Jake Catlett Photography

My Hanoi Curse

I think maybe Hanoi hates me. Which is regrettable, because I certainly don’t hate Hanoi. The people don’t seem to hate me so much (at least not all of them), but the environment, the place itself is holding a grudge against me for some reason, and I haven’t figured out why yet.

I say this because I’ve taken four separate trips to Hanoi in the last 3 years, each time with the intention of doing lots of photography. Now, it hasn’t been a complete wash, I always get a few good shots while I’m there, but nonetheless, it’s pretty much guaranteed that when I go to Hanoi, either the weather will suck, I will get some terrible illness, or, most likely, both.

The first time I went up there I was taking photographs for a cinema that was opening. My buddy is the manager, so he had pity on me and gave me a job. My first contract, in fact. Anyhow, I didn’t get ill that time, but the weather was gray and ugly, and I didn’t get much good stuff.

The second time I was there my mother and father came out for a visit, and we were to spend a couple of weeks hanging out in Hanoi, Sapa, Ha Long Bay, and Hoi An. I was there for a week or so before they arrived, and during that time I got some nice stuff. But, long story short, my father started passing a kidney stone and had to be sent to a hospital in Bangkok, and by the time we all got there I was so ill from food poisoning I had to be hospitalized as well. So we spent the better part of that trip in Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok. That was a vacation to remember, oh boy. The first solid thing I had to eat before leaving Thailand was a bowl of potato soup. So, I didn’t even get to enjoy any Thai food out of that expensive little detour.

Just about a year ago I went up north again, and went to Hanoi for 4 days before going to shoot Ha Long Bay. The weather was perfect! Sunny, blue skies, not too hot, not too cool… a beautiful October in Vietnam’s ancient northern capitol. I spent 4 days laying in my hotel room sweating bullets with a cramped gut. I turned on my TV when I entered my room, and literally didn’t turn it off the entire time I was there, I just left it on National Geographic Channel while I drifted in and out of consciousness for the next 96 hours. When I needed food I ordered bottles of water and rice soup through room service and just shouted at them to open the door when they came up and knocked. As you may well know, every day there’s a set of 4 main programs on Nat Geo, and they repeat them once they’ve cycled through. So, mostly I wouldn’t finish watching one show, I just kept falling asleep and waking up again in a different part of the program, later on in the day. One show in particular was this ridiculous special about the Bermuda Triangle. They had all these crackpot scientists and idiot pilots on there babbling about tears in the fabric of time and other drivel, and I started having bad dreams about flying planes in the rain and aliens and crap. Forget the fabric of time, I thought it was going to tear the fabric of my brain. Chalk it up to one of the top 10 worst travel experiences for me. The illness is bad enough, but thinking about paying for plane tickets and hotel rooms for the pleasure of going through it… that just plain sucks. And every once in a while I’d peer out my window and see clear, blue skies with gorgeous, golden afternoon light streaming down the street. It would have been less insulting to open my window and see a great big middle finger sticking up at me.

My 4 days in Ha Long Bay afterwards were great, but that’s not the point of this post. It’s about Hanoi. And Hanoi usually sucks for me.

So, back to the present. Or not so distant past. A few weeks back, I knew I was quitting my job, and a good friend and I were planning a 10 day trip down to the Mekong Delta before leaving for Laos. However, due to work constraints he was unable to make it, so I had 10 days looming ahead of me with nothing to do. I figured I should go hit Hanoi again… it’s the fall season, the weather is usually nice, I definitely want to get more shots of Hanoi, and plus I have a few friends that either live there or were going to be there at that same time, so at the last minute I decided to get a ticket and go up there.

The night before I left I was busy trying to get some things done before I went, and I didn’t get to bed until about 2:30am. My flight left at 6:30, so in order to get to the airport an hour before take-off, I had to wake up at 4:30. I do not function well on 2 hours of sleep. Yes, I know, nobody does, but I’m particularly bad. Generally speaking, no sleep at all works better for me than 2 hours. I’m sure I looked as bad as I felt as I trudged through 2 airports with an uncomfortable 2 hours airborne stuffed in between. But, hey! As I stepped out of Noi Bai airport in Hanoi, the sun was shining. It was partly cloudy, but enough nice light to work with. As we set off on the freeway I saw people harvesting several patches of gold, ripe rice amongst the other still-green patches, with the beginnings of mountains off in the distance, and I thought “Yes! Finally, I’m going to get some great work in Hanoi.” The ride back to the city is about an hour long, so I drifted off to sleep with a smile on my face, excited about starting my 6 month trip on the right foot.

