The Colonel and Uncle Ho

We landed in Hanoi tatered (no, not tattered) from jetlag. We took a 6-hour power-nap, ate some dinner then slept all night. The following morning Michael and Jess arrived.  Thanks to having a Vietnamese speaker in Jess, we were able to get around very easily.  And we had the added bonus of understanding the random things people would jokingly yell at you. Once, I was walking down the street and a really old lady yelled something and several other old ladies began laughing hysterically. Turns out, the woman screamed, "Look at that crazy foreigner lickin' on that popsicle!"
Sure, I was eating a home-made coconut milk and shredded coconut popsicle.   Yes, it was delicious and melty. But did it necessitate warm-hearted public mockery? In North Vietnam, yes it did.

Decent beer, but it needs more bath mat.

Another time, we were all eating hot pot at a bia hoi joint. (Hot pot is sort of like fondue, but actually good... not just something you say is good in order to avoid explaining why its not. Hot pot is a pot of boiling broth on hot plate into which are dunked an assortment of raw meats, seafood, veggies and noodles. Bia hoi is a home-brew-pub that serves pints of lager for $0.30-$0.50 a pop. That's correct, it's probably the cheapest beer in the world. You sit on the sidewalk on stools that are about one foot tall and they surround tables that are about 1.5ft tall and you make a big mess eating and drinking.) 

Anyway, we ate most of the meat and veggies and the broth is at this point a sort of dark brown gravy. I load in another pack of instant noodles as sort of a boiled/fried starchy desert. When I try to serve the noodles they slip out of the ladle and land back in the broth splashing and burning everyone at the table with boiling gravy-water.

The man who seems to be the owner comes storming out and just starts screaming at our waitress. He goes on and on for what seems like a minute. She's trying to walking away and he's stalking after her, continuing his tirade. Out of breath, with his face red and sweating he storms back into the pub. The gal, who seemed to take it well enough, walks off with a little smile.  Most of the other patrons are wearing a similar smile. Confused, we all turn to Jess. She laughs and repeats, "Why didn't you cut the silly foreigner's noodles?!?! He obviously can't feed himself! He must be helped in even the most simple of tasks!" I sit there shame-faced as she returns with some scissors, cuts my noodles, then serves them into my bowl.

So yes, people in Hanoi can seem brash, but with proper translation it's seen to be more of an ironic humor. And they will rip you off if you're not careful. They will refuse you service rather than try to understand what you are attemping to buy. This feistiness is probably mostly due to the heat, humidity and crowdedness. There are 7 million people in Hanoi and estimated to be 4 million motorbikes. You'd think this would make things really noisy and hectic, but not really. Nobody's going over 15mph and everything rolls along smoothly and remarkably quietly.

But not everything was necessarily straight-forward and clearly spoken. Some things were shrouded in riddles that needed more thought than mere translation could offer.  And I'd like to leave you with one these instances. I'd like you to think about the ramifications of this occurrence. Deep rooted biases in parts of both America and Vietnam would certainly be shaken if either knew what the other was up to.

So everywhere around Hanoi are KFC's. It's the only American restaurant in town. Just about the only foreign corporate-type anything we saw. We didn't know why only KFC was allowed in, but seemingly on every other street corner we saw these huge disgustingly modern KFC's, and rarely with any patrons. And there was something else we saw a lot of. Giant billboards dedicated to Ho Chi Minh, the great North Vietnamese communist leader. Here he's well loved and referred to as Uncle Ho. His image is in almost every home and on many TV channels.  His actual freeze-dried body is on display at his mausoleum attracting HORDES of people who wait hours in line to see it. Why am I talking about these things? Well, you be the judge...