Hanoi living: Documenting the mundane

This morning I am up early – rare for a Sunday – but I have work to do before plans to head out.

As ever the cockerel the neighbour keeps in his yard is crowing.  It’s a myth they only crow at daybreak.

I leave the girlfriend sleeping while I head downstairs.  I switch on the computer.  The internet is slow but we’re about to treble our internet payment to receive a promised faster service.  It’ll take $60 to set up and then be about $30 a month.

An email tells me that episode one of the new Dr Who series is now available for download on iTunes.

After a couple of hours work I wake the  girlfriend. I mention Dr Who but she’s unexcited – she’s still mourning the old guy and has already written off the new young doctor.  We’ll see.

She complains of feeling sluggish and blames the lack of air in the room.  Difficult one this.  Closed windows equals stuffiness.  Open windows equals mosquitos.  We vow to try windows open for a while and hope the new mosquito plug-ins will do their thing.

Does she want breakfast?

No, just tea.

The tea is English Breakfast Tetley.  After months of persevering with the omnipresent Lipton I saw the Tetley in a “gourmet” store.  My cereal is also from there – or rather parts of it are.  The nutty, fruity, seedy parts.  The rest are from Fivimart a nearby Vietnamese supermarket where the challenge is to get everything you need before the overly loud Vietnamese boy-band ballads push you over the edge.

The poncey, half-fat, high-calcium milk is apparently from New Zealand, via our corner shop whose owner is deservedly becoming rich on the back of the expensive tastes of locally living foreigners.

The girlfriend says she’ll eat at her mothers instead.This surprises me as I thought we were just popping in for tea on the way to out-of-town shopping hell “Big C“.

My suspicions are confirmed when she makes me stop the scooter outside a shop with whole roast ducks strung up in the window.

Eventually we arrive at the folk’s place.  There is no getting out of lunch.  The duck is hacked horizontally, Vietnamese style, so each piece is a cross-section of skin, fat, bone and gristle.

If I hadn’t just seen off a huge bowl of cereal I might have been more in the mood but I hadn’t been warned.

However, I look on as more chunks of duck land on my plate.  There is also a Vietnamese approximation of fishcake, greens, pumpkin soup and some little cakey things with sugary gingery centres.

On the way over we very nearly saw the sun for what I believe would be the first time in just under two months.  The sky briefly goes from its normal grey to an off blue.  I feel the warmth of the sun and wish I wasn’t wearing shoes and socks – and then I remember how the mosquitos buzz around me at the in-laws place and I’m glad I did.

Alongside the gloom it’s been very humid for a while.  Before setting off that morning I had taken the scissors to the part of the foam lining in my crash helmet that rests on my sweaty forehead.  It was giving me a rash.

With that out of the way the air can circulate better and my sweat can dry.  The downside being that I occasionally feel bugs in there after they’re scooped up by the open air vents.

The humidity adds to the persistent almost-headache that I have here.  For the most part I keep it at bay with a combination of water, caffeine and paracetamol. When we arrive at the in-laws I ask for water.

However during the meal I’m given, without being asked, a beer and then a brandy.  It is 1pm. By the time I finish the meal my head feels thick and heavy and I understand why my father in law naps after lunch.

The meal is followed by very strong tea of the non-Tetley variety. I am periodically updated as to what everyone else is talking about.

We eventually leave and head out to go shopping at Big C. We park outside coffee chain Highlands partly so I can have the coffee I’ve been holding out for – partly so we could use their parking area.

I have the Cafe Freeze.  It used to be a simple frappucino-style drink but it has recently been given an overhaul. Alongside the icy, creamy coffeeness they’ve added “coffee jelly” in an approximation of trendy bubble tea.  I’m not convinced.

We eventually shop. It’s hellish but that’s shopping for you. My girlfriend has to carry her handbag in a clear sealed bag, apparently in order to stop her shoplifting.

The checkout, as checkouts here are – is more than painfully slow.  The lady on the tannoy – as ladies on tannoys do here – talks absolutely all the time at very loud levels. I move closer to actual-headache levels. I need more water.

We buy a hammock and metal stand, a desk lamp, coat hangers and a mosquito net for the guest room.

We briefly consider taking advantage of the free delivery service but that seems like wimping out.  We carry everything ourselves instead. Hooks on either side of the bike take two shopping bags and the long, thin holdall that carries the hammock, and heavy metal stand, is rested on its end on the seat between us – pointing up in the air.

We head for home.  At one point an old guy on a bike in front of us turns left and has an immediate change of heart and then turns right.  I have to stop abruptly to avoid hitting him.  Maddeningly he gives me the look-away. Later we drive past Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum which is absolutely buzzing with people.  The good weather also sees the swan pedaloes on Westlake all out.  I notice, as I drive past, that each are equidistant from each other and are stationery.  The teenage, Hanoian equivalent of “getting a room”.

We make it back to the house unscathed, drop off the stuff and double back to a shop that we’d noted earlier in the week sells metalwork objects.  We want to buy a wine rack.

I had tried to buy the rack midweek but when I entered the store ma and pa were absolutely fast asleep and I didn’t have the heart to wake them.  This time pa gives us a price and dusts off our purchase.  Meanwhile ma is quite obviously playing computer games.  Although her screen faces away from us it is plugged into speakers and her KERPOWS! are broadcast across the showroom.

And now I’m home again.  The hammock and stand is put up on the roof.  It remains to be seen how often we’ll use it.  You always think you’ll use outside space in Hanoi but it’s my experience that normally that heat, humidity, bugs or noise normally chase you inside.  Why sweat outside when you can enjoy AC inside?

So, that done, I’m back in the bedroom and, as a result of the new open-window policy I’m typing this while hiding under the mosquito net.

However two fresh mosquitos bites have shown themselves since I started typing.

I’ve an open invitation to join the missus and sisters for Korean food tonight.

But I think I’ll have a quiet one.