Oh, the aliveness of Ha Noi. It strucks me with surprise every time, every day. There are scooters honking and cars driving and women in hats selling fruit and dogs sleeping on the dusty pavements. And yet, with all this aliveness, I find my inner calm here.
"It's weird." I told Claudia yesterday as she licked on her forth ice cream for the day, "that I've only been here once and yet, somehow I feel at home. Ha Noi is home in a strange way I can't explain."
We talked about nyckelböcker the other day, a Swedish word meaning books that is really written about a real person but the names has been changed, but the direct translation is "keybook". A famous podcaster had got it all wrong and thought it meant books that really captures the essence of ones soul, and now, he described in one episode, he felt like he missed the word that he once used as "keybook", as he had applied "key-" to many other things that he thought described him perfectly.
Ha Noi might be the keycity for me.
It's so vivid, so alive, it's talkative and cheerful but yet, there is this island-vibe slowing down our steps and makes us stop and smell the flowers (slash, the smell of loveliness from the endless amazing food stalls).
Yes, the pace is slow but the options eternal. The other night we were out partying and bumped in to... well, probably everyone who was out partying in the whole city, but mostly we hung out with these two guys from London, one of which had already stayed in Ha Noi for 10 days and had no plans on leaving. I totally related. Claudia keeps asking when I want to leave the city, of course, but I have no answer.
