Single White Female in Hanoi (4 page)

By the time I walk through my gate I've decided to email my friend Kate, who's teaching English in Prague, and tell her I'm coming over.

But once again, back in my living room, I'm soothed by the high moulded ceilings, the air of sanctuary and civility, the comforting hum of the ceiling fan. My panic cools.

‘There must be more to Hanoi than this,' I tell the leafy plants in the window box outside my living room. There's a cup of green tea in my hands, and my little speakers are emitting the soothing tones of Marvin Gaye's ‘What's Going On?'

Richard gave me the mobile phone number of a friend of his, Owen, who arrived recently from the US to help a floundering local college improve its administration and curriculum. I turn down the stereo, pull out the phone number and call it. The receptionist locates Owen quickly. He's very friendly, and tells me to turn up tomorrow morning. When I locate the college on my map of Hanoi, I see it's barely a block from my place. Auspicious.

The day is getting on. I improvise a meal with leftover rice and coconut milk, and make another pot of green tea. Nga or someone has let themselves in while I was out and put a large thermal flask on the desk, so I can make hot tea any time of day or night.

I pore enthusiastically over my Vietnamese phrasebook. I've learnt a few words now – in theory at least. I can count to a hundred and say ‘thank you'. Best of all, I've mastered the art of saying ‘
Xin chao',
which is the polite greeting. ‘
Chao'
must be said with a downward tone. An accidental rising intonation changes the meaning of the phrase to an Oliver Twist-like ‘Please may I have some rice porridge?' It's an easy mistake to make, and when I do accidentally make it, I remember I'm in the company of such greats as Bill Clinton, who greeted the locals with a request for porridge during his historic visit to Hanoi in 2000.

The last of the daylight fades, and I decide the best way to cheer myself up is to head straight into the Old Quarter, make use of a cheap Internet café and go on a CD-buying spree.

As I leave the compound, a small, terrified, ginger cat falls on my head, seemingly from thin air. I unpick its claws from my scalp, put it down and keep walking. I'm starting to adapt.

With every passing day I feel my slender thread of attachment to this place strengthen.

Waking early in the morning is not without its merits. People have been telling me this all my life, but I never listened. Now I enjoy the morning light in my apartment and the relatively mild weather that precedes midday's thermonuclear onslaught.

But most of all I enjoy the ‘street-singing' that reaches my bedroom window from the alley beyond the gate each morning. Although it's quite loud, it feels like it's coming from a long way away, and not just in space, but in time. And in a sense, it is. The singing comes from street vendors who wander the streets hawking their wares. Each type of ware has its own instantly recognisable signature call – a short, lazy phrase – and has probably had this same call since time immemorial. The phrase is such a unique fusion of melody and syllables that it seems unrepeatable, yet, like a digital sample, it plays over and over, perfect each time.

I'm riveted by the man who calls out ‘
Pho'
from his bicycle. He starts on a low note, then slides it slowly up to the high register – the syllable is ‘
fuhhh'
. There's a gap of about five seconds, then the voice returns, forming an ‘
ahoyyyyyyyy',
which starts high and then cascades down very slowly, tailing off towards the end, so that it sounds like he's just fallen down a canyon. With the natural reverb the alley outside adds to his rich voice, it's a strange sound indeed. His is the song of all such vendors, although I never hear it sung with such gusto by any other.

But the most exquisite street-singing I hear comes from the
banh mi
girl.
Banh
means bread – a Vietnamisation of the French word
pain
, since it was the French who introduced bread-making here. I lie rapt in bed as, in between the less appealing interjections from hoicking man, her voice sings its plaintive melody.

It will be a month before I put a face to the voice. She's about eighteen and impossibly beautiful. Like all
banh mi
women, she wanders the neighbourhood selling hot bread rolls from a wicker basket she carries on her head. She probably comes in from outside Hanoi before dawn each day. She smiles unfailingly when she sees me, despite the fact that I never buy bread.

In another reality, her pure inimitable voice, her grace and her beauty might have led her to a rewarding career as a singer. Instead, as a member of the uneducated underclass, she's doomed to wander the streets in all weather for a pittance until exhaustion or disease claim her at an early age.

The microclimate of Hanoi is hurtling its way into the high thirties as I set out on foot for the college where Richard's friend, Owen, works. I find it easily – it's directly on the other side of the block that lies across
Nguyen Thai Hoc
. There's an enormous garish banner hanging over the entrance that proclaims: ‘Hanoi Global College'. Behind this is a gorgeous sand-coloured French colonial building.

