My hands found John’s, gripping tightly, memories of recent news reels flashing across our minds as the plane seemingly hovered above the runway on its last descent. A pause that lasted for eternity. Then BANG! Laughter followed by, “Well, that was a bit of a rough landing.” I looked at my watch—10:30 pm. Wrangling our backpacks from the overhead compartment, we made our way down the aisle past the Japanese flight attendants wishing us “happy memories.”
Bleary-eyed, John and I found ourselves 20 people deep in line to see the border guard. 10:40 pm. 10:50. Finally, passports stamped. √ Baggage Claim Found. √ Customs? Not so much. After splitting up and securing our bags, we regrouped, confused. The exit was partially blocked by a dark, seemingly closed customs area where a young guard in a brown tailored uniform stood lackadaisically behind a desk. The group of travelers ahead of us trickled past him, unnoticed. “Should we just go?” I asked John. No one was checking visas. “I guess?” He said with uncertainty. Walking past the guard without so much as a glance from him, we exited the building.
A cacophony of honks and voices surrounded us as we stepped into the thick lukewarm air. “Do you want a taxi? Taxi? Hey, Miss, want a taxi?” I shook my head. John waved a “no” with his hand. We moved off to the side of the pickup area, away from the crowd. John took out his phone and ordered us a Grab (app like Uber, because Uber doesn’t work in Vietnam). A red Honda Civic pulled up to the curb in front of pillar 18. “This is us,” John said, opening the door to a pristine leather interior. As I slid into the backseat, I noticed a golden Buddha sitting on a throne of lotus leaves, watching me from the dashboard. The car smelled like cigarette smoke, clinging to the fabric. John and I shared a look of anticipation as the driver pulled out into the busy airport intersection, expertly navigating the crowd and narrowly missing a woman on a scooter. Hurray, we were off to the Chemi Noi Bai Airport Hotel.
After a comfy sleep, morning arrived too soon. We sat in big, yellow, high-backed chairs in Chemi Noi Bai Airport Hotel’s check-in area, waiting for our Grab driver to arrive to take us to our Airbnb. Beyond the colossal glass entrance, scooters zipped by. A woman in a puffy North Face jacket and pink gloves trundled past, navigating the muddy, gray road, carrying a bag of leaves on her back. Two identical sisters rode in the opposite direction—one, the passenger, engrossed in her phone, while the driver wore a blue surgical mask, eyes fixed on the road ahead. Both wore Adidas sweatpants.
Before we knew it, our driver had arrived. Quickly, we wrangled our luggage and went out to meet him. The driver, after tetrising three of our bags into his labrador-sized trunk, insisted on placing my backpack in the passenger seat (which had been scooted forward until it nearly touched the glove compartment). Our concierge closed the car door behind us.
Now, a brief preface before the next part of this blog post – I wanted to share with you our initial experience of a Grab ride in Vietnam, because it was unlike anything we had experienced before.
As John and I watched the countryside roll by, a symphony of honks interacted with our driver and his Mazda 3. Each beep served a purpose: “Hey, I’m passing you” (our driver to a scooter on our right), “You’re about to crash into us if you continue left” (from the car behind us), “I’m trying to turn” (from a massive semi in the middle of the intersection). Beep beep beep—“You go ahead.” Beep beep beep—“Thank you.” Keep in mind as you read this that these honks happened on and off during the entire car ride.
A black puppy, ribs visible, sniffed through trash on the roadside as we passed. Beyond it, rice paddies stretched out with workers in straw hats tending to their fields. A lone scarecrow-like figure, mirroring them in its own straw hat, stood motionless, keeping watch. Piles of garbage accumulated against a wire fence, followed by advertisements plastered on makeshift walls. A construction yard with towering cranes and scaffolding rose in contrast to a nearby graveyard, its tombstones crumbling into a sinkhole. Beyond that, a vast green field stretched by, dotted with tiny shacks.
The gray fog and pollution wrapped around our car like a toxic embrace. Bus stations, car repair shops, and—of all things—a massive pickleball court lined the road as our driver squeezed between a hoard of scooters. The high-rises we passed appeared to be mostly hotels, towering amongst the shops and residential buildings. More piles of trash passed by, some along the train tracks, scattered refuse between homes. Two schoolgirls in uniforms rode a scooter together, plush keychains dangling from the younger one’s backpack. Helmets here are unique—pink with cat ears, yellow and shaped like baseball caps.
Shacks clung to the side of overpasses. A line of thirteen buses—some abandoned and filled with trash, others seemingly just parked—sat under the same bridge. A pristine Range Rover dealership stood proudly, next to a row of crumbling buildings. Two dogs lounged in a yard. Amidst everything, palm trees and tropical plants I’d only ever seen in greenhouses back home thrived.
I blinked, and a baseball field-sized stretch of land overflowing with plastic pallets dipped in and out of view. Blink. More shops, wedged between residential buildings, their walls patched together with metal roofing. Blink. A hundred semi-trucks parked in neat rows, their shipping containers stacked separately. A man without a helmet sat on his scooter, phone pressed to his ear as traffic whizzed by. Blink. A pond of murky brown water, shacks teetering on its edge. Palm trees lined the highway, reminding me of Hollywood Boulevard. Women perched on guardrails, selling fruit from green plastic bags under brightly colored umbrellas.
And it continued: a smoldering trash heap stood next to a sprawling plant nursery. A man with a toothpick in his mouth and flip-flops on his feet weaved through traffic on a scooter. Power lines ran through a row of trees, their trunks serving as makeshift utility poles. Refrigerator-sized propane tanks were planted on rooftops. A church occupied the fifth through seventh floors of a tall, narrow building, while an aquarium shop filled the first floor. Next door, a residential building had laundry hanging on a third-floor balcony. Beside it, a half-completed structure stood, its walls graying with time.
In the middle of a town square, someone burned trash on a public bench. More unfinished houses, their rear sections crudely patched together with scrap roofing. A string of lanterns, gray and half-torn, swayed outside a storefront. A string of brightly colored lanterns, glimmering proudly through an alleyway. On first glance, one-third of the outer stretches of Ha Noi seemed to be crumbling, another third was new development, and the last third was a mixture between the two.
At a café, people sat outside, laughing together. Across the street, someone slept on their scooter under a tarp, just steps from a high-end Prada store. A pack of dogs ran through an empty street. People sold fish in plastic bags from the backs of scooters—on the on-ramp to the highway. Every scene flickered past like a montage through our entire car ride—poverty vs. development, nature next to decay… cycling by in rapid succession.
Our car turned onto a quieter stretch of road, flanked by thick trees. We entered a neighborhood called Ecopark, fit with a wide bundle of high-rises surrounding a central common space. Above some steps, LED lights spiraled around tall stalk-like painted metal structures, ending in leaf formations. Shops like Happy Children (a kindergarten), Vin Music (a music shop), and EcoMart (a small grocery store) filled the lower levels of the buildings, leaving the rest for apartments. Arriving at our Airbnb, we thanked our driver quickly (as there was no dillydallying with the number of vehicles on the road) and headed to the apartment on the 26th floor.
More soon,
-W