It is 7:38 am. It’s hot. I’m awake. Everyone else is asleep.
None of this is new.
The AC is on, but only in appearances. It’s blowing air around the room and gives the illusion that it’s cold when it hits The Sweat but that’s it. Even the shower is a weak mimicry of cold. It’s coldish at first contact but by the time it runs off you finger tips, it’s hot again. There is no Winter God here.
In less dramatic terms, it’s hot and there is no escape. What’s really sad is that we stayed here before our trek and the AC was Strong. So we know what we’re missing out on. And this is like the most comfortable bed we’ve been on and I can’t even get under the covers to appreciate it.
And we’re back in Hanoi and the honking is strong. But it’s temporary. I can be hot and not sleep for another day.
Today is spicy, which i feel like I say that about every day but really. We got in from another Midnight Train somewhere around 4:40 am. Tonight (or I guess very early tomorrow morning) we fly out at 1:45 am.
So.
–
“1.6.”
“…million?”
-Kelly and Marisa in The North Face Knock Off Store
We got the AC to work.
Upon review, that was unnecessarily dramatic. But I’m sensitive and it’s what I was feeling in the moment, so in the pursuit of honesty, it will remain.
Temperature honestly makes a huge difference. I’m alive again. Sort of.
It’s late-ish and we’re packing up this hotel for the last time (we returned to the same one we stayed in before) and I am all done, so it is time to write.
As I failed to mention in my throughs of drama this morning, we had an even spicier, earlier morning. We took another sleeper train back to Ha Noi, one that I was so tired I actually slept on.
It got in around 4:30 am though, so I still got the chance to feel like death. We rolled up to the hotel and stood outside like grimy heathens until the bell boy (who was taking a nap on the sofa) let us in and the front desk guy (who was also napping) checked us in. We were all really experiencing a deconstructed reality in that lobby together. But it’s fine, we lived, we slept (eventually).
After resting, we ventured out to get some coffee (which I was told was super good in Vietnam and can now give that statement full Rachel-Seal of Approval), and hit up the North Face Store.
Now. I didn’t really talk about this before because I wasn’t sure how to put it into words, but here goes nothing. Right before we left for Sa Pa, we were wandering around Ha Noi and stumbled upon this store. Kelly didn’t have a rain jacket so we entered.
And there were wall to wall North Face products at excessively low prices. There was a hallway that lead even deeper into this wonderland and when you walked through it, everything got muffled and quiet, like you had maybe entered a different realm or a wizard’s lair.
I’ve never seen two people have a bodily reaction to a store quite like Marisa and Kelly did when they started checking the prices. I thought Marisa was going to pass out. But we also had the midnight train to get ready for, so we had to leave with out doing the extreme damage to our funds that we wanted to.
The North Face Store then became the mantra that Kelly and Marisa invoked when the trek got especially rough. It was our Light in the dark. Our Savior. Our Love Interest + Family™ that was waiting for us after we finished our Last Job.
And today we returned.
Perhaps it we were blinded by excitement. Maybe the trek made us realize that we were beyond material goods. But it just wasn’t as lit.
And also we noticed that everything was super fake. I’m really not sure how we missed it before. But we definitely saw it this time.
It’s always sad when your gods forsake you, but I’m sure we will recover.
We still managed to spend a substantial amount of money there though, just maybe a little less than we would have before Sa Pa opened our eyes to the False Gods of Capitalism and Material Happiness. Anyways, we wandered the city a little bit, which was nice because we didn’t really get the chance to do that the first time around. That Festival I noticed was in full swing now and there were kids with the star sticks running around and lights strung up everywhere. Kelly got ambushed by an errant chicken. We got our nails done.
Also I feel like the motorbike capability needs to be discussed. I have never seen people put so much stuff with such confidence on to something so small. I think the most impressive version of this we saw was three people on a bike, transporting a huge speaker. The guy on the very end was holding the speaker in place and didn’t even look like he was on the bike, more like he was suspended in the air right behind the bike.
Alas, we have to leave soon, so I won’t really get to see the city as much as I want to. Our flight is at 1:45 am, which is death, but it must be done. It was the only direct flight. The other one left at 8 am this morning. Which we probably could have made, but god at what cost? (It was also nine hours long and had a layover in Singapore, which could have been super rad to run around for an hour but I think we would have died.)
Yeah, not much to say today. It’s odd though, thinking about how we’re actually out here, seeing the land. When we booked stuff for this trip, and specifically this fight from Ha Noi to Osaka, it seemed like it was just something we were thinking about doing, not something that we were actually going to go do. And now we’re here, taking our last inter-trip flight.
Wild stuff, my dudes.
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