Heading up the steps to the front entrance, I'm smiling already. I enter a bright airy corridor. The walls are decorated with colourful children's paintings, which have been thoughtfully framed. There are young women wandering the corridors in flowing powder-blue dresses. These are called
ao dai
and are the traditional costume of Vietnamese women – a long, high-necked dress over loose-fitting pants. The women smile when they see me. I hear the sound of kids laughing. Best of all, when I walk into the teacher's area there's a big, well-stocked salt-water aquarium. I used to keep one at home in Sydney, and the familiarity of this lovely thing is heartening.

In the centre of the room is a huge, glass-topped wooden table. Sitting behind it, his features reflected below in the shining glass, is a big fellow with a trim grey beard and piercing blue eyes - the only Westerner in sight. This is Owen. He rises to greet me enthusiastically. I tell him a little bit about myself, avoiding mention of my disturbing experience with his friend yesterday.

When I tell him I played in bands in Sydney and taught piano before coming to Hanoi, he becomes very animated.

‘A musician, hey? That's fabulous. I think we should make use of your talents here. There's a piano somewhere in the building'.

‘Really? Wow!'

‘Sure! Somewhere downstairs, I think. Yeah. I'm thinking maybe we could offer piano lessons here, too. Or maybe you could write a course that incorporates teaching English
and
music.'

‘Wow!' I exclaim again. This sounds like my ideal vocation.

I stand by proudly as Owen examines my teaching certificate. I wonder how many of the other teachers here can boast a ‘Distinction' on their own TESOL certificates.

‘Do you mind if I make a photocopy of this?' he finally asks. ‘I've never seen an actual TESOL certificate before'.

‘Be my guest,' I say as nonchalantly as possible. When he's gone, I sit down, blink a couple of times and stare into the fish tank. Owen's only been here a couple of months, maybe he just hasn't seen a TESOL certificate since he got here?

Being a musician is no guarantee of a job, even in Sydney. Given a background in teaching and Linguistics, teaching English was an obvious choice for employment for me in Hanoi. Late last year I'd applied to take a dangerously compressed course in TESOL, an acronym for ‘Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages', at the University of NSW.

Once accepted, I received a large package in the mail. It contained a heavy volume with the startling title
Systemic Functional Grammar
and a tough written exam. I imagine this would have instantly deterred about half the applicants. I studied grammar as part of a Masters degree in Linguistics, and I couldn't have been more mystified by the contents of this tome if it had been printed in Sanskrit. Without the patient tuition of a grammarian friend I would have foundered at the starting line.

The course itself consisted of 148 contact hours, which were squeezed absurdly into less than four weeks in January. There was one very placid chap in the class who later said he'd enjoyed the course, but the rest of us figured he was lying. It had been a month-long onslaught with no respite.

At the end of the contact hours, we had to complete a major work which involved designing a 60-hour curriculum. Mine came to 163 pages. It was a lot of work for a general malingerer, but it earned me that Distinction.

When Owen returns he takes me on a tour of the building. The school has been open for less than a year and the premises are former Communist Party office space, fallen into disrepair. The ceilings are very high and ornate. Chandeliers hang in the corridors. Thirty or more workers are pounding away downstairs to make yet more classrooms. They're uncovering long-buried floors laid with stunning tiles and mosaics – and, with considerable disregard, mixing cement on them.

Our peregrinations through the building don't uncover a piano, though.

On the way back to the teachers' room, we come upon Mr Thinh, who owns the building and the college business. He's a large and confident man in his forties with a pumpkin-sized head of well-combed shiny hair and a mouthful of perfect teeth. His eyes wander to my chest when we're introduced.

‘Very pleased to meet you,' he says and bows chivalrously.

‘Carolyn's from Australia, and she's got a very good qualification and she's also a music teacher,' Owen tells him in a slightly defiant tone.

Mr Thinh smiles broadly. ‘I would very much like you to have this,' he says, and hands me his business card, which describes his position as ‘rector'.

Owen and I are invited upstairs to his air-conditioned office for tea and a chat. As we walk in, I'm hit in the face by a massive temperature change. The contrast is so extreme, I wonder how it is that tiny thunderstorms don't form in the doorway. It's my first contact with cool air since arriving in Hanoi.

In the office we sink into big, soft sofas. Owen and Mr Thinh discuss the school in voices that barely veil their mutual enmity. The conversation excludes me entirely, but the comfort factor more than makes up for it. Sipping fragrant Vietnamese green tea in the cool air, I'm in heaven.

