Coffee Culture in Hanoi

the old and the young at Cafe Lâm 

My first morning in Vietnam I was extremely jet lagged after a twenty hour journey from Chicago.  I stumbled blurry eyed down the streets of the backpacker district and hopped into the first cafe I could find and ordered a coffee.  The little cafe had only plastic stools to sit on; I remember them being quite near to the ground and it felt more like I was squatting than sitting.  Hunched in such a way I examined my first cup of Vietnamese coffee.  It was brought out with a smile by a young waitress and placed before me in a casual way as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  I did not agree with this notion.

There was a bowl full of hot water.  In the bowl was a small glass with condensed milk on the bottom; it was wearing a tiny metal hat.  I soon observed that the hat, or phin, was actually a filter as there was a dark oil like substance leaking from the bottom of it.  I remember thinking that it must be broken, because even after five minutes it still contained some hot water.  I kept poking at it and eventually the waitress, giggling to herself, removed it for me.  I mixed what now looked like a shot of espresso with the condensed milk and took my first sip of Vietnamese coffee.  It was divine: sweet and strong enough to cut through my extreme jet lag and help me get on with my explorations.

Sitting with Le Xuan Hoang at his coffee shop near the Red River, watching my coffee slowly filter through the phin,  I'm reminded of that first cup.  Hoang's cafe is located on a busy street near a committee building (No 3 Bo Song Quan Hoa Street).  He says he owes much of his cafe's success to it's location, as many patrons come to his cafe on business.  "I think umm people to drink coffee they have some reason.  Some people they want to drink coffee.  Some people they want a place to sit.  Some young people they want a place to be with their friends.  A lot of reasons for drinking coffee. But for my place, my shop, it's about the quality of the coffee,"  Hoang says explaining the real reason for his shop's popularity.

He uses a blend of three coffees: two types of beans from Nha Trang mixed with Trung Nguyen, the most popular brand of coffee in Vietnam.  He explains that the Trung Nguyen is strictly for aroma and that the other two are to make it strong, which it definitely is.  Hoang is convinced that not many people can really taste the difference between good and bad coffee, but fancies himself a connoisseur.  He limits himself to one cup a day though in order to control his coffee habit.

Vietnamese coffee distinguishes itself from its western counterparts in three ways.  It is roasted with butter oil, which coats the beans and protects them from burning during the process.  In this way they can produce dark beans similar to a French Roast.  Another difference is that they don't use 100% Aribica beans as is the trend in much of the west.  They usual do a blend of 70% Aribica and 30% Robusta, which makes the coffee a bit stronger and for many makes it a unique drinking experience--nostalgic almost, like this is how coffee once tasted long ago.  The third difference is the unique varietals that can be planted in Vietnam's diverse landscapes.  Among them are Arabica (and an "indigenous" Sparrow, or Se, Arabica), Robusta, Excelsa (sometimes called Chari), Liberica, Catimor and others.



through the souveir shop, the hidden cafe



The brewing method itself is also quite unique.  Coffee was introduced to Vietnam in the late 18th century by Dutch and French colonizers  Supposedly, the introduction of condensed milk was due to the difficulty in keeping fresh milk in the tropical climate but has since become a matter of preference.  The phin, or metal filter, has disputed origins and though they are seen in other places in South East Asia, no one can quite agree where they come from. 



It may come as a surprise but Vietnam is the second largest producer of coffee beans after Brazil.  Until recently they were only producing rather low quality beans for mass consumption, but as more money comes to the country they are specializing in higher quality beans.  As the coffee shop owner Hoan explained to me, twenty years ago there were barely any cafes in Hanoi, now he reckons there are over two thousand.



