Notes on Hanoi
Things I saw while walking the city's streets and peering out from inside its cafes.
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.
1./ That’s the gurgling of eighty or so water pumps in the courtyard of an old apartment building in the city’s French Quarter, where we stayed—with dense tangles of pipes snaking up the building, some five storeys high, to their respective apartments. The entrance gate is closed at midnight, and if you come back after you have to wake the guard—a wiry, crotchety uncle usually dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, who sleeps on a thin mattress lining a rigged wooden platform just inside the entrance gate—to be let in, though he seemed never to be expecting us despite the supposed agreement in place 😆 It seemed to be one of three Airbnbs in the building, from what I could make out from the arrow signs. It did make me think that, wherever affordable, I should cut back more on whole-apartment holiday rentals to refrain from taking up affordable permanent housing for locals, charming and “authentic”-feeling though this place was…
2./ The first time we left our apartment, we turned off our street and soon came upon the century-old Dien Hong park, bounded by busy roads. It was buzzing, so festive. People were playing badminton and cầu mây (we call it sepak takraw in Malaysia), sitting on mini plastic stools to chat over a snack, while pet dogs stared hungrily or took a leak. There’s a beautiful, very old, stone fountain originally built by the French (with just the right amount of patina, as W.C., an artist, would say) in the centre of the park: dragons weaving down slopes, toads spouting water—or they would be if the fountain hadn’t been left dry.
3./ 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!