I don’t want to live with the bourgeoisie no more

Ho Chi Minh City, day 6?

Things have happened since last time. we’ve eaten at an old, fancy hotel, we’ve been to a fancy mall, and we’ve walked through the old quarter several times. And we’ve changed our scene to Ho Chi Minh City, leaving a hotel with a very peculiar and anxious sense of theoretical luxury, that kind of bottomed out in a lot of missing details and very awkward service.

Back to the beginning, eating a really good hamburger at the Sofitel Hotel felt really strange, especially after reading the story of colonial life in Hoa Lo prison. The hotel was built around the turn of the century, and it was a popular place among the rich colonials. The hotel kept the look, and it really oozed old style. Roger Moore had drank martinis there, and now, so have I. But, coming from the old quarter, and having spend most of my time in its tight alleys, it felt surreal to suddenly sit in a clean and pristine hotel restaurant. It kind of made me feel like a colonist myself, enjoying the extravagant luxury while people just a short walk away were cooking food in communal pots over an open fire. I don’t think I’ve ever felt the privilege of being part of the global one per cent that viscerally ever before.

The mall we visited the next day caused a similar crisis, as it was filled with upscale stores with a price level so far from everything else (The Gap was expensive even by Swedish standards, not to mention the Dior et. al. stores) in Hanoi that it felt, again, really disconnected from the outside world. An oasis for the rich far away, conceptually, from the “real” world while just a short walk away in real life. A reminder I really shouldn’t need by now.

Following the shopping excursion, we went north again, through the old quarters. Getting further from the I guess more touristy part where we lived, I somehow felt closer to the “real” Hanoi. But it wasn’t until we were going back, having visited a pagoda that boasted a tree taken from the original tree that the original buddha meditated under, that I felt the closest to this imagined “realness” I have so far. Going through some less traveled roads heading back to the main road, we passed by five people occupying the entire sidewalk with their project, the cutting up of half of a pig’s carcass. A few minutes later, we saw some people kill a chicken (they put it head first in a bucket, which had the benefit of making the killing a bit more abstracted, to me). Lastly, as a crowning monument to the possibility of authenticity, I spotted a roasted dog. Just kind of a stall with different meats, similar to several ones I’ve seen before that and since, but this one had a dog in it, instead of some chickens, or some pig’s trotters. But maybe my imagined finding of something real is just that, imagined. I almost feel arrogant, almost racist, to entertain the thought of finding any kind of “realness” after a short 5 days in a city, or a country.

Do what you will with this information, as impossibly self-indulgent as it is. I’m mostly using it to process my thoughts.