Looking around, I see a framed photo of Mr Thinh in army fatigues – presumably his war days. He's crouched down, rifle in hand. My attitude to him softens as I realise he was sent to war to fight people that look like Owen and me. Next, my gaze settles on a digital thermometer. The temperature in the chilled room is 29 degrees – as cold as a hot day in Sydney.

‘The wheels are turning quickly for you,' Owen tells me back downstairs. ‘They want you to come in tomorrow night to observe your first class'.

I nod solemnly. I want to turn cartwheels around the staffroom.

‘You should have a timetable within a week. Believe me, the wheels are turning very quickly for you,' he repeats.

On learning that I'm vegetarian, he's delighted to tell me that tomorrow's observation class will be taught by Natassia – a young German girl with flawless English, who's also vegetarian. It's all too perfect.

Way too perfect, it turns out. Facts I'm yet to learn include: there's no piano anywhere in the building; Mr Thinh never went to war – he spent the duration of the conflict safely cloistered in Moscow, growing fat on Russian stodge while his compatriots starved; the fish swimming around in the aquarium have a startling mortality rate; the women wandering around in floaty dresses are administration staff who are frantically trying to hold up a house of cards; and Natassia is Swiss, not German, and her English is far from flawless. But she is vegetarian.

I'm really looking forward to teaching. I've already started teaching Nga, my landlady, some English. She turns up almost daily for chats and to observe my life, which fascinates her. Everything I pull out of my suitcase is of immense interest.

‘And, Carolyn, why do you bring this?' she inquires, as she turns my things over in her hand. My ideas about life are solicited with earnestness. ‘And, Carolyn, this is your family?' I find her absorbed in a small photo album friends presented to me on my departure.

‘No Nga, it's my neighbours. We're friends.'

‘Your neighbour?' she tilts her head backwards slightly, squints and flicks through the rest of the album. She looks disturbed. ‘What about your family?'

‘My family? They're not in there.' I can sense Nga's mind at work. It is analysing, compiling, quantifying the strangeness of the foreigner.

With Nga, the theme always returns to family and marriage. She's sad I don't have a husband. Without a family of my own, she tells me, my life is without … she doesn't know the word. She writes it down in Vietnamese,
y nghia
, and I look it up. ‘Significance, meaning,' I read dejectedly.

But I enjoy Nga's company. She has a deep, engaging voice and an intimate way of relating to me, as though we've known each other for a long time. Nga is pale but has a classic Vietnamese beauty, with flashing dark eyes, full, pouting lips, and strong cheekbones framing a small bridgeless nose. But her expressions reveal little. Later she'll get to meet many of my visitors, and offer me her fairly perspicacious assessment of each of them. Funnily enough, a number of these people, most of them Vietnamese, will also volunteer their opinion of her after she's left the building. ‘Don't trust her,' they say.

It turns out I've underestimated her English skills. Her English is very slow and laboured, and her pronunciation, typical of Vietnamese people, is such that one could be forgiven for thinking she was speaking Vietnamese. But one day she takes me unawares:

‘English, errrr, very difficult', she volunteers.

I agree.

‘Yes, errrr, for me, errr, very difficult'.

I nod further agreement, then –

‘Present perfect and present perfect continuous tense – these one very difficult for me'.

This astonishing comment sets the stage for my experiences as an English teacher in Hanoi. The distinction between ‘I have eaten' and ‘I have been eating' would elude most learners of English. Yet, consistently, students who can barely ask ‘What is your name?' will get every answer correct in a written grammar exam.

The promise of a job has invigorated me, and in the evening I decide to walk to Hanoi's hub – the ‘Old Quarter' – looking for excitement. I study my city map and set out.

The Old Quarter is flanked by the Red River, which forms Hanoi's northern border. It's barely more than a kilometre from my place, but the journey takes nearly an hour. The obstacle course on the sidewalk forces pedestrians to weave along at a geriatric pace, which is perversely tiring. I long for an invigorating walk at a cracking pace.

Hanoi's Old Quarter is about as old as a quarter can be, with a history spanning over 1,000 war-torn years. It began to come into its own as a CBD at the end of the tenth century, when Vietnam won independence after a millennium of Chinese domination. Hanoi was small citadel called Dai La, when King Ly Thai To made it his nation's capital and established a walled palace there, among a few villages scattered around a muddy alluvial plain. He renamed his liberated city Thang Long – ‘Soaring Dragon' Hanoi has had seven or eight name changes since then. The current name, Hanoi, means something like ‘Inside the Bend of the River'.