Reviews by brenaj
I never planned to review a CD shop because CD shops in Ha Noi are like anarchists at a Black Flag concert – throw a rock and you will hit four. But after coming here I now understand that those proverbial four shops/anarchists are, in addition to being illegal in many countries, more often than not full of the same half-done trite tracks.
At this shop don’t even mess with the wall racks. Go straight to the fat binder at the back. Thousands of CDs are listed. Of the ten I requested, nine were in stock and all were perfect. No scratches, missing tracks or random cuts of boy bands. The selection is no more than a step above standard, but I am convinced that if you cannot find your disc here you will probably not find it in Ha Noi at all.
On that note, to my mind the answer to the poor CD selection in Ha Noi is to encourage more people to order CDs from abroad. My theory is that customs officials open packages, copy whatever CDs they find inside, replace them, and then reproduce them en masse for distribution. (Those of you who have imported all of Bjork’s albums, you know who you are.) But regardless of how they come, you will find them here. Happy shopping/shipping!
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Well-known fact: You should go to the dentist every six months (if you are from the USA) or every year (if you are not). Even if you brush and floss twice a day (as I do, and I’m sure you do too) your teeth will still accrue tartar. Tartar starts out soft. Over time it becomes appallingly hard. Think barnacles. Barnacles all over your teeth spewing out juices to make more barnacles and digest your gums. If you do not remove the barnacles, your teeth will look like Ha Long Bay well before your crown does.
And no one will love you. I’m sorry but that’s just true.
Not-so-well-known fact: Cavities come from bacteria, and bacteria is communicable. I.e., you can catch cavities from others. Not quite sure who you were snogging at Solace the other night? Have a partner with sensitive gums? You may be doomed.
Ideally, you would arrange for your first date (if you’re a bit of a tart) to take place at the dentist so that you know beforehand what you’re getting into. This is called prophylaxis, i.e. prevention, and it is most effective before you start thinking about that other prophylaxis. Just keep in the back of your head, ‘first my strawberry-flavoured barrier method and then my orange-flavoured barrier method.’
Just about any dentistry in town will do for a basic cleaning. I recommend this one because it is the real deal – as soon as you open your mouth and the dentist sticks his hands inside he starts up with the how-old-are-you-are-you-married questions he knows you cannot answer – JUST like a dentist in my home country, which makes me positive he is legit. Also, the staff are fluent in Key English Phrases – ‘open’ and ‘100,000 dong’ – the latter being the price of a cleaning and polish. The doc will clean your teeth with a water jet, scraping away the barnacles, and then he will polish. Whole thing takes less than 20 minutes. Easy and cheap enough to go every week or month or two (more for coffee drinkers).
I’m sorry I can’t comment about cavity-filling and things like that; I am a heavy user of prophylaxis. But they have lots of very convincing-looking drills. I’m quite sure they could bore a lot of holes if they needed to. They open early and close at 8pm. Have fun!
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I came here after a duckwit on a Honda sped through a red light (on the wrong side of the street) and broadsided me. I flew (that was super) and then landed (not super) kinked up like a straw in a mango drink, hit the pavement, the bikes (but unfortunately not duckwit’s head) and heard: thunk, thunk, thwack, CRACK. I goose-stepped out of the traffic – which did not stop, which was only picking up, which niggled that suspicion in the back of my head that everyone in Ha Noi is trying to kill me (why else would they keep driving straight at me with that pinched, wild-eyed look on their faces?) – and tugged my bike apart from duckwit’s. We faced off. He was angrier than me; I was taller than him. We shared universal gestures of disapproval and, reluctantly, stalked off.
I was hoping that the CRACK had been me, and not my bike (which I love, and which I took for a thorough check-up post-disaster), and fortunately it seemed I was right. Something was very, very wrong with my rib. After four days of moving through my office like the Terminator, avoiding funny people and NEVER sneezing, I caved in and sought a doctor.
Ok, that was a lie. My supervisor caught me lying on an ice block on my desk, moaning, and called a taxi.
I panicked. But I didn’t want to admit I am frightened of doctors. So I told her I had no money. She robbed the petty cash and pushed me out the door.
This is a private clinic. There is no wait, the staff is excellent and the price is FAR better than what you get at the ex-pat joints (doctor visit 200,000 dong and X-ray 200,000 dong). No surcharge for being a foreigner. I couldn’t say if the technology is state-of-the-art (because duh, I avoid doctors) but it LOOKED really fancy. Just make sure that if you don’t speak Vietnamese, you come with someone who does.
