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Published: December 27th 2017
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Buying Pineapples
She got me to pay 100,000 VND for this picture. We pile our fifteen suitcases into a small black taxi. Our driver is slight and friendly and doesn’t speak but turns the AC up he when hears us complain about the heat. We pass by rows of houses smattered along the road. Their balconies rise up four or fives stories, not more than ten feet wide. Motorbikes pass us but not yet like in the droves I’ve seen in pictures. We stop at a stoplight and they all keep going. Children ride on the back of their parents’ bikes. Girls in dresses drape their legs over one side behind their boyfriends. All wear baseball-cap-like helmets that wouldn’t protect you from a light breeze.
Sarah and I are mostly silent, gawking out the windows, spacy from 24 hours of travel. As we pass intersections we share looks of ‘holy shit,’ as we look out at the
Shoots and Ladders landscape.
As we go on, the streets become narrower; the bikes multiply. The city slowly swallows as we approach the Old Quarter. I don’t see many white faces. Families and friends are gathered on the sidewalks in between parked mopeds, eating at tiny tables. Grown men and children alike sit on pre-school sized stools made of colorful plastic. Turn after turn we snake through streets that feel alive like a jungle. Women in pointy hats carry on their shoulders what looks like an old fashioned scale. A wooden bar rests on the shoulders pointing forward, with a rope at either end leading down to two circular baskets filled high with pineapples, lychees, or bananas.
Our driver pulls over and points to our hotel. We stagger out, each schlepping on our backs and in our hands the last twenty-two years of life. Thousands of people on those little sidewalk chairs, sipping and smoking, watch us duck through traffic, and squirm through parked bikes and up the stairs to the Little Hanoi Diamond Hotel.
We are met with coffee, tea, and wonderful smiles. Another small Vietnamese man helps us up the four stories to our room. And, yes. We made it. One of us turns the fan on and we plop down on the long-dreamed-of bed.
What have we gotten ourselves into? says Sarah.
I sigh as we stare together at the four corners of our room. We’re tired, sweaty, jobless, and wonder out loud about how to cross the street.
We make ourselves get up in about an hour and walk down the four flights to the lobby. We are met with more smiles as we walk through the open door, held by the spry, ageless doorman.
And then, we are in a sea of honks and exhaust. It feels dusty although the street is paved. I’m stuck to the sidewalk. Every direction seems dangerous. To the right, middle-aged men sit on stools six inches high, in front of a literal hole-in-the-wall. In front of the hole are bottles of water and beer; I guess for sale. To the left is a row of bikes 20-deep, parked this way and that, obstructing the sidewalk. And straight ahead is the street. There is no right or left on this street. Bikes pass on both sides. Women carrying fruits and vegetables in the scales-things walk along either edge. Everyone is honking and no one seems upset.
I look down at Sarah next to me. In the Hanoi sun, she glimmers, all golden hair and glinting sunglasses.
I guess we just gotta go, she says.
And we do, slowly traversing the edge of the street, walking single file, heads swiveling back and forth looking for bikes that might stray into a leg or shoulder.
We make it to the end of the block and stop. Now we have to cross. But there are no breaks in the traffic. We look around at this four-way intersection and see that there are no stop signs. Everyone seems to honk when they come into it, some slowing down, some not.
Finally, like jumping into an icy pool, we clasp hands and start across. We make our way like Frogger, stopping for one bike as it speeds by us, then darting past a pack of four only to stop again as someone else swerves around us. But then, with one more hop, we are on the other side.
We keep shuffling along the edge of the street like a couple of old women. All the while we are passed by actual old women carrying twice my body weight in pineapples.
Since leaving the hotel, I’ve been honked at maybe two thousand times and I’m getting used to it. But it isn’t like Boston honking. There’s no scowl and middle finger attached. I’m not sure how you say ‘honk’ in Vietnamese but it’s probably something like ‘excuse me.’
Sarah spots a fruit stand that’s selling drinks…across the street. We’ve made it half way up this block. But we can’t wait too long to cross this time because now we’re in the street. We count to three and take the plunge. This time we walk a bit more purposefully and it’s not so bad. It still feels like diving through gunfire but this time there’s fruity drinks on the other end.
I stare up at this bamboo structure, decorated with baskets of fruit (real or fake, I can’t tell) and a sign printed in Vietnamese. Two ladies are working behind the real-fake fruit and one comes around with a menu (in English). We order a guava and a mango juice and sit down before we realize we have no dong (Vietnamese money).
A white face appears beside us. Sometimes they take American money, she says. They didn’t. Damn, where’s the ATM? Across the street… As I set off to find some dong, the day-long journey and the exhaust are getting to me. I have to cross from one block to the next and find it easier to dodge the flying bikers this time. The first ATM bears no fruit besides a laugh from a man waiting his turn. I spot an ATM across the street; goddamnit. I sharks-and-minnow my way across and fail to pull any money out. On the third try I find that the correct button is labeled ‘current.’
I fold the colorful Monopoly money into my pocket and stagger back to Sarah, a man gone through battle.
She’s apprehensive as I sit down. But then I whip out the dong and phew, we are saved. Guava never tasted so good. And probably never was, cause this shit is fresh. The world whizzes around us. We are in the bowels of a living being, says Sarah. I sip my agreement.
And then we go back, collapsed in our hotel room, fan blasting, AC on high. I feel years older as I check my watch. It was maybe twenty minutes.
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