Can’t beat the Hanoi heat *

01Sep11

*Preamble/ explanation: A friend of mine by the name of Oslo Davis — yes, THE Oslo Davis — told me I should write something for the NY Times’ magazine column called Lives (open submission) so I did. I think one year and a month with no reply is the NY Times’ way of saying, delicately, “We’re not interested in this story, but gee, thanks for reaching out!”  So, this isn’t really the old Comical Hat style, but as the story was not published, and I just remembered I wrote it, I figure its worth firing up the Old Comical Hat engine and giving it a home on the interweb where it can dwell fairly anonymously for eternity.  I really thought slipping in descriptions of “Banyan trees”, “crumbling French colonial period villas”,  “Lilliputian-sized plastic stools” was the way to get into bed with the NY Times magazine, but, oh how I was wrong…  so Hanoi residents please forgive the (strategically used) cliches.

Genetically engineered to live by a peat bog in misty-wet-with-rain-Ireland, I suffer from a physical disability as an émigré in Hanoi, Vietnam – if only in the summertime. Quite simply, my large, pasty-white, rather hirsute body can’t process extreme heat and ridiculously intense humidity. The former takes me to boiling point, the latter applies the lid, and here I am: a sweaty Irish potato trapped in an Asian melting pot.

On good days, before the sweat starts to cascade, I like to joke I’m the hottest man in Hanoi (as temperature wise it’s possibly true), but this physical shortcoming is no laughing matter. Not for me, anyway. I am in a constant state of anxiety, haunted by the notion that, one day, my body will pass a fatal tipping point and achieve absolute meltdown. On the side of the road someone will find clumps of ginger hair, some nails, a pile of sweat-drenched clothes and a pair of flip-flops in a steamy pool. I will be the index case for a phenomenon dubbed, “spontaneous evaporation.”

But until that day comes, I soldier on, summer after summer. When I enter a party or a bar, a friend or acquaintance might say, “hi”, “bon soir”, or “so we meet again my old nemesis”, or whatever, but even if I hear the salutation, I won’t be listening. I will be too busy scouring the venue for somewhere cool to stand. For the rest of the evening, I will only be available for small talk under the largest most accessible fan in the room, its rickety-whirring buzz like music to my little red ears.

When socialising, I’ve given up hoping that wherever I go there will be a proper air conditioning unit. In Hanoi’s crumbling French colonial period villas and shabby townhouses, air conditioners seem to be rendered impotent. In the pokey, late-night watering holes, where smoking is nearly compulsory, there is no air to be conditioned.

Inevitably, I have been caught in a pickle or two – citywide power cuts are common, and inevitably some other sweaty oaf will steal your spot by the fan while you’re at the bar. Over the years, I have had to perform countless emergency manoeuvres. At restaurants I have pretended to go to the toilet but actually walked to the car park, jumped on my scooter and driven around the nearest lake to cool down. During dinner parties I have slyly slipped into the host’s bathroom and run a shallow cold bath and soaked my baking feet. I once even stood in an AC-cooled ATM booth and simulated the actions of a man withdrawing cash on a particularly brutal summer’s day.

Recently, at a street-side bar serving 50 cent glasses of bia hoi (fresh beer), I found myself exposed in typical fashion. It was a birthday bash for a cold-blooded Canadian friend of mine, who is seemingly immune to the 90 per cent humidity and 40 degrees Celsius-heat. As soon as I pulled up a Lilliputian-sized plastic stool and joined the table, I realised there were no fans around. I could feel the heat clench its fist around my body and gently squeeze. I couldn’t very well leave after just sitting down. Acting quickly, I ordered the smiling, teenage waitress to bring a bucket of ice. My friends presumed I wanted to drink my beer iced in the stultifying heat, and yes, I did, but most of the ice was actually applied to my pulse points – the nape of my neck, the underside of my elbows and the soles of my feet (I’m something of an expert in iced-acupressure massage) – a highly effective measure despite the somewhat suspicious pools of water under my seat.

Day to day, I do what I can to survive. Like crossing a river from one safe rock to another, I travel around town, darting quickly in and out of air-conditioned offices and shops, avoiding crowded restaurants, trying to persuade my friends to have coffee at a café where I know there are industrial-sized fans. For the average Hanoian, the shade of a hundred-year-old Banyan tree might be enough at the height of summer, but I need an electric-powered buffeting breeze right in my face.

Sometimes as I visibly melt in a crowded bar, so-called friends will laugh and wonder how is it possible that someone can live here for over 10 years and fail to acclimatise, as if you can sandwich ten thousand years of evolution into a decade, as if like Gregor Samsa’s overnight transformation into a cockroach, I might suddenly awake one morning from uneasy dreams to see I have spindly hairless arms and a new-found indestructibility when it comes to heat.

So, what the hell am I doing here, you ask? Well, you see, I have thrown down the anchor, so to speak, and found a local lady and started a family. And although I will never adjust to the climate here, I thought, at the very least, my half-Vietnamese son, would never suffer like his father in the heat. But throughout this latest long, hot summer, I have continually picked my young toddler out of his pushchair and felt his sweat-drenched back, and his soggy-mane of hair, and sighed. Whenever its time to go, the missus has always found us under the largest, most accessible fan in the room, its rickety-whirring buzz like music to our little red ears.

Advertisement

Filed under: stuff, Whimsical   |  11 Comments
Tags: hanoi, heat, New York Times Magazine, summer, vietnam