One of the oldest coffee shops in Hanoi is Cafe Lâm, located on Nguyen Huu Huan street in the Old Quarter.  It's the full of old men wearing barrettes and smoking.  Through the haze of smoke though, it's hard to ignore the walls covered completely in paintings from various decades.  The story is that before the coffee shop became famous many starving artists would come hang out there.  They would exchange their latest works for credit and drink coffee for free until it was time to create another one.  This exchange did two things for Cafe Lâm: it was able to adorn itself with countless paintings that are now worth quite a bit of money and created an atmosphere where artists and intellectuals could hang out: an atmosphere that seems to exist to this day.  It was hard to ignore a man next to me who was doing a rendering of one of the paintings on his iPad.



Cafe culture here is just as varied as in the west.  From old unique cafes like Lâm cafe to expensive cafes with lavish couches where young couples go on dates.  Many however are simply done in people’s houses, which they furnish with a few plastic stools and open to the public.  In such operations the costs are very low as it's usually family members who work there or employees from the countryside who are paid a pittance.  According to Hoang, though, these operations rarely make much money.  "If you want to be a success in your coffee business.  You have to have some special thing.  Make some difference to other.  Maybe about quality, maybe about atmosphere.  Maybe because of you.  You are friendly and they want to see you," and Hoang surely is a friendly man who had to excuse himself several times during the interview to make small talk with his patrons.

cafe trung at Cafe' Pho Co



One popular cafe in Hanoi has a rather interesting gimmick.  It is Café Pho Co, called "The Hidden Cafe" by most Westerners (11Hang Gai Street).  If one hasn't heard about the cafe it would be near impossible to spot as one needs to go through a souvenir shop to find the cafe.  Indeed I had to stop at several such shops before finding the windy path that led to the old cafe with a bonsai garden and winding staircase that leads to one of the best views of Hoan Kiem Lake the city has to offer.  Café Pho Co is also famous for its cafe trung (egg coffee), which is the typical Vietnamese coffee topped with a sweet froth almost like a meringue. 



As described in the beginning of this post, Vietnamese coffee does take quite a while to brew and filter and no one at the coffee shops seem particularly rushed.  Indeed, many people hang out at them for hours slowly sipping and chatting with friends as the world passes by.  It's a distinctive feature of Vietnam, this savoring of the joys of life instead of rushing from place to place with a large paper cup.  Like the coffee itself this attitude takes some getting used to, but after you try it you soon find yourself addicted.

A Story of Whitehead Camp

Without a good news source it’s easy not to think about many of the darker sides to Vietnam—past and present. Every country has its own dark history, but to ignore it completely is to rob people of their life stories. On a hunt for a story that could widen my view of Vietnam and its people I was led to the protagonist of this week’s blog: a twenty eight year old man who grew up in Whitehead, a refugee camp in Hong Kong. Due to the political nature of this tale, he has expressed a desire to remain nameless and will be referred to in this article as Anh.

With the rise of the new communist government in the late seventies came a troubling period in Vietnam that included reeducation camps for those who had supported the old government in the south and a fearful time for any families who may have aided either the French or Americans in any way during the wars. Many families fled the country to seek refuge. They are commonly referred to as “Boat People”.

Anh comes from a formerly well-to-do family. They lived in what he described as a villa in the seaside town of Hai Phong. Anh’s father is a Christian and, under the new government, was not allowed to pursue his dream of studying music at Hai Phong’s music university. The rising tension of the new government led Anh’s aunt and uncle to leave the country in the early 80’s when they still had some wealth. They headed to England where they remain to this day. For a number of reasons Anh’s family remained in Vietnam hoping the situation would get better. In 1983, however, they were left with no alternative but to embark on a boat journey. The figures vary dramatically from source to source, but it is estimated that there were roughly two million “boat people” and that five hundred thousand of them perished in their attempts at finding asylum. 


Many of these boats, not really sea worthy vessels, headed for major shipping routes hoping to be taken aboard freighters. They risked being attacked by pirates or stranded at sea; those that did make it to other countries were often sent back. Anh’s family made it to Hong Kong, which had declared itself a “port of asylum”. They were immediately sent to Whitehead camp.