My visit went really well. It turns out the CRACK was my bike, not me, so I had to go back to work and mop up the mess from all that melted ice (and return the petty cash).
The best part is I got to keep my X-ray. It’s bluish and kind of risqué. Exactly what I was looking for to hang in the front hallway.
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Superb selection of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, open late, and addictive – you can easily stay here for hours, coming back night after night, feeling like you are in a good friend’s place and no has a clock.
Just as importantly, word on the street has it that Ha Noi’s handsomest ex-pats can be found slouched around the bar and looking pensive within coils of cigarette smoke on the upper floors.
(But that could just be the incestuous gossip of my Gaulophile girlfriends who nibble tartines and pretend to be reading books with really long titles as they sit in Ete evening after evening, hoping to be picked out of the crowd with a provocative opener like, “Have you ever seen the moon rise behind a chateau in the wine country?” I wish them all possible luck in their pursuit.)
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I rocked up here late one night, Vina girlfriends in tow, wearing a short skirt and bad shoes (I found them in my garden last week). The guards were frisking all the men at the entrance. I tried to get frisked too, in the interests of gender equality, but they refused – even the kinda-sorta cute one who looked like a good frisker. Then they shot a nasty look at my feet. I tried to explain about recycling resources, and the dangers of pre-menopausal camel feet and varicose veins but my language skills are a bit, ah, perforated, so I gave up and allowed the girls to pull me inside without my frisking.
Inside, the club is what it tries to be: a shiny pleasure vault for foreign men with big gold cuff links and neglected goatees. Trawlers. They swirled their scotches on ice (swirled, not sipped; more than a drink or two and they wouldn’t have been able to pay for the after-party) and looked the girls up and down as they bumped and twitched on the dance floor. They didn’t notice me, thank god (was it the shoes???), so I ignored them and did my own thing. Which was dancing (not twitching). But my girlfriends, I must admit, have sticky fingers and palpitate for foreign passports so, dizzy from the attention of a scary thug hovering nearby in a starched white pirate shirt and diamond stud, they tried to encourage his leering by doing that chick-on-chick bump and grind thing.
I hate that. I am not Madonna. There isn’t any part of me that I sell (in college most girls tried to sell a glimpse of their tits, school fees being what they are, but all I could sign on to part with was my plasma; and then I passed out at the sight of the needle).
Someone grabbed my waist and I ran away. On the way out I stopped in the bathroom. I would like to give Nutz 5 stars for its bathroom. This is a really, really nice toilet and I have since stopped by twice just to use it. Highly recommended.
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posted about 4 months ago by brenaj
about the event: FREE Acting Workshop by Hanoi International Theatre Society @ Green Mango
Many thanks to the stunning, talented, vivacious (and impressively organised) Director Ruth for running the acting workshop on 27 July. All the jolliest Hanoians were there -- kung fu artists, women in labour, astronauts, strippers, snobs, spastics, zombies and the obligatory dehydrated elf. It looks like the upcoming production (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Brothers_(musical))
will be a smash -- and smashing fun. I'm very glad to have met all of you, be trapped in an elevator and learn about our cartilage together. (not to mention the bizarre opera-homicide that followed)
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This is a small spa that does not cater specifically to foreigners (read: cheaper, limited English, staff keen to make you a regular customer). They offer: hair cutting, styling, dying, perming and straightening; waxing; massage; manicure and pedicure; facials; eyebrow/lash tinting; body detox treatment.
I highly recommend their waxing services -- clean, private, professional, quick, and not-so-painful-you-will-want-to-cry-
but-just-enough-to-satisfy-latent-masochistic-desires-and-
leave-you-wanting-to-rip-out-by-the-roots-all-the-hairs-of-
your-nearest-and-dearest.
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An ancient Korean proverb says, “Better a fool with kisses like caramel than a genius with a kiss like ashes,” which shows you how serious Koreans are about aesthetics.
Gim Bab is a narrow (and aesthetic) cozy restaurant with a blessedly civilised eating couture (shoeless, on the floor, low tables, welcome to sit as you like, nap after your meal, stay ages or rush in and out). At lunch time it is full of Korean businessmen and rich students from RMIT. In the evenings it is the place to go for a relaxed tête-à-tête among close friends, or for some serious, cultured wooing. (As in, you don’t know yet if your date kisses like caramel and honey, or ashes and dill, but you would like to find out).
