Finally, Haiphong

After separating for the evening, Mickey (“like Mickey Mouse!” he kept saying when making introductions) and Siu (Anglicized in Sylvia) were beckoning me from a sidewalk restaurant table. In Vietnam prevalently, but I have seen some in Cambodia too, these are kindergarten size: little plastic stools, chairs and tables, not very comfortable to sit at. But the company was good and the food, rice noodles soup, not bad. We made our way back to the hotel separately, and the next day we left together as we had planned to go to the bus station and board a bus for Nihn Bihn, where we would be able to board the fabled unification express, the train line that runs the almost 2000 km from Hanoi to Saigon, which is the name people still use for the former capital of South Vietnam in common parlance. The panorama suggested that poverty is everywhere in North Vietnam and tending to misery, no pretense of pride or face saving to keep people from showing it. They also seem to have worse habits, though this is just speculative on my part: the misery I have seen both in the cities and the courtyside, I reckon, according to my perception of reality, can come from unchecked abuse of drugs and alcohol, written on many people’s faces as well as the crippling of war, 30 odd years of uneasy “peace” aren’t enough to undo the societal damages to the collective unconscious of generations-length invasions, aerial bombardments and pitch battles. The generalized lack of personal care and garb seemed much beyond what limited means would excuse: in the North (though I did not see Hanoi), I noticed a general lack of personal care, as if war and its survivalist imperatives were still the ruling esthetics. In spite of visiting at the time when everybody wants to show their best face and with some notable exceptions going in the opposite direction, stridently and unrealistically challenging the general shabbiness.