Whitehead was located near Tolo Harbour, a remote coastal area in Hong Kong. The camp was, for the most part, a prison that housed around twenty thousand refugees like Anh and his family. It was a colorless mass of two story concrete buildings surrounded by a large metal fence with barbed wire rings curling along the top of it. According to Anh each building housed one hundred and fifty to two hundred people on tri-level bunk beds. When they arrived at Whitehead, Anh was five years old.

There was little to do in the camp, Anh explained to me. There was no work to be done and even the meals they received were precooked. It was a sort of glum existence, Anh played football on the streets and went to a school that was taught by people from the camp with no formal teaching background. He said there were only a handful of times that he was allowed to leave the camp, usually on school field trips. Besides that his existence was limited to life within his specific camp. The only animals he remembers seeing before he was fourteen were rats and police dogs.

As is human nature, the extreme insulation of the camp produced a number of gangsters who, though the resources were pitifully small, wanted to have the best for themselves. The early days were the most dangerous with many people battling it out for power. They sharpened the metal supports their bunk beds and used them as knives. Anh remembers the stories of the many deaths during that time period. If the lights went out in any of the rooms in the building it meant trouble. Since the refugees didn’t have control over the power supply, a lone dark room insinuated that the light had been purposefully sabotaged for ill purposes.

Eventually things settled down as certain gangsters came to control each camp. Anh’s compound had a tall slim gangster named Dhong who was always surrounded by a large crowd of thugs. Anh told me that when Dhong eventually returned to Vietnam he was soon murdered. One can assume the murder to be related to his cruel treatment of many of the families in the compound; revenge.

As time went by many of the inhabitants of the camp were interviewed to see whether Hong Kong would be willing to release them from Whitehead. Anh’s father told them of their struggles as Christians and about their wealth and villa being taken from them. “They (the interviewers) said his story was ‘too true to believe,” Anh said.

Anh’s father failed the interview and the family remained at Whitehead until 1997 when Hong Kong was handed back over to China. At that time they were forcibly removed from the camp and sent back to Vietnam. He told me he was literally brought out by two guards with their hands firmly dug into his shoulders.

The UNHCR’s Refugee Magazine reports that many of those who voluntarily repatriated by 1996 received financial assistance from the Vietnamese government; those who waited were assured only of their safety. August of 1996 saw the 50,000th Vietnamese person voluntarily reentering the country. There was much pomp and circumstance to celebrate the event, which was overshadowed when one of the 310 returnees aboard the aircraft attempted to flee. He tried hopping the fence of the Hong Kong airport, which forced the question: how voluntarily were these people returning?


Anh was fourteen years old when he came back to Vietnam. Luckily his family still had some connections and was spared the degradation of many of the returnees whose daughters were forced into unhappy marriages or whose children were forced into whatever jobs they could get to survive. Anh described that his greatest excitement upon returning was his cousin’s bicycle. “It was just a small metal bicycle but I drove it everywhere,” he said talking of his endless cycling journeys in an unfenced environment.

Anh was also lucky that he was still young enough to attend school when he returned. He remembers studying hard and at one point in High School being faced with an exam that would determine whether he could go to university or if he’d be forced into the military. He passed and studied English in Hai Phong. He lives a happy life now with a beautiful girlfriend and a stable job. His father, on the other hand, no longer plays music. The part of himself, I suppose, that didn’t survive Whitehead.

Bia Hoi Anniversary

Bia Hois are cheap, but usually quite gritty; they sell their beer in deformed glasses and in an environment housing rats and a heavy urine odor.  Having said that, I love them to bits and frequent them quite often.  It’s just that when I was invited to a bia hoi’s six year anniversary party, I hadn’t expected anything so grandiose.  The chairs and tables had white sheets draped over them and dark red bows.  There were oysters, lobsters, steaks, slices of Parma ham, an abundance of wine, and some very nice Oceanic beer.  Everyone was dressed in suits or classy dresses and it was all free…it felt like a wedding.  It was invite only.