I awoke about 45 minutes later in Hanoi to the sound of rain beating on the window next to me. We stopped at the hotel where I had a reservation, only to have them tell me they were full, sorry, oh, our mistake, no problem, we own another hotel, you can stay there, we’ll call them now. Oh, the price? Don’t worry, it’s fine… no, really… okay, ummm… no, it’s not the same price, it’s more expensive, yes, but… but…

And so I left them standing there saying “but, but, but” as I walked out the door. I make a reservation, they don’t keep a room for me, and then they try to push me off on a more expensive room. I’m not having it.

So, that’s how I found my trip to Hanoi beginning. Walking down the street, in the rain, carrying all my bags, trying to find a hotel room. I finally got a decent room at a place called “Return Hotel”, which is one of the oddest names I’ve ever heard for a hotel. I shook off my irritation, and decided to go out in the rain anyhow and try to get a couple of decent shots. I wound up getting a great panning shot of a guy in a bright pink rain coat, driving in the rain. So that was worth it for sure. Soon it stopped raining, however, and the sky stayed gloomy and dark. So as shooting goes, that was the day. I went and hung out with some friends, walked around, had coffee, and had an altogether pleasant afternoon. I got back to my room early, was in bed before 10pm, and planning on getting up before 5am, doing a bit of yoga, and then getting out to Hoan Kiem Lake for some early morning work.

And so I did. I got up as early as I can manage, and headed out to Hoan Kiem Lake… and more gray, ugly weather. I was still having fun, just enjoying the walk and my free time, until I started sweating, feeling irritable, my food and coffee feeling heavy and uncomfortable in my stomach. I know this feeling well by now. It’s my Hanoi Curse, coming back to haunt me. I spend another hour listlessly walking around the lake, trying to convince myself I’m just tired, attempting to deny to myself that it was happening again. But my horrible Hanoi gut wrench just won’t allow itself to be sidelined. I didn’t allow it to completely ruin my day, I still walked around with my buddy Tim for most of the morning and afternoon, still went and had a coffee by Ho Tay (West Lake) later in the afternoon, but not long after the sun went down, I also went down. Down for the count.

I made several feeble attempts over the next day to get out and do some stuff, but there was almost no point to it. The weather the next morning was clear, and I did get some nice shots at the lake. But Hanoi hates me, apparently, and will take all measures necessary to keep me locked up in a hotel room somewhere, feverish, bored and pissed off, hopefully deciding to take the hint and just stay away next time. My last day there I found myself laying in my hotel room, once again, drifting in and out of sleep with the National Geographic Channel on. Nursing a fever, half watching crazed crab fishermen risk their lives so rich people 6 time zones away from them can eat crab legs. Next, it’s a special about southern Indian cuisine, which would have sounded great to me under normal, less intestinally distressful conditions. Now it’s… NO! It can’t be! It’s that damned special about the Bermuda Triangle again! Really, I’m not kidding you, here’s the pilot in the introduction again, talking about seeing the very fabric of time itself beginning to tear open, and if I sit around long enough that moron “Dr.” Hutchinson is going to come on, babbling about his proof of what happens in Bermuda with his electrical “experiments”.

With a great big groan I forced myself off the bed. I hated my room. There was no fan. If I turned on the aircon, I was soon too cold. If I turned it off I was suddenly too hot. I was allergic to one of the blankets, and my eyes were feeling puffy and irritated, my nose itching. My stomach churning, sweating, dizzy – I gritted my teeth, put on a shirt, grabbed my camera and walked out the door. The idea of taking photos making my headache worse, I went and sat in a coffee shop facing the street and drank a mango shake. I might have felt awful, but damned if I was going to sit in my hotel room any longer. If I was doomed to feel that awful, at least I was going to do it somewhere where the temperature was tolerable and there was something interesting to look at, even if it was just the people walking on the street, or the cute girls they had serving drinks in the bar. Me vs. Hanoi. I’ve decided that no matter how much Hanoi hates me, I’m going to fight back by trying to enjoy it. No matter how much it tries to force me away with it’s craptastic weather and it’s delicious food, so full of microbes and digestive horrors, deceptively calling to me with it’s warm aroma like some kind of olfactory siren. No matter how feverish and ill I am, I’m going shuffle down the road, sniffling, holding my aching head with a smile on my face. “Hi! Yes, I LOVE Hanoi, the weather is great! Ooh, whatcha’ eating? Can I try some? Please make sure there’s some raw vegetables and unpeeled fruit involved, maybe some poorly cooked pork. No trip to Hanoi is complete without some parasites to bring back with you!”

