Hanoi Gray

Hello and xin chào! I'm shocked that a full year has just about come and gone, but here we are at the end of my time living in Hanoi. There aren't enough words to express what an insane and amazing time I've had here. On one hand, it has been much more challenging than I ever expected—I guess I don't know what I was expecting—but on the other, it has been much more rewarding than I ever imagined. Accordingly, it’s time for an overwrought, elegiac reflection on this place that I’ve called home for the past year. With every fiber of its being, with every banyan tendril draped over every questionably bundled tangle of power lines, Hanoi seizes you and reminds you that you are here and nowhere else. It is at once euphoric and infuriating, exhilirating and exhausting. It’s hard for me to grasp the fact that I’m really leaving. In Vietnamese, the word for “to miss” is the same as “to remember:” nhớ . If you say “Tôi sẽ nhớ bạn,” it could mean either “I will remember yo...

Hello and xin chào! My time in Vietnam is rapidly coming to an end, but I managed to fit in one last trip while I'm here. A week and a half ago, I made a quick one-day trip down to Vietnam's largest city, Saigon. (Saigon's population is 8.6 million, compared to Hanoi's 7.8 million.) I flew down after class on a Tuesday night, and I flew back very, very early on Thursday morning (more on that later). Officially named Ho Chi Minh City, it's still called Saigon by nearly everyone in Vietnam. It was a fascinating contrast to Hanoi—as Vietnam's commercial hub, Saigon is far more modern and cosmopolitan. Overall, I left with a pretty mixed impression. As an expat, I loved all the trendy cafés and bars, but as a tourist, I was pretty underwhelmed. At the end of the day, it seemed mostly like a whole bunch of city, and "big city in Vietnam" is something I'm obviously pretty familiar with. That said, I had a wonderful time hanging out with my good frien...