Lake Hoam Kiem-etics

I left Lao Cai to return to Hanoi at 7:30pm, after Day 2's trek, a local dance festival, and an early morning departure from Sapa to the Bac Ha market, some 3 hours away by jeep. Colorful and far from the realm of my ordinary reality, of course, but also a bit ho-hum now that the presence of tourism is so palpable. I'd probably more enjoyed another day in Sapa, my new fantasy residence. After the market, we visited two m ore hill-tribe families (enh...) and took a short boat ride down a river that feeds in the great Red River. We stopped, somewhat inexplicably, to gaze across to China at the border gate, and then I was deposited back at the madhouse that is the Lao Cai train station. As coincidence would have it, I bunked again with the same father-and-son duo that I'd shared a compartment with on the way up! They still weren't the most engaging travel companions I've ever encountered, and i was hard to elicit much conversation from them until we had a very disconcerting smell of smoke coming through the AC vent. I sought out the attendant, who appeared long enough to tell us "no smoking!" which, of course, we weren't, nevermind that it was a fire-like smoke smell, not a cigarette smoke smell. Another attendant appeared. "Smoke", we said. "No", she said, "no smoke." "Yes," we said, "smoke." Someone who at least appeared to have a bit more authority came by as well an then left with the air of someone on a problem-solving mission. None of the three ever returned. I fell asleep; my detached companions may have been asphixiated, I couldn't be sure and, patience and sense of hospitality and congeniality worn thin, I didn't really care.

We arrived in Hanoi at an ungodly 4:30 am, at which hour the city was still a ghost-town. I took a cab to my hotel, which was shuttered tightly. Unfortunately for me, I hadn't heard them tell me that, when I returned from Sapa, I should ring the bell (Bell? What bell?). It;'s not exactly like you can find a Starbuck's or 24-hour cafe or anything even remotely resembling it. Having nowhere else to go, I had the cab take me to the lake in the Old Quarter, where I'd read that all of Hanoi comes out to exercise beginning at 5 am. I had nowhere to go. I may have been the only one with a suitcase, but I had plenty of company. Hanoians, young and old, were circum-ambulating the lake, stretching, arm-swinging, bending, doing aerobics, massaging their and others' pressure points, slapping their buttocks, kneading facial and neck muscles and otherwise demonstrating eastern self-care. If I hadn't been so exhausted and feeling a bit lost for want of a home, I'd have taken a few better pix. Had any of these antics taken place in New York, it would be a comic sideshow. Here, it was the most mundane and routine of quotidian pursuits. It felt silly even to be aware of what was going on around me, never mind *watching* and, god forbid, *photographing*! And yet it is among the most intriguing and entertaining sights I've encountered on this trip!




Everybody's doin' it!