Nhớ Hà Nội (Thank You and Goodbye)
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 you” or “I will miss you.” To a foreigner, this suggests that the act of remembering is an act of sorrow. After all, I suppose, remembering something is predicated on its absence.
I will remember the sights. Racks of birdcages and bagged goldfish and feather dusters and eggs and water coolers all precariously rigged on the back of motorbikes. The colonial-era shophouses and villas with their crumbling ochre façades, repurposing the remnants of a violent past as symbols of an indomitable pride. The sidewalk barbers clipping away en plein air. Street corners at night, when people crowd around a quán nước, chatting and smoking and drinking tea. The women in conical hats selling fruit—apples, bananas, mangoes, dragonfruit, lychees, rambutans—from baskets balanced across their shoulders.
I will remember the sounds. The low purr of dozens and dozens of idling motorbikes waiting for the light to turn—then a swelling chorus of revving once the timer hits five seconds to green. Tiny geckos chirping in your wall. Traditional ballads playing from an open window somewhere in the distance. Roosters crowing in a neighborhood with a higher population density than Manhattan. The bánh mì ladies announcing over and over again the list of breads and dumplings and anything doughy that they’re selling from their bicycles—it’s always been too muffled to figure out exactly what they’re saying, but you know the tune of their words by heart.
I will remember the smells. Skewers of meat getting grilled on a minuscule cart by the side of the road. The occasional heinous whiff of durian you get while driving that manages to overpower all the exhaust. Passing the cigarette factory on your way home from work. The smoke from burning joss paper on the first day of every lunar month. The intoxicating aroma of broth from the sidewalk hotpot restaurants that spring up along your street in the places where buildings have been demolished—and how that scent not only makes you instantly hungry, it reminds you that you’re almost home.
I will remember the tastes. The bitter but refreshing tang of nước vối—the green tea you get in a plastic cup if you ask for a trà đá (iced tea). An especially good batch of bún chả from Trang, who has seen you come into her little quán in the alley below your apartment two or three times a week for nearly a year. (Just the right balance of sweet and sour broth, savory pork belly strips, and spicy chili paste.) A fresh bánh mì thập cẩm that you only get to eat because a man rolls up on a motorbike loaded with plastic bags full of baguettes to restock the place just as you were about to leave.
I could tell you about all these sensory experiences in excruciating detail, but that would still never fully convey Hanoi. It conveys nothing of that intangible feeling of being here, nothing of the energy that suffuses every nook and cranny of the city. You wouldn’t feel that brash, devil-may-care attitude that animates the soul of this bewildering place. You wouldn’t feel the sense of possibility in needing only a tarp, plastic stools, and an open stretch of pavement to start just about any kind of business, even if you’re sandwiched between a construction site and a busy intersection.
It’s in those ephemeral moments of awe, where you feel this sudden clarity about where you are and that you live here, that Hanoi really reveals itself. It’s going to the night market and stumbling upon the sprawling Tết market, overflowing with glittery, red decorations and soft, yellow lanterns. It’s waiting out a rush hour thunderstorm under a bridge. It’s getting stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic next to a mini-bus carrying a coffin and mourners in white headbands, and it’s watching the woman in the front seat languidly toss fake money into the road in honor of the deceased.
It’s emerging from one of your favorite coffeeshops, hidden down a tiny alley, after an afternoon downpour. The air is much cooler—only 85°F now—and the sky can’t decide if it wants to be sunny or unleash another torrent while you’re riding home. After passing strung-up laundry and old ladies in floral pajamas, it’s a two-minute walk down a quiet street to the place you left your bike—it’s never been totally clear if it's supposed to be parking, but the coffeeshop told you to park under the banyan tree at the end of the street. It’s damp and dreary and muggy, but as you get on your bike, looking at all the still puddles and dilapidated shophouses in the dappled sunlight, something just feels right.
Mình sẽ luôn luôn nhớ bạn, Hà Nội. Mình hy vọng là mình trở lại sớm được. Cảm ơn nhiều.
Hẹn gặp lại,
Gray
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 you” or “I will miss you.” To a foreigner, this suggests that the act of remembering is an act of sorrow. After all, I suppose, remembering something is predicated on its absence.