In Vietnam it is considered good luck to invite foreigners to anniversary celebrations or inaugural events because it means you’ll have good business throughout the year.  A friend of mine, and the photographer for this week’s blog Michel Anderson, goes to this particular bia hoi often.  There is a server there whose name, for reasons that will later be explained, will remain anonymous.  This server had invited Michel to the party and after talking to one of the managers told Michel to bring some friends. 

It was buffet style so in typical Vietnamese fashion there was plenty of pushing, shoving, and hoarding with regard to the expensive food items.  I kept hunting for the oysters but they were phantom-like in their ability to disappear from the buffet.  I’d usually see an angry looking middle aged woman with a large plate of them just after they were brought out.  I didn’t mind, I was party crashing anyway and contented myself to sit with my group on mats atop a bamboo bench with a bit of ham.  The table was extremely low to the ground for a large man like me so I had to stretch them out in awkward ways that nearly tripped passersby.  The man across from me found this amusing.

He was from Vung Tau, a beach town near Saigon, and was at the celebration alone.  He had a large mustache and was wearing a bright Hawaiian shirt—the kind of shirt that a girlfriend would throw out when you’re not looking.  He was drunk; he was a drunk; so am I, so we got drunk.  For me it was a good chance to practice my Vietnamese, which got me as far as finding out where he was from and that he was an engineer who worked on large building projects.  I don’t remember his name, probably due to his tendency to make me slam full glasses of red wine.  “Mot tram phan tram! (One hundred percent)” he’d say clinking my glass and looking disappointed if I showed hesitation.

My red wine drinking companion had a craving to sing some karaoke and so I accompanied him to the main stage.  The thing is that it wasn’t really open karaoke; at the time there was a white suited professional on stage with long slicked back hair being given a large bouquet of flowers for his great performance.  Earlier there’d been a staged comedy team and I wasn’t surprised when they wouldn’t let my friend sing—especially given how stumbly and red faced he was at this point. 

Instead we just stood in a corner and took in the whole scene.  His big smile and giggle went cold and he seemed to be having a solemn moment.  He motioned around at all the well off people in the room with their expensive suits and seafood and said something about money.  A friend of mine from Saigon had recently told me that people from Hanoi are much showier with their money than in Saigon, so I assumed this may have been his intention.  I said Hanoi people have a lot of money, right?  He seemed to understand my Vietnamese for he shook his head and clinked my glass.

Red Wine Drinker

Soon after I think he realized that he was wasted for he said goodbye and left the building.  I decided to get another wine and meet back up with the friends I’d come with.  The man who served me the wine, the man who’d been feeding the engineer and I wine all evening, turned out to be the man who’d invited Michel to the party in the first place.  His English was impeccable; I asked him how he’d achieved this and found out that it was due to missionaries when he was growing up.  He had a secret to tell me, that in a few months he was quitting his job to go to seminary school…he was having a glass of wine when he said this.

I was later introduced to another manager of the place who was younger than I’d expected and holding a smiling baby when he talked to me.  I thanked him for inviting me, though he hadn’t really, and that I wished his business much success.  The whole thing must’ve cost a fortune.  Outside an old hunchbacked woman pushed a large wagon of rubbish for which she’d receive a pittance, and somewhere out there a mustachioed man from Saigon was probably getting sick.

Late Night Photo Mission

The Late Night Market

It’s a strange thing to stay up all night in Hanoi when sober; you start to get this feeling that you’re up to no good.  When I set off at 2:30am with the photographer for this blog, Sebastiano, we felt like thieves.  The alley was silent, so much so that we dared not break it with the revving of his Minsk motorbike.  Instead we rolled it down the long maze that is our alleyway with no memorable sounds save the incessant dripping of water and a few dogs that also had the impression we were criminals.  We weren’t…aren’t…in fact our mission was quite innocent.

