we went into hanoi by train train. the line is long and runs the north and south of the country. the express line makes it from saigon to ha noi in about 30 hours. some of the stops, then, are at odd hours. the ha noi bound train from saigon, express line, stops in nha trang at 05h38. at the ga an old woman asked us three times if we wanted bread or coffee. we shook our heads and ignored her and said no each time.
by and by they announced the imminent arrival of the train originating in saigon arriving on track 1. i imagined if i might get hungry in the next 24 hours and asked na if she also had a good kind of imagination about whether or not one could get hungry, so she called the woman over and bought two banh mi with terrine and herbs. not very good but we soon learned that they would be better than the meals sold on the train. we had a sleeper car with long beds that you could stretch out on. the car was otherwise shabby. everything was in steel and painted beige, and faded, maybe there was an olive green color in there. i didn't pay attention to colors in a way that i would remember what to write. but let's say that everything was painted beige, and the floors were painted olive green. the room was clean, in theory, but the way the beds were made of steel and the lights were flickered and dusty made it seem that it could never be clean. there was one table in the middle of the room that was of solid wood and fixed to the wall under the window with a steel corbel, no legs. it could support the weight of people stepping on it to climb to the
upper beds. there were four beds.
at first there was a man in one of the beds and the other one was empty. we slept and when it got light we woke up and the man came down and na chatted with him a bit. she said that until he talked, he assumed that he was a murderer, a through and through psychopath, but quickly learned that he was a nice respectable guy. this is why i think it is important to introduce yourself to strangers. for most people the default assumption is that someone they don't know is a murderer, or a pervert, or at the very least a fool and a philistine. this particular man gave me some fruit that was crunchy and juicy like an apple but very small, and with a stone pit and a floral taste. i ate two of them. the man got off at the first stop and we were alone. they came and sold food and i had
a rice plate, which i chose not to finish, and a beer.
in da nang two other people got on: there was a woman who climbed straight up to her bunk and went to sleep and never spoke to us, and a man with a leather jacket in sunglasses.
he came on just as the train was about to leave, with one of the attendants helping him to carry a heavy package of 18" sesame wafers for frying. these same kinds of wafers you see for sale on the streets sold as snacks already fried. if you are lazy or health conscious, you can just microwave them or heat them over a gas flame to make them soft. he had two briefcases also, and a plastic bag with two cans of red bull, a bottle of vitamin shake, a bottle of tiger balm mentholated rubbing oil, and two oily packages full of small banana leaf parcels, called banh it. he had two ear piercings which weren't rings or studs, but were rather small loops of thick-gauge wire embedded in the lobes. being on the topic of studs, i should note that the wall did not have any masonry, but was pure stud. maybe that is why i felt it was dirty.
this man had a stout face and short pure black hair, combed forward. he was sweating. he took out a handkerchief and wiped his face, put his sunglasses back on, then started devising how to arrange his luggage. first he hung his bag of red bull and banh it on the hook next to his bunk, but then he was holding the sesame wafer package and realized that the hook would be better used on them, so he hung the sesame wafers there and put the red bull on the table. he put his two briefcases on the bed, away from the door, then sat down and took his shoes off. na asked him if he was going all the way to
ha noi. he said yes and introduced himself. he pulled a card out of his wallet and showed it to us.
if we want to read something, i sound the words out for na, then she determines whether they match words from her dialect, then we can usually interpolate the meaning. so we found that we had in our hands a badge serving as press credentials for a newspaper based in a large city in vietnam. the man had a raspy voice when he spoke, and he jerked his head from side to side, nervously. you probably think that he is a murderer, but the way he jerked his head nervously it wasn't like he was planning to kill us.
he told na that we were brave to travel to ha noi by ourselves, because ha noi is full of thieves and tricksters and in general there is wickedness in the streets, not kindness as we might have grown used to in the south. that is why he puts his briefcases on the bed away from the door, because people are quick and they can snatch and run away. also ha noi is cold, and make sure you have a jacket, he said.
after they were done with the pleasantries he pulled out a laptop and carefully set it on the table, then he moved and sat on my bed, then he moved back to his bed, then he went back to my bed, and plugged his laptop into the electrical outlet on the wall. he inserted a disc and started playing electronic music with the computer's speakers. i went up to na's bed and took a nap.
i woke up and went out to pace around in the hallway. my knees got tired so i went back into the room and sat on my bed, so that it was all three of us there, and i started to look at his laptop, which was playing music videos. maybe i saw about 20 of them. a typical one would be showing voluptuous women in hotpants dancing on rooftops and men with aquiline noses, bleached hair and vinyl robes shouting things, shouting in a way like you imagine hitler to shout at rallies, like:
you've got to!
got to!
got to!
feel the rhythm!
and you!
and you!
move your!
move your!
make love with you!
(etc.)
that was just one of the videos, but just imagine that they are all like that.
the man, who eventually introduced himself as (paternal) uncle XXXX, saw that i was paying attention to the video and he became happy and he said we should have a little to eat, and he took out the banh it. he ate one, then offered the bag to us. he told me that i had to finish all of the bag, that it was for me. it was very delicious and i quite easily finished the whole bag. banh it each have a small shrimp with a thin edible shell and the outside is a starchy steamed dough and smeared in a savory oil. he also took out two cans of red bull, opened one for himself and gave me the other. he went into the bathroom and he came back smelling like marihuana. he gave na his business card and wrote his cell phone number on it, and told her that we should call him when we were in ha noi if we ever needed anything. his wife was a paramedic and his son, who had recently failed college entrance exams, would also be going to trade school to become a paramedic. the name we could use to address him, he also wrote that on his business card. that is how we learned what to call him.
we watched his videos i don't know how many hours. he went to the bathroom every now and then to smoke marijuana. when they came around for dinner i didn't buy any but i bought two cans of beer and gave him one. it became dark and he said that now he was going to sleep and that i should also rest. he kept the computer on and turned it so that it could be seen from both beds. i studied my grammar a bit and then fell asleep. na said she kept getting woken up
because chu XXXX several times opened his tiger balm and inhaled of it deeply and rubbed it inside his nostrils, either to improve his breathing or to improve the sensation of having smoked marijuaha in the dirty bathroom, which was the only room where the window could open.
we got into ha noi very early. just before 5am.
