This post is also available in: Vietnamese
“The heat. Asian heat is not like other heat, it’s a thing all its own. It seems to get into you, feels like it’s softening your joints, your bones. It’s a viscous, living thing.
“Feels like if you fell over in the street you might actually not reach the pavement. Instead you’d be buoyed up, bouncing quietly up and down on a cushion of hot air until someone took pity and righted you again…
“I like it. It fills me with a sort of languid energy, and while I’m in Vietnam I feel simultaneously wiped out and able to do anything, forever.
Hanoi's Languid Energy. (Photo: Antony Stokes)
“Hanoi wasn’t what I was expecting. It’s chaotic and noisy and constantly in motion, sure – but then there’s this sleepy charm that pervades the place, a dusty, old-fashioned feel, like the rest of the world has gone digicam but here reality is still filmed on rickety Super 8. Listen closely and you can almost hear the click and whirr of the tape spooling through the gate.
“Cake shops, coffee, long drinks with dully thudding ice cubes, the constant dragonfly hum of a million million motorbikes…
“The days just stretch out in Hanoi and, talking comic book art with a Vietnamese friend over the world’s best pineapple juice as dusk descends, I think: I could live here. I could come out here for a year or two, everything’s so inspiring, so different… I could get a whole lot of new ideas out here.
Stretching out the day. (Photo: Antony Stokes)
“That was almost a month ago and now I’m back in London. We’re having a heat wave but – eh, it’s just heat. Not that special heat, not that Hanoi heat that gets inside you and slows your soul and claims you as its own.”
Thank you to Andy Stanton for writing this little love letter and letting me post it here to add to the love stories I wrote about earlier.
When Andy sent me this, he told me a guilty secret: he liked HCMC too.
This topic reminds me a favourite poem:
Khi ta ở chỉ là nơi đất ở
Khi ta đi đất đã hóa tâm hồn
Chế Lan Viên
When we stayed, the land was just the land
When we go far away, it became the land of our soul
Chế Lan Viên
You miss Hanoi’s heat and I miss London’s rain.
There have been storms rather often these days in Hanoi. Not many Hanoirians like it, but I do. Because on a stormy day the sky of Hanoi is so much like the sky of London on rainy days.
Looking out of my window to the Keangnam skyscraper it reminds me of the City Bank and HSBC skyscrapers in Canary Wharf when I used to stay in London. My mind is always seduced by the pictures in which neon signs are flashing with taxi-cabs and buses passing through the rain.
But the differences between the two cities are: Hanoirians always want to escape from the rain asap as they are not well prepared for it and everyone on the roads are wearing raincoats, riding motorbikes and honking the horn to find their way home. While in London’s streets people walk up and down with black umbrellas with a calm, resigned attitude as it is a part of their daily lives because in England it can rain on any day.
Anyway, I know that how selfish I am to be so happy and become dreamy whenever it rains cats and dogs and the sky of Hanoi is covered by dark clouds. For me, only on rainy days, the skies of Hanoi and London could become one.
I do miss rainy days in London and I do miss living in that city.
Would you like to exchange the heat of Hanoi for the rain of London, Sir?
From Hong Son
UKAV Director of Communications
Dear Antony, although I ‘ve never been to Hanoi (hope next year)I was 1st. really surprised in positive, strange but nice way.Then, I must admit,my western style of thinking told me “Logical, that ‘s the result of too much heat(at least I’m honest).But then this entire
“love” stories spoke and moved me in a way that I was supposing that 3 totally different persons/artists/poets had workde and written on it.Everyone in a fantastic way.As I noticed, that Andy Stanton, who is also in love with HCMC has been responsible for the entire story my brain started now to work.Then I saw some pictures of the well known movie “The quite American” (based in the South) or immediately “heard” a famous Kate Bush-Song “Pull out the Pin”-a story about the North, Hanoi.So all in all, what a great story. BW + enjoy the WE, Ingo-Steven
I love Mr Andy’s poetic style and neither can those photos be improved. The article increased my appreciation of Hanoi. The point Ms Vivian makes about London is right. Although I am not British, London is like my second home. This is an excellent piece of work.
Dear Antony,their ‘s one remark of which I’ve forgotten to write:
In the midst of this great Story(ies…)there ‘s one “K-Sentence” to me:
“Andy ś poetic style” mentioned that Hanoi wasn ‘t at all sthg. like a town of which” he was expected”.Well, this is exactly what I like:To receive and get or see a new city/landscape of which I once had a totally other expection/imagination.Otherwise, to me,things are becoming much too much facts which can be easily “calculated” and “manipulated”. BW ‘s , Ingo-Steven