We Pound The Pavement With Our Eyes

July 17, 2009

Confusing as they are, the curious thing about the streets in Hanoi is that if one walks around long enough, all the streets lead to the same place. This is the phenomenon that Ellen and I have discovered after tromping around in the temperamental rain, our raincoats blowing in the wind and our feet soaking in the soul of the Old Quarter.

We have discovered this delightful ice-cream parlour, Fanny, as as I write, Ellen is devouring her second scoop of nougat flavoured ice-cream, and reading Cecelia Ahern. The funny thing is, I bet she wouldn’t be caught dead with that book back home, despite her protestations that The New York Times called it “intelligent chick-lit”. But then, this is the wonderful luxury of anonymity that being in a foreign country provides. Something that home, with all its trappings of preconceived notions, can ill afford. We are who we are, more than we care to admit.

We spy a group of Singaporeans in the far corner, easily identifiable by their dressing. A check of the Inventory quickly yields one gray army shirt and one junior college orientation shirt. My eyes struggle to process this strange, familiar unfamiliarity, oddly displaced, and I wonder with a mild mortification if we look as queer to the Vietnamese as they look to us.

Otherwise, we are very much alone. We have been conferred the gift of invisibility in this pulsating bustling place where while crossing the road is in itself as skill, crossing it while looking unperturbed is an art, one that we have clearly not mastered, as evinced by our terrified faces every time we are faced with that unsavoury prospect. Nonethless, I suspect we provide hearty entertainment for the Vietnamese.