My friend Sebastiano (a.k.a. Seb) mentioned during a drinking session that he wanted to be more challenged for his photography assignments.  It was during this session that we hatched the idea for this late night mission.  If you’re a follower of this blog then you might remember an earlier entry about staying up past curfew and a certain disgusting club called Phuc Tan.  It would have been easy enough to go in there drunk and take a few shots with a point and shoot camera, but Seb insisted that those photos always turn out horribly; that they failed to capture the true disgusting nature of all the drunkenness, debauchery, sweat, and bad dancing.  He said it had to do with an improper flash.

So, armed with a new and, I’m assured, fancy flash we drove out to the Red River and Phuc Tan.  In the city, even downtown, there weren’t many people up.  We saw the odd security guard asleep on his feet, working girls in the midst of their nights work, the odd jogger (at 2:30?!), and a few old men playing chess.  Even the rabbit warren of alleyways that make up the Old Quarter were completely devoid of their usual traffic.  It was a bit like a zombie film.

Due to the disturbing calm of the night, we were quite surprised when we came upon the night market.  It was the market that fed other markets, the teat on which all of Hanoi suckles.  There were stacks of pineapples as tall as a man and whole gutted pigs stacked in threes on the back of motorbikes.  It was like a small village of farmers and distributers busy at their industry.  It woke me up.

Neither of us remembered exactly how to get to Phuc Tan, which is likely the case with most that go there.  Eventually, when we got close enough, we just followed the trail of stumbling foreigners wearing the remnants of what were formerly Halloween costumes.  Timing is everything with good photography; at least that’s my opinion…the opinion of a non-photographer.  The whole point of our going out sober in the middle of the night was to catch Phuc Tan with its pants down, which quite literally is what happened. 

It was some expensive equipment we were toting around so we pushed our way through the mass of bodies to the least inhabited part of the club:  the third floor consisting of two make-out couches in full swing, poor lighting, and one couple with their pants down.  I may be exaggerating, but I did feel quite badly when they lowered their heads, adjusted their pants, and left the spot on the stairs where they’d been “dirty dancing” (as ambiguous a term as the situation).  From up on the third floor we could look down onto the dance floor through strewn bits of toilet paper and other half assed attempts at Halloween decoration.  We smoked a few cigarettes and planned our route through the place marking certain strange characters, by costume or behavior, for photos.

Phuc Tan Halloween

After setting up his camera to the proper functions we pushed our way through the crowd, I in the lead making a hole just like a front lineman for a running back (I guess High School Football taught real life skills after all).  Our major concerns were not pissing anyone off, causing them to break the camera, or being too showy with it, causing someone to steal the camera.  When you’re sober, it’s strange how volatile drunks seem.  Surrounded by skeletons, pirates, and sexy bunnies, I was reminded of the college frat parties that everyone makes fun of.  Yet here were adults—backpackers and professionals—doing the same thing.  A middle aged sea captain had his white cap stolen by a sexy young thing without a costume.  I was just behind him so he tried reaching around near my hands unsuccessfully searching for it.  Eventually he realized it was the girl.  She was smiling at him engagingly, but he merely gave her a fatherly look of disappointment and took it back. 

We exited through the sea of laser lights and decided, being quite awake, to take another tour of the giant market.  It was about four at this time and we saw yet a different crowd of Vietnamese workers setting out to start their day.  In a dark alleyway, as we approached the market, there was a troop of about ten women with conical hats and long wooden polls slung over their shoulders like muskets.  At the end of the polls were collections of plastic bags and we assumed that these ladies were going to buy produce to sell at one of the smaller markets.  They marched in step like soldiers…do they meet up every day at four and do this; every day at four while two hundred meters away somebody is buying an overpriced drink for what would be a good day’s profit?