And the really awful thing is that I DO love Hanoi! It’s a beautiful city. Sorry to all my friends in Saigon, but it’s much more beautiful than any city in Southern Vietnam. The ancient architecture in Hoan Kiem district, all the beautiful little Vietnamese temples and pagodas, the lakes and parks in the mornings and late afternoons. It’s all great. And while I do prefer southern cuisine, the food in Hanoi is still fantastic to me, I love being able to sample stuff I haven’t tried before. And while a lot of travelers complain about the people in Hanoi, personally I really like them. The people in Hanoi are usually quite serious, and they often seem tuned in to history and politics, and a lot of people there know about world events. I always seem to have really intellectual conversations in Hanoi.

But I always wind up too ill to enjoy it.

On my final night I was still feeling like used shoe leather, but I still decided to meet my friend Zen for a couple drinks and some food I desperately hoped would stay inside of me for more than an hour. I was glad I did, Zen is always great to talk to. But walking back to my room in the warm, damp evening air I was feeling expired, over, finished. Hanoi had done me in once again. As I walked through an intersection in the old quarter, I heard a motorbike coming up the street I was crossing, far too fast, the horn honking as if to say “I’m an asshole, get out of my way or I’ll hit you”, and then I saw a young woman coming towards me up the street I was walking on. Moments after she passed me, I heard a scream and “slam!”… the two bikes had crashed. I turned around and saw them kneeling there in the street, dazed and bleeding, and I thought to myself “that was supposed to be me”. The city had wanted to put me in the middle of that wreck, I was sure of it, but it’s timing was off just a bit. Hanoi 3, Jake 1. I shuffled up the road despondently, into my hotel, up the stairs, and into my bed for another fitfull night of tossing and turning, getting up every 30 minutes to turn the aircon on, then off, on, then off.

In the morning my friend Thu came to meet me for a coffee before I got a cab to the airport. The weather was still overcast, I was still feeling terrible, and while I didn’t think I could stomach a coffee, a lemon shake didn’t sound too bad. Sitting there talking over our drinks, sleepy and somewhat cranky, I started talking to Thu about the old houses in Hoan Kiem district and how much I love them. She asks me to show her which houses I’m talking about, and I point out some examples. She shoots me a sour face and says “I hate those old houses, they’re just terrible.” “Why?”, I ask. “They’re beautiful, it’s great that they’re still around, architecture like that is a part of your culture.” “No, they’re awful. They’re dirty, inconvenient… In the summer they’re too hot, in the winter they’re too cold. The house I live in is old like that, made mostly of wood. I don’t like the smell, I’m never comfortable there. I wish I could live in a nice, new house.”

On that note the conversation died for a few minutes, and I sat there thinking about this. This conflict with new and old, tradition versus modernism, this is what Vietnam means to me, it’s the one theme I see repeated over and over again, everywhere I go. This ancient culture, and a stubborn way of holding onto tradition, of doing things the “Vietnamese” way, coupled with a desire for new things, and the way people associate modern things with success and development. These two contrasting ideas, always together in the same places. As I’m thinking about this, looking across the street at these old, colorful houses, a young woman dressed rather stylishly in black and white, with big sunglasses perched on her forehead comes out of a doorway and leans against it, talking on a cellphone. And there it is, my train of thought expressed perfectly in a nice little composition, ready to be photographed and stored away forever. I grab my camera, walk out into the street and take my shot. And now it’s time for me to get in my cab and head back to Saigon.

Thanks for the shot, Hanoi! Maybe you don’t hate me so much after all…