The Song of Hanoi
My new acquaintance Quinn and I departed ways one morning from a little café along the left bank of Phnom Penh’s Tonle Sap, the butterflies of persuasion stirring a dusty cloud over our brief encounter.  Quinn and I separated in amusement, though, but left no doubt in each other’s mind that we were well aware of our earlier innane extractions, and were quite neatly disposed to our particular whims and each other’s arcane concerns—and yet our meeting was a mysterious, almost novel reconnoiter, one of washed hands and earthborn requests.   

On to Vietnam....

Hanoi on a warm Sunday morning was robust as ever, the parks bursting with happy children playing, their attentive parents smiling on, street vendors busily hawking their wares and sidewalk cafes buzzing with caffeinated energy.

Sitting low on a small wooden stool I sipped my coffee and looked outward over a cobbled-stone plaza towards the bustling crowd strolling along Hoan Kiem Lake’s green banks.

That is when I noticed the Asian beauty at a nearby table holding gently to a small glass and speaking softly over it with her ruby-red lips-- to a hulking chap wearing a broad-brimmed white Panama, his slouching shoulders a dead give-away.  Quinn, of course, and an unlikely sighting.

Hanoi, among its many charms, is enigmatically a sumptuous swelling of glamour and romance. It is predictably an urban sprawl of dingy aged yellow French colonial buildings amid rousing family-run shops and businesses, particularly in the old quarter, yet seems propped up and somewhat oddly strained and cast within the shrouded purview of the iconic mausoleum of its entombed master and architect just blocks away—Ho Chi’s model of a state-run social order at clear juxtaposition to the rigorous efforts of the many street merchants in full flurry in today’s Hanoi.

The coffee was strong, and rich with sweetened milk, and when she saw me eyeing her, her big brown eyes twinkled.  Quinn watched in amusement and waived me over. 

‘In all the coffee houses in Asia’

Quinn suffered from an accident of some kind from years ago—I think maybe some Asian war. There was a noticeable limp, but he was not revealing.

One of those moments—simply captivating.  Captivating like a coiled cobra caught in the stare of a playful mongoose before it was set to pounce…

Later, I kicked a soccer ball around with giggling little boys and girls outside the café beside the lake-side park, and spoke with young college students trying out their English on me, but seemed more interested in learning how to start up their own businesses.  Entrepreneurship is in full bloom in Hanoi— the free market is as busy as one of the many French esplanades bending through the City for Peace.  The grim faces I saw a few years back are now full of smiles….

The lure, the snare—Hanoi is a city of self-exposure.  A splendid place to be on this April morning.  I mentioned sumptuous—Hanoi is sumptuous.  It simply is.

Another reunion is inevitable.  I think even Ho Chi would approve.

Halong Bay and Sa Pa await.
Vietnam is wonderful today….

Dan(ny)

Just a short distance from the giggling children and a bouncing soccer ball reared the old worn-down Hanoi Hilton--that terrifying gulag for so many brave Americans who sufferered horribly within it's dingy confines--now it's a broken down relic of its former austere and menacing self, that murderous jail lifting its skirts of captivity and barbarity. Now it's a museum.

Those Americans who somehow got through it--the tortures, the horrible tortures, the pure horror of it all....

It is a world of unadulterated calamity, I thought, as I lifted a rolling soccer ball up with my right foot and nudged it over to a young Vietnamese girl wearing a red Ronaldo tee. She was a bit out of breath, but happily retrieved the ball from the tall American--her gleaming smile revealing everything--simply unforgettable. She had her football, she had her football.  :-)

Those brave men, those brave men....