The Spring Onion Man

These are the thoughts that went through my mind as we strolled through the giant market taking photos of people at work or sleeping by their stands.  Most were happy to have their photo taken, some even posed like the spring onion man whose picture is featured here.  It was so much friendlier than the other city markets that often seem disenchanted by tourists.  I guess at that time in the morning two sober westerners wandering the market was more of a novelty.  Some even patted our heads, pinched our cheeks, and called us beautiful.

To celebrate our picture taking success we enjoyed a beer and the sunrise at Puku next to some incredibly drunk Irish who were loudly singing away at five thirty.  Strange.  Strange to have experienced a drunken night-out sober.  Strange to see things through a different perspective.  Strange to see the juxtaposition of the market and the club so close to each other.  Strange always to see the sun come up.  It’s all about the flash.

Betsy the Keg

Mario and Luigi feeling quite proud of their keg

Bia Hoi’s are famous in Hanoi.  No, that’s not just coming from the mouth of a heavy drinker, they really are.  Just google Bia Hoi and see how many hits you get.  They’re great places of all shapes and sizes that have a great variety of dishes and fresh beer out of a keg.  I appreciate a good beer and I wouldn’t waste my breath trying to argue Bia Hoi being amazing beer; it’s cold and it’s about thirty cents a glass…and it’s okay.

I’ve just moved house and last weekend we’d decided to have a housewarming, Halloween, and birthday party (it was Tali’s, my wife’s, birthday).  Originally we told people to bring their own drinks and we were going to make some sort of fancy sandwiches…then we thought we’d better buy a slab of beer just in case…then we built a bar and bought a fridge for the terrace to store this beer…then we put together that there must be a way to just get a keg from a Bia Hoi.  Funny how the sandwiches never happened.

When I was living in Japan I couldn’t help but notice that they still sell cigarettes in vending machines.  To keep the kids away, you cannot utilize these machines without first swiping a card that proves you’re of age.  I wanted one of these cards.  I had to fill the thing out in Hiragana and Katakana; I had to send forms proving my age, and take passport photos.  When the card came I felt so proud; I was the only one in our group who had gone through the trouble of getting it.  You  see, it wasn’t merely the cigarette access…it was an act that made me feel more like a citizen and less like a traveler.  I was part of the society, of age, and a smoker.  I should have access to the vending machines.  The card was quite a hot item when I left.

The keg was a very similar thing.  I was told that people had them delivered to their houses and, despite my low level of Vietnamese (which I’m working on [yes that’s guilt speaking]) should be something that a person living in the country could organize.  My housemate and I on our first foray into the Vietnamese keg buying world stopped at a strange little Bia Hoi in an alleyway.  We’d been shopping for fruit and veg in the market and it was around nine in the morning.  There were four people in the establishment drinking.  I asked the man who I assumed to be the proprietor about the cost of a keg.  He told me twenty million (about one thousand dollars) and then went on to say that they didn’t do take away.  This first failure only fueled the desire to make it happen.

So after many strange dealings in a different Bia Hoi in a different alleyway we eventually got Betsy.  Betsy’s original name was Beatrice like in Dante’s Vita Nuova, but we thought that seemed a bit much for a keg.  It was quite a difficult task in the end.  I went to said Bia Hoi four times: once to enquire, twice to try and arrange things, and once for pick up.  When arranging things I came armed with a calendar and a few choice phrases I’d memorized (keg, happy new house, Saturday, deposit, etc.).  I shook the man’s hand, he brought me a beer, he gave me a smoke and I assumed it was a done deal.  When I went there the day of the party they seemed confused…later on though, it was there and on ice.  Betsy was a thing to behold.

It took four of us, two Bia Hoi servers and my friend and I, to shimmy the thing up the ladder that leads to our terrace.  When we finally got her to start spouting out beer it was hard to believe we’d done it.  I haven’t had a keg at my house since university days; very exciting.  We just stared at it quietly for awhile, occasionally asking her nicely for more beer.  She was very obliging.

