Not a bad way to see things a second time, but I've rarely felt more less cool. There's something deeply unsettling about human horsepower.
Thom and I spent the rest of the day and evening on our own. I wanted to check out the art scene in a neighborhood less than a half hour from our hotel. Crossing the street at rush hour isn't for the faint of heart.
Darkness only increased the intensity of Hanoi's color.
Urban electrical wiring is no less complex in Vietnam than India.
Thom got a haircut from a barber with a 20-year-old son. Neither of us thought he looked much older than that himself. According to Graham Greene, the Vietnamese age all at once.
The barber kindly allowed me to use the family bathroom. To give you an idea of how cramped and unfancy it was, here's the adjacent kitchen. I inadvertently left my fanny pack, containing both my i-Phone and i-Pod (don't ask!), hanging above the toilet.
The Manzi Art Space, just down the street, in a classic French colonial building, was in between exhibitions but the owner said we still could have a drink on the balcony. She reminded me of Yoko Ono.
We sorted through dozens of works on paper, casually displayed in plastic wrappers. When I couldn't decide between two small but pricey pieces, Thom bought the water color to thank me for making all the trip arrangements. I protested. A little.
A gallerista served us delicious cocktails while other young staff members, mostly artists themselves, wrapped our purchases. Going rogue (the rest of our tour group was on a street food tour) often provides cooler, more authentic experiences as Thom discovered when I returned to the barber shop for my fanny pack. The gallery owner showed him how to download "Into Thin Air," a subversive art app. "Get it off my phone," he pleaded as soon as we left. "I don't want to be arrested at the airport!" Of course what Communist authorities consider subversive seems more like Pokemon for hipsters to me.
After a quick change of clothes, we celebrated our art purchases at the Metropole Hotel which Patrick had recommended for its lounge singer. "You'll feel like you're stepping back into the 20s for a colonial whitewashing." More importantly, it's where Hanoi Jane stayed during her infamous tour of North Vietnam! Thom was in heaven, no surprise, even after our light supper cost more than a million dong. Ironically, we saw more Asians dining there than we did in any of the restaurants on our guided tour.
En route back to our decidedly more modest accommodations, I spotted this interesting, possibly subversive, poster. Thien claimed he had absolutely no idea what it advertised when I asked him about it the next morning. It also prompted him to confide that his propaganda spiel near the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum had been recorded.
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