Meals are served with pitchers of cool water. Gim bab (Korean sushi) is their specialty, and meals come with pickled ginger, kim chee and other spicy vegetable salads.
It’s a cinch to find, easiest in the rain – imagine racing down Kim Ma in a deluge, disoriented by the traffic and swirling lights, trying to turn into the septicemic BBQ Chicken tower but skidding down the hill a little. That puddle where you would land is the place. Right hand side. Staff is super friendly.
(*Note for veggies: they CAN make gim bab without ham, you just have to encourage them; remember that carrots are never pink. Send it back if in doubt.)
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**From confidential notes scribbled on a beer label and hidden in my shoe**
Because I’ve never been to a TNH party before, last Saturday night I took a pass on the swan boats, Starbowl, a snake-wine tasting party and quality alone time with my air conditioner to pop in to Stones 1 and do a bit of Mata Hari to see what all the static is about. (You may have seen me; I was the frowning bald girl in a tailoring disaster who snapped your picture with her cell phone camera when she thought you weren’t looking.) Based on this field research, I have some recommendations to Stones 1:
1. Make a Pick-Up Line Grab Bag and have each patron take a handful of ‘Openers’ as soon as they enter. This will level the playing field. It is so unfair that some men can be really, really funny and charming right from the start, whereas others come off like PeeWee Herman in a truck stop. Not only is this misleading – god knows a seemingly clever, warm-hearted individual could very easily be married, syphilitic or prone to spontaneous anti-social eruptions like Beevis and Butthead imitations or jokes about dead babies, it cuts out all the wonderful and genuine individuals who inadvertently send women sprinting with gems like “You look just like my mother,” and “God I’m so drunk; did you just say you wanted me?”
2. Build a shelf for party games to help people mingle, frolic, and loosen up enough to dance. I would suggest Twister, LEGOs, chess, interactive crossword puzzles and soft-porn trivial pursuit.
3. Put vegetables on the menu to appease the irritating, proselytizing vegetarians among us (fyi you can order delicious veggie kebabs in advance).
4. Oil the seats so that drunk people will fall off them more readily. It’s funny.
5. Consider assigned seating. Beautiful people should be seated beneath the moon, with the waves in the background, to give the rest of us an excuse for staring in their direction.
6. Provide small stools for those of us unaccustomed to Western men. After a year in Viet Nam, they all seem freakishly tall and talking to them gives me a neckache.
7. Make travellers wear a scarlet name tag so that we won’t unknowingly waste valuable mingling time on a chap who is leaving the country in 48 hours.
8. Hire someone to come in and make a fool of him/herself. This is a good way to get a party started, as everyone enjoys bonding over someone else looking stupid.
9. Hold themed parties, i.e. Arabic night, Bring-a-pet-to-party night, Bollywood, Swingers night, Dragon Boat Racing. I don’t know about the white t-shirt idea, but pyjama parties and cross-dressing beauty contests are ok.
10. Employ a little old man to wear a tuxedo and sit in the WC and dry your hands and offer you a mint after you do your business.
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I hate my parents. They never gave me a chance. When I watched Nadia Comaneci win the gold medal in gymnastics, when I cheered the Russians (any Russian, pick one) win medals in figure skating, sure I said “Oh mom and dad please, let me take tumbling and skating lessons!” and cried when they refused on the basis of fraudulently quoted mortality and anorexia rates, but I knew in my heart that I had the balance of a club-footed grasshopper and my destiny lay elsewhere – swimming.
I could have been an Olympic swimmer. I could have. There is no mortality in swimming because you only dive into the deep end and you never eat less than an hour before getting in the pool and if you feel tired you just turn over and there is always air above you. And there is no anorexia because fatless people sink. But disregarding the truth of things, my parents stingily refused to demolish my brothers’ room and build even a quarter length pool in the backyard, so I had no opportunity to practice and I never made it to the Olympics and now I am past the golden age of 16 and have no hope.
Nevertheless, I can still swim at the Thang Loi hotel. I go there in the evenings when it is getting dark and West Lake looks more like a romantic tropical coast than a murky depository of sewage and beauty salon washwater. I am very serious, in my swim cap and goggles, and if you were that person in a bikini who drifted into my lane yes, I kicked you. Why were you treading water and looking at the stars? Were you also the one who decided to go horizontally when all the rest of the swimmers were aligned vertically?
If you also have rotten parents who scuttled your dreams, you can console yourself for 40,000 dong in an ok-sized outdoor pool (25m?). Buy ticket from attendant and remember that it closes at 8:30pm.
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