Pho and the Pig Blanket Pursuit


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January 30th 2007
Published: January 30th 2007
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In Hanoi's Old Quarter
It was like pre-Katrina New Orleans on an extra dose of speed. Replace bronze spray-painted pantomime street-corner man with hunched over orange selling lady from the country, tourist horse-carriage rides through the French Quarter with brochure hawkers advertising Halong Bay excursions, the same amount of gawking tourists and you have it: Hanoi’s Old Quarter. I really felt quite at home and, for the first time in Asia, felt an uncomfortable knawing of homesickness and a longing to once again walk those grimy New Orleans alleyways so endearingly etched into my consciousness. History explains it, the similarities in architecture and the laissez-faire attitude, but it didn’t lessen my shock to see it flourishing in Vietnam. They’re doing better than our poor little state now, I would imagine.

So Southeast Asia has the street market scene, right? But with that comes the drawbacks of street market seats and the adorable habit of setting up children’s plastic stools by miniature plastic tables. If I hadn’t been surrounded by locals not only utilizing these facilities but even managing to make them seem glamorous, well then I would have been forced to believe they had only been installed for the pleasure of watching gargantuous foreigners fall off of them. As it was, I enjoyed a fantastic cup of coffee perched pristinely on top of a pink plastic stool, watching locals make it seem they weren’t watching me.

I made some purchases in Vietnam, some worthwhile, some not. The first was a pair of Jesus sandals at a little shoe shop in the Old Quarter. They served me well, but God were they ugly. The second was the pig blanket from Sapa, or so it was dubbed for its unavoidable odor of a pig sty and dirt floor fire, bought after an hour long pursuit by a lady with fake minority earrings through the foggy market streets. I gave in, I’m ashamed to admit. I carried that malodorous piece of cloth around with me for a month before disposing of it in Thailand, shipping it to my unsuspecting mother for a thorough dry cleaning and Febreezing. I’m happy to report: pig blanket has been de-contaminated and ready for use, but not without the pointed use of face masks and significant expenditure of man power.

It goes without saying the first image that comes to mind with the mention of “Vietnam” is motorbikes, green-light motorbikes like rats storming a food cellar and the motorbike blare. It’s amazing the truces and balances we humans strike with each other - it seemed motorbike drivers come to near hits every 30 seconds, but no one explodes, no one throws punches, you can’t get worked up about things that are inevitable, I suppose. I half fell in love with every female motorbiker I saw, the jet-black hair slashing around in the wind, the what-the-hell attitude exuding from every pore as she flirted with the probability of a collision that comes with skirting through high density traffic with one hand, the other holding a cell phone to her ear. So motorbikes served as our life-saver transportation, getting us through Hanoi’s myriad traffic and bringing us across the northwest jungle border of Vietnam into Laos.



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In Hanoi's Old Quarter


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