Is it healthy to just up sticks and move every time a place turns out not to be perfect after all?
Was I so publicly committed to Hanoi that I was duty bound to stay forever however bad it got? Like someone waiting out a bad marriage so as not to upset the kids.
Supposing I did move somewhere else. Would that ultimately make me happy or just restart a cycle that begins in wonder and ends in disenchantment?
The questions whirred around my head and yet I couldn’t make sense of them enough to blog them before now.
Luckily being home was everything I hoped it would be – despite the fact that it also ultimately persuaded me that Hanoi was my future.
Seeing my family was wonderful and their acceptance of my new wife was very touching. We had a lovely Christmas. In between we enjoyed the silence. We slept. We walked. The headache went.
And yet it’s England that feels like a foreign country now. My skin cracked and itched between indoor central heating and outdoor subzero temperatures. Shopping centres were like different planets.
While irritated by Hanoi I had re-written England in my mind. It turns out that large parts of UK cities are not as beautiful as I remember them. I was shocked that motorway verges, like Vietnam’s, were thick with rubbish. Food came in freakishly vast helpings. Coffee shops are taking over high streets.
The snow was beautiful but hated and complained about as if it had been the result of an unwise Government policy decision. Taking my wife to a football match I started seeing the bug-eyed swearing and screaming through her eyes.
Visiting UK is a holiday now and we’re planning to go back in summer if we can. We loved it but it didn’t feel like home.
We came back via Moscow and it was almost a three day trip in all and we arrived exhausted.
But for all that we’re smiling and we’re rested and we’re happy to be here. Hanoi feels comfortable and I say that despite current temperatures that keep us hiding under our duvet in our cold, concrete house.
Hanoi is home and I want to break that moving on habit. I am not sure that even entertaining it is healthy.
I’ve come to conclusion that most places have pluses and minuses that just about level off. What we miss here is more than made up in other areas. There is no paradise – not anywhere – just a set of conditions that hopefully add up to a lifestyle that suits.
In the end I suppose it’s not about an absolute commitment to Hanoi it’s just about an understanding of what we have here.
In the end this place remains special to us. Most of the time.
Enough of the time.
It doesn’t matter how much you know, like, love a place; how much it’s suited to you or your lifestyle – occasionally you need a break. See other things, experience the world and appreciate what you love back home when you finally get back. Whether it’s the quiet life, or the fast pace (Hanoi or perhaps London) home is usually the opposite in many ways of what you seek on holiday
Sometimes it becomes so much of a change that you realise you can’t live where you currently are, but I don’t think you need have worried about that as your love for Hanoi is obvious!
Good to have you back, Steve!
Steve – I’d be gutted if you hadn’t reached that conclusion. You being in love with Hanoi (as a concept, a dream even) is a reliable constant in life. If you fell out of love with it, it’d be like someone telling me that santa claus isn’t real (and that must never happen).
Sorry my trip to the Toon didn’t overlap with yours – hope to see you if you both make it over this summer.
Hi Steve, I’ve been following your blog for a while.
I am from Hanoi, but have been living in Canada for almost 4 years. Im deeply touched by your love for my hometown. It just makes me wonder whether some days in the future I’ll love another place more than my birthplace. If someday, I decide that I love Canada too much I’ll stay here for the rest of my life. It will be very very painful to me if I’ll have to admit that Vietnam feels like a foreign country and it’s no longer a place for me.
Just writing to share with you that Im going through the very same process, struggling sometimes with my own feelings, but unfortunately, I haven’t reached the stage where I can say for sure if Hanoi wins my heart.
Steve,
U’re a grown up man. I’m a grown up man. I’m even older than you.
And we have our share of disagreement, publicly.
But for the record, I want you to know this post has created a big lump on my throat.
Thank you for your inspiration.
PS: I think I’m falling in love with you.
PS again: I’m straight. Just kidding. But you’ve just written one of the BEST love letters I’ve ever come across for Vietnam.
Wonderful post. Hanoi one me over in just the four days I spent there last year. I envy you.
I am now living in another country too. Although i still wish to go back to my home someday, I am happy where I am now because of the opportunities this place offers me!
Wonderful post. As an American who was a teen in the early and mid-70s in the midst of the war, my image of Hanoi was of a cold grey souless city…the effect of exposure to US news media, no doubt. Your blog has truly brought the city to warm and wonderful reality. I stumbled across it via a Hanoi daily photo blog and it’s been a pleasure to follow your insights ever since.
Minxlj – I think the problem is that forever seems so long. It’s a big step to get married “forever” but I can do that. But what’s to stop me moving around? Well nothing except that it reaches a point where it doesn’t solve anything and is, in fact, counter productive.
Thanks Michael.
Peter, nice to hear from you. It was never the chance that I would leave now – just one day – and the fact that I even considered that worried me a bit. Sorry I missed you too.
Van, good to have you reading. I wish I could just switch of the thought process that makes me question living anywhere. It’s the thought that I could move on that is so damaging.
Vietnam720 – you always make it sound like we had a big row. Not the case just a differing of an opinion on a single matter. That said I think I did a lot of growing up last year. I needed some edges knocking off me and needed a bit of grounding. I have to get better at everything and be a better person – but then again don’t we all. Dealing with Hanoi when it’s not perfect is part of that.
DB – thanks!
Lillian – opportunities are an odd one. Happiness is so intangible. Will opportunities alone make you happy?
Dirk, Thanks very much. This place can be grey at times but never soulless.
So Steve, are you going to tell us more about the new job? I had four “proper” jobs in Vietnam and several freelance jobs. I never came close to thinking any job was secure or fulfilling. It would be nice to know those kinds of jobs are out there though.
ELLA – I’m the new head of marketing and communications for British Council Vietnam.
We’ll have to see how it goes but I’ve met enough colleagues in my early days who have been there for 10 years or more to suggest that it can be a longer term option.
Wow. That sounds like a very cool gig. And it comes with home-cooked hot pot! Congratulations.
Hi Steve
I totally relate to your post. It’s exactly what I feel but can’t put into words.
I guess we do face those questions at one time or another in our life. For me it’s been like a constant battle which I have to fight everyday. Hopefully I will come out of it soon.