Notes on Hanoi — etc.
The digest: including postcards from Ninh Binh + an old letter about swimming in Dubrovnik + readings + joy, wherever it is found.
However you found your way here, welcome! I’m Emily, and I write letters about how we seek and tell stories to make sense of a changing world and our place in it.
A glimpse of Tràng An
Some ninety kilometres south of Hanoi: Ninh Binh, a network of limestone karst mountains and caves covered in sultry rainforest—a deep green when seen up close, but leeched of colour when seen from a greater distance, especially on the overcast days we were there, the hazy grey veil broken just once by torrential rain. On the travel internet, Ninh Binh is often touted as the less crowded alternative to Halong Bay. But instead of rising from the sea, the limestone peaks emerge majestically from rivers, lagoons, green paddy fields (which won’t turn gold till the harvest season later in the year), spotted with serene old temples and pagodas. Or maybe they were just serene because we went exploring in the evening on creaky bicycles borrowed from our guesthouse, dodging day trippers from Hanoi. We took these photos while we were out on a rowboat, weaving in and around the Tràng An Landscape Complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, along the Sao Khe River. We were one of the last boats—just one of a rickety handful—pushing off shore that evening, which left us better able to appreciate the mystique of the landscape, its outlines softened by the coming dusk ✨
New letter:
Notes on Hanoi
A fragment:
Walking along Trang Thi street close to midnight, we segued into two long lines of teenagers flanking the street, hanging out on their parked motorcycles. People here seem to learn to ride motorcycles young, which gives them an element of freedom in a busy city, and I imagine their bikes serve as economical perches if they can’t yet afford to hang out too often in cafes and restaurants. I saw them sneaking glances at each other from across the street—Oh, that one’s cute, will they approach? An ice-cream shop nearby carried on a brisk business and a boy, bespectacled and dressed in a white t-shirt and shorts, a subtle swagger animating his shoulders, collected two ice creams and ambled across the road to a girl, also simply dressed, waiting with her friend on a bike. I turned to W.C., couldn’t help but smile. It all felt like something of a school dance!
From the archive:
From an old city by the sea #3
An excerpt:
The sea salt has curled our hair in places, misted our skin. We wear our straw hats slant across our faces and lie on our backs to dry off on towels spread across a concrete slab, paved between craggy rocks. We can hear the waves slapping against the shore, bright green Aleppo pines swaying overhead—and every so often, the breeze sends a rustling through the leaves, casting dancing shadows on our faces, shaking spiky brown filaments and pinecones down on us. Earlier, I had seen ants scurrying in their midst, and try to keep a childhood memory from intruding: sudden stabbing pains deep inside my ear, my parents driving me to the nearest clinic as I whimper in the backseat, the doctor tipping in an oily solution to wash out a pinprick of a creature that didn’t look like it could possibly have caused so much trouble.
Readings, etc.
1./ Listened to The List by Yomi Adegoke, a novel inspired by the real-life events of the “Shitty Media Men” list that leaked in 2018. I enjoyed it. The character studies and the surprises they still offer despite the topical proximity of the underlying subject to the current zeitgeist, though I felt that the material had perhaps been stretched too thin, drawn out too much in parts. At least, that was my experience listening to it; would I have felt differently if I’d read it instead, because I read so much faster? Also, I couldn’t help imagining the possibilities of other endings with this book, which could have been more unsettling, more interrogating. What if there were less certainty about whether Ola’s fiancee had indeed done what he was accused of in the list? What if there were just no way of proving, debunking, or knowing? How would she—or we, caught in the same situation—have chosen to go on? Would she have trusted the man she taught Michael was, or would the accusation, the mere fact of its existence, have made that completely impossible?
2./ I finally finished George Saunder’s A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, a short-story writing manual based on the work of the Russian masters—but also a life manual, honestly. I’ve been taking my time through it, trying to absorb its lessons more deeply. Funnily, while experimenting with changing points of view and adopting that of an inanimate object in a short piece I did as a writing exercise recently, I realised I’d adopted some of their influences: resulting in a pinch of fairytale-like whimsy with which I surprised myself. I want to add: if you’re looking for a short story to read: among the ones Saunders picked as teaching material for the book, “The Nose” by Nikolai Gogol is my favourite 👀 Here’s an excerpt:
3./ I movie I found entertaining, though it got mixed press reviews: Wicked Little Letters, based on a true provincial scandal from the 1920s that went national, wherein a small English town is beset by the anonymous sending of hilariously vulgar letters to the townsfolk. First, the upstanding “spinster” of the community Edith Swan (played delightfully, as always, by Olivia Colman) gets whiplashed, then others of her conservative seaside community too. The insults run along the lines of “you foxy-arse old fucking mare”, “you great big fucking onion!”—which, honestly, we would consider twee compared to our day’s online trolling 😆 Edith points the finger at her neighbour, the potty-mouthed single mother Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley, who was the complete opposite in Women Talking), whose single-mother-ness and Irish-ness compounds her culpability in the townsfolk’s eyes. The film is a charming, eccentric little caper, with moments of chilling darkness and real emotion. Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction!
Joy is not a crumb
This, with a strong piccolo—or is it cortado? I honestly am not sure of the exact difference and should find out, though different cafes seem to vary in how they make them anyway! But that’s besides the point here, which is: the bread. I’ve hardly ever liked rye bread but I love this rugbrød from a cafe in KL, glistening with olive oil, which might just pave the way to more liking of rye bread? I always marvel a little when that happens: when one iteration you like of a thing opens you up to try other iterations of the thing. I’ve learnt over and over that it’s always worth trying another take on something you didn’t like before, even when I forget this and have to learn it again 💚
From back in KL,
E.