Hanoi is a special place.
If you’ve been there, you know this. If you’ve lived there, you more than know it — you probably find there are parts of your life, week, day where you feel like your mind is still there.
I could write a dissertation and a half on why Hanoi is special. Maybe one day I will. I could also write a few separate chapters on why I left. Note: there is little overlap between the two sets of reasons. There would be no Venn Diagram.
Because Hanoi is so special — so unique, so unusual, so distinct — it has a habit of connecting people who have lived there at one time or another. I tend to think this is because there are many shared reasons behind why or how people end up in Hanoi to begin with.
Few foreigners are in Hanoi to make millions. Few foreigners are in Hanoi because their multinational company sent them there on an executive management post. Few foreigners are in Hanoi to capitalize on real estate. Few foreigners are in Hanoi to facilitate a new oil/gas drill site.
That’s not to say there aren’t any foreigners in Hanoi doing the above things — there are. There just aren’t very many.
What this means is that there is a certain unifying “je ne sais quoi” element that brings the (very diverse) ex-pat community together in Hanoi. And this unifying element connects people even well after they’ve left. It connects them to each other and to Hanoi itself. I used to think it was just parallel nostalgia. But I now think it’s more.
I met up tonight with a friend who is visiting from Manila. She and I both lived in Hanoi, and at the same time, too. However, we weren’t really friends while we lived in Hanoi. I mean, we knew each other and we were often at social events and spoke kindly to each other, and we were friendly, but I wouldn’t say we were friends. However, a series of events after I left Hanoi and while she was leaving Hanoi — facilitated by our mutual friends — led to us to become fairly natural post-Hanoi friends.
And so now it feels normal to hang out in Singapore when she is visiting — and curiously, not talk about Hanoi very much at all. I mean, it is there, lingering in the background like an old family painting you’ve gotten used to having on the wall. But it’s not actively part of the conversation. Tonight we talked about fitness, politics, our jobs, psychology, current events, and family. Our conversation was very much reminiscent of that same-mindedness I wrote about earlier. I will actually go so far as to assert that Hanoi brings that same-mindedness together. It is the connection. Those shared reasons for being in Hanoi often translate to an ideology — however above/below the surface it might be for each individual — which binds the expat community there… even long after they’ve left.
“I can honestly see how you lived here for three years and how others never leave here.”
This quote was said to me tonight by a friend from high school who is visiting Hanoi right now. He has been there 5 weeks. When we first chatted, he had arrived in Hanoi the night before and was astonished that I had lived there for so long. He called me “the true adventurer,” which I found amusing, because I am now so accustomed to living in “other” places that it’s not as much adventure as it just is My Regular Life.
But now, after 5 weeks… he gets it. He is lucky. It took me 5 months. 🙂