The party got messy.  It was bound to.  People started shouting off our balcony to passersby and people who didn’t understand gravity feeds had Betsy spraying every which way.  I eventually came to stand guard by the keg and help people with their beers.  When we finally succeeded in getting our kind guests out of the house the whole terrace seemed covered in a thin layer of beer.  I told my housemates we had to stay up and finish Betsy…we soon found that she only contained half a beer more. 

It was just as well I suppose for it was at that time that it seemed like a good idea to strip down to my underwear and clean up after the whole party.  Drunkenly I put my arm around my housemates’ shoulders and told them to look at the giant mess for it wouldn’t be there in the morning.  After about an hour, sticky and smelling like a bar rag, I decided to give up.  In bed though, I smiled wide thinking of sweet Beatrice who’d worked so hard. She was still sitting up there, completely spent, only drunkards to carry on her name.  It was a fine keg.

Up Past Curfew

Phuc Tan at 4am

There is a twelve o’ clock curfew in Hanoi, or so I’m told.  True, most respectable places of business do close their doors well before this time and the streets are almost devoid of people.  As for those places that do stay open, and for those people who do wander past curfew, I hold a bit of suspicion.  I don’t really know the penalty for operating past curfew; all I’ve seen in regards to this phenomenon are laughable scenes of bars having patrons walk around the block, drinks in hand, until the police have left; that, or restaurants, alerted minutes before the arrival of the police, quickly taking away everything on your table to make it appear as if they’re closing up.  My suspicion arises from the fact that these places and people, you know who you are, obviously have no problem breaking the law, albeit a small one; who knows what other liberties they’re willing to take.

I’ve only been in Hanoi for a month now, so those seasoned souls who have been here for years will probably laugh at the naivety of my perceptions regarding the dangers of living beyond curfew.  Having said that, there do seem to be lurking dangers that had never occurred to me when living in Saigon… namely gang rape.  A friend of mine, let’s call her Sheila was out with another friend, we’ll call her Jane.  It was past curfew and they were clubbing.  Jane got so drunk she could barely stand, so Sheila, with the help of a Vietnamese guy loaded her into a taxi.  Sheila was having a hard time giving the driver directions to Jane’s house so the good Samaritan, who helped load her in the car and claimed to be a police officer, got in and said he’d help get them home.  The Good Samaritan instead directed the man to a dark alleyway where a group of men were making rude gestures.  The men proceeded to grope Jane and try and pull her out of the car whilst Sheila screamed for help.  Apparently one of the men had a moment of conscious and started yelling at the others.  The cab took off and brought Sheila and her friend to her house.  The cab driver then tried to overcharge them.

So you see what I mean about these den’s that stay open late and the spiders that abide in them.  The other night I went to one.  Hanoi Rock City was closing for the evening having hosted a few bands playing decent covers.  I’d been drinking for the better part of the day and saw no reason to stop just because the bar had closed.  It was suggested that we go to Phuc Tan, which apparently never closes.  I was pretty much out of money but figured that would work itself out somehow.  Phuc Tan is a meat factory: full of sweaty scantily clad young bodies looking to hook up.  I don’t know why but the upstairs area we eventually shoved our way up to gave me the impression of a boat.  Something about the mouldy windows, musty scent, and the way everything seemed to be swaying.  This last part, I presume, was from the alcohol.

Phuc Tan again

After a series of nineties classics one of my female friends said that this club was situated right next to the Red River and that there’s a path that leads there.  I told her we must do this!  She then warned me that one of her male friends had been “molested” and that there’d been some weird naked guy shouting at her last time she’d taken the path.  I put the quotes on molested because I don’t really know what she meant and since she was smiling when she said it; it probably wasn’t all that bad.  We must do this, I reiterated and proceeded to convince the rest of our group to join us on our adventure...they all said yes.