I will remember the sights. Racks of birdcages and bagged goldfish and feather dusters and eggs and water coolers all precariously rigged on the back of motorbikes. The colonial-era shophouses and villas with their crumbling ochre façades, repurposing the remnants of a violent past as symbols of an indomitable pride. The sidewalk barbers clipping away en plein air. Street corners at night, when people crowd around a quán nước, chatting and smoking and drinking tea. The women in conical hats selling fruit—apples, bananas, mangoes, dragonfruit, lychees, rambutans—from baskets balanced across their shoulders.
I will remember the sounds. The low purr of dozens and dozens of idling motorbikes waiting for the light to turn—then a swelling chorus of revving once the timer hits five seconds to green. Tiny geckos chirping in your wall. Traditional ballads playing from an open window somewhere in the distance. Roosters crowing in a neighborhood with a higher population density than Manhattan. The bánh mì ladies announcing over and over again the list of breads and dumplings and anything doughy that they’re selling from their bicycles—it’s always been too muffled to figure out exactly what they’re saying, but you know the tune of their words by heart.
I will remember the feelings. Falling down on your motorbike and burning your right leg on the exhaust pipe not once, but twice. Getting hit by a car. Getting hit by another motorbike. Hitting another motorbike. Getting hit by another motorbike and then hitting yet another motorbike as a result. Your butt steadily going numb from squatting on a tiny plastic stool at dinner. Rain from a tropical storm pelting down on your face while you dodge the sections of road that straddle the line between puddle and flood. The humidity. Dear Lord, the ceaseless humidity.
I will remember the smells. Skewers of meat getting grilled on a minuscule cart by the side of the road. The occasional heinous whiff of durian you get while driving that manages to overpower all the exhaust. Passing the cigarette factory on your way home from work. The smoke from burning joss paper on the first day of every lunar month. The intoxicating aroma of broth from the sidewalk hotpot restaurants that spring up along your street in the places where buildings have been demolished—and how that scent not only makes you instantly hungry, it reminds you that you’re almost home.
I will remember the tastes. The bitter but refreshing tang of nước vối—the green tea you get in a plastic cup if you ask for a trà đá (iced tea). An especially good batch of bún chả from Trang, who has seen you come into her little quán in the alley below your apartment two or three times a week for nearly a year. (Just the right balance of sweet and sour broth, savory pork belly strips, and spicy chili paste.) A fresh bánh mì thập cẩm that you only get to eat because a man rolls up on a motorbike loaded with plastic bags full of baguettes to restock the place just as you were about to leave.
I could tell you about all these sensory experiences in excruciating detail, but that would still never fully convey Hanoi. It conveys nothing of that intangible feeling of being here, nothing of the energy that suffuses every nook and cranny of the city. You wouldn’t feel that brash, devil-may-care attitude that animates the soul of this bewildering place. You wouldn’t feel the sense of possibility in needing only a tarp, plastic stools, and an open stretch of pavement to start just about any kind of business, even if you’re sandwiched between a construction site and a busy intersection.
It’s in those ephemeral moments of awe, where you feel this sudden clarity about where you are and that you live here, that Hanoi really reveals itself. It’s going to the night market and stumbling upon the sprawling Tết market, overflowing with glittery, red decorations and soft, yellow lanterns. It’s waiting out a rush hour thunderstorm under a bridge. It’s getting stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic next to a mini-bus carrying a coffin and mourners in white headbands, and it’s watching the woman in the front seat languidly toss fake money into the road in honor of the deceased.
That’s what I’ll miss the most. This ineffable feeling of rightness in spite of being on the other side of the world, that somehow I can feel like I belong in this place that is so confusing and frustrating and alien. That it can be home. And for that, I cannot thank Hanoi enough. It will always be my first adult home. I will think of it often, and each time I remember these sensory fragments from my whirlwind of a year here, I will miss it.
Mình sẽ luôn luôn nhớ bạn, Hà Nội. Mình hy vọng là mình trở lại sớm được. Cảm ơn nhiều.
Hẹn gặp lại,
Gray
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