It was a dark path on slippery wooden planks hovering over a lotus pond.  The railings, when they were there, were rickety things that offered very little stabilization.  It was a horrible idea.  I thought this many times on the way as the planks gave way to a muddy path I twice did a cartoon style wobble.  The kind of wobble that feels as if your legs are whirring beneath you circular fashion keeping you from falling.  There was lush vegetation to the left and right but again, very little visibility.  I stomped in the muck beneath me having once heard that you’re supposed to let snakes know your coming and they’ll probably get out of your path.

Our destination was full of mosquitoes but quite picturesque with the lit bridge in the background and the Red River beneath.  No naked man...no molestation...no danger at all really except that of falling.  When I was bringing my wife, who was having a hard time staying awake on the dance floor, home I was extremely aware of the possible dangers.  In my mind were the aforementioned gang rape story and other tales of people being stripped of their possessions and beaten.   Instead, I got a very good deal on a cab ride home.  In Saigon I never thought twice about my personal safety and regularly wandered about until sunrise...is it possible that these dangerous tales I’ve heard have been exaggerated?  Does curfew create a haven for deviants?  Is it just a matter of time before I too get into trouble?

The Gatekeepers

Most of us past our mid twenties will remember that famous scene from Ghostbusters where Sigourney Weaver, wearing that tawdry red dress charred from the apartment fire, asks Rick Moranis, “Are you the Key master?”

In reply he asks, “Are you the Gate Keeper?”

They embrace and begin making love in a half destroyed apartment complex while horrible scenes of slimy ghosts wreaking havoc take place below them.  After a few weeks of staying at my friend’s house here in Hanoi, I too have found the Gate Keeper.  Not in any sexual sense, good God I hope not, for my Gatekeeper seems to be about ninety years old.  Okay, maybe a conservative eighty, but I still don’t think he’d be any competition for Sigourney even with his own red dress.  Maybe I have a thing for Sigourney Weaver...I do really like the Alien series...especially when she’s clad in underwear shooting the Alien out of the airlock.

I digress.  My gatekeeper is an old Vietnamese man who is, not surprisingly, married to an old Vietnamese woman.  They’re an odd pair and really don’t seem to have much else to do all day than check on the gate.  Let me paint a picture of the alleyway: it’s off of Kim Ma, a major road, and there is a narrow passageway with peoples flats to the left and right; at the end of the passageway is a gate the opens to three or four other houses including our own. At night the gate is kept securely closed with a padlock; during the day it is merely a large metal peg that can be unhooked, via a small swinging opening, from either side.  The old couple, day and night, have taken it upon themselves to make sure that the gate is always shut. 

Periodically throughout the day the old man or woman will potter down to the gate, jiggle the metal peg, look out at the busy street through the bars, usually look disapprovingly at our house, and then potter on back home.  Even if the gate is left unfastened for only a minute, they are well aware.  Once I walked to the end of the road to throw out our trash, a thirty second journey, and on my return was met with a look of death from the old woman.  She gave me a good talking to and there was little confusion, despite the language barrier, what she was upset about. 

I can’t help but feel there is a little partiality to yelling at us rather than the other residents in the alley.  I’ve seen others leave the gate wide open and drive off without giving the old couple a thought.  When this happens I’m always worried that I’ll be blamed for the transgression; in fact, I sometimes close the gate for others fearing chastisement by my wrinkly neighbours.  Again, I don’t see them yelling at the others, just us.  Is it because we are the only people that allow this kind of treatment, is it just racism, are they in some way trying to be nice by showing how much they care about our safety?  If so, why do they also insist on looking through our rubbish?

 I think about this and I also think how I’ve never seen them outside of the gate.  I think of their age and wonder if they are more frightened of the world coming in, or that they might be forced out into the world.  The city’s changed rapidly over the past few decades, so much so they might not even recognize it.  I imagine that, in a way, it has changed to such a degree that they are actually living in a land foreign to them.  The only comfortable place is home, or rather that small area behind the gate; the gate through which they watch the world change.  The only contact they have with that changing world is probably us: the foreigners, no less strange than Slimer, who need to be told how life is lived behind the gate.