Hairless In Hanoi

(It's not as dodgy as it sounds) South East Asia Diary #5

On Tuesday 17th September 2024, I landed in Vietnam.

There was an energy, as the cab hit the motorway like television static. Vietnam felt charged, that feeling of a dare, and as I looked out across flooded fields and rural cemeteries, I remembered long summer evenings after school when anything felt possible and boredom could collapse into something unexplained.

The kerb outside Arrivals had felt hot to my touch as I opened my case on the steaming tarmac in search of cigarettes and shorts. I had two fags left and it occurred to me that my next pack would cost £2 - what a thrill.

The air coming through the window was humid, one step closer to water than in England, the it leapt to climb me like a shaggy dog, there was an almost submarine quality to the journey.

Hanoi to me was little more than five letters, a pin drop on Google maps. I had flown to a city in North Vietnam with eight million people, a handful of whom I was now destined to meet, and I was excited. Seven weeks and three countries lay ahead. There is an all-encompassing rush that comes with traveling alone, unsupervised, completely free to carve a path into your day, any path.

I decided to start my trip in a luxury hotel, to wash London off with some complimentary shower gels, a new slate for South East Asia. I don't know anything about Vietnam - the hotel was intended as a buffer, my crash mat, just in case I hated the place or landed in the middle of a military coup. In fact, Hanoi was recovering from a typhoon that had killed over 200 people, but the hotel had emailed me a few days before to say it’s all fine, just come. I had an anxious image of myself perched on a rooftop pool listening to a podcast while all around me the streets swirled with storm water and drift wood and wailing people in life rings.

As we drove through the suburbs my first impression was how colourful everything was, as if England was a watercolour and Vietnam had been done in felt tips. Hanoi has a distinctive pallete, the bright lime green of palms, the warm yellow of sunshine on dusty white shop facades, the red fuzz of motorbike tail lights and billowy black fumes.

Hanoi has this rustic glow that reminds me of old classrooms with varnished wood fittings and freestanding blackboards. But the city is visibly grappling with the modern, tarpaulin signs announce Sim deals, air con solutions and face whitening creams. Street vendors use bright overhead lamps, like miniature floodlights, and so as the sun starts to set everyone is captured in sweaty illusionless detail. There is a dreamlike quality to it all, cafe scenes look like miniature plays, as if diners are onstage. The constant river of motorbikes that flank either side of the taxi is loosely hypnotic. The Vietnamese people are not hidden away like passengers in cars or British bikers clad in their midlife crisis leathers, the people here on bikes simply trickle past in their plain clothes or work garms, pieces of their personality jump out, you can guess their jobs, their intentions, their connections to one another. A builder wearing a high vis vest and a construction company’s branded polo top drives his girlfriend to work, she is some sort of nurse or dental assistant in whites, she holds him lightly around his waist with one hand, scrolling her phone in the other, a nice handbag perched over one shoulder, her ponytail bobbing playfully, there is nothing in her body language to suggest that she is speeding down a busy road, unprotected from the possibility of sudden death.

When my taxi finally stops I am seduced by the glamour of it all as hotel doormen rush to help, a boy begins carrying my bags, someone passes me a small tray with iced tea and a flannel, a row of ladies bow in polite unison as if attached to the same puppet string. I wish I’d changed at the airport, I feel underdressed being waltzed through this stylish rigmarole in an old Kappa tracksuit, splattered in Thai Airways apricot yoghurt.

By sheer geographical accident and global injustice, I am a little bit rich in Vietnam. It is an exchange that works both ways, however, and as I catch myself adjusting to the game, nodding at people, and giving small notes to porters, already there is a fan of brochures on my lap, talk of pedicures and badminton coaching. This is my entry into the world of “hotel hopping”, where I can just sit by the pool with a plate of rice cakes while somebody else explores Vietnam for me. In England we still see Asia as a back-packers’ paradise, but the truth is many Brits here simply drift around on a cloud of cheap luxury, and then fudge a few waterfall snaps for their Insta. It is charming, but I must wrestle myself free from the polished jaws of the concierge who are already trying to write my name down for a pancake making class on the roof in two hours.

Rich man cosplay is part of South East Asia’s tourism offer to Europeans. It is a soft mode of exploitation that benefits both sides, for Vietnam profits hugely from fanning our princely delusions as the entire nation strives to recover its tourist industry after the crash of COVID.

Over in Thailand they actually have a phrase “Farang Khi Nok” - which means “Birdshit Foreigner” - used to describe white tourists acting like they’re a big deal, retired taxi drivers from Luton collecting lap dancers like empty Gü pots.

My plan is to get out and explore, but I am tempted by a massage first. The spa manager approached me while I was idling in the jacuzzi, waiting for my room to be ready. There was something compelling about her cold intelligent smile, a smidge of Maggie Gyllenhaal in the foothills of her face. Deep down I would rather save my muscles for a male masseur on Hanoi’s gay scene, or shadow of one, but she is a good salesperson and I agree to see her in the wellness-themed undercarriage of the hotel at seven o’clock. Sometimes I say yes to something, it would seem, simply to reward the seller for their aura. I think I better watch some porn in my hotel room so that I am deflated and unarousable when I go for my massage, but none of the usual websites will load. After a few sideways attempts, I worry that my increasingly creative search terms will be flagging up somewhere in reception and so, defeated, I settle for a couple of old clips on my phone and some Vauxhall memories. I feel a quick pang of nostalgia for sexually-liberated England, and I have my first inkling here of Vietnam being a subtly controlled environment, a beautiful place gift-wrapped in lassos of invisible red tape.

At seven I take the elevator to the basement spa, in just a towelling robe, it is comically short on me and I look like Devon Banks the gay archnemesis in Tina Fey’s sitcom 30 Rock. The masseuse is now in a full face of make-up which I find a bit surprising, and she is commanding her own stratosphere of sickly perfume.

The massage starts off pretty chill for the first fifteen minutes (although her soft touch makes me long lightly for the firm dry grip of a man) but then she starts taking my hand and cupping it against her breast. Beneath her blouse I feel a sort of hard lacey, patterned, bra, and I have to politely pull my hand away two or three times, rejecting my own puppeteered advances. I didn't want to make a scene by announcing that I am gay, I’m not even sure what that would mean in Vietnam, but at the same time, I am not in the mood for exploring my bisexual streak in a Vietnamese cellar underscored by knock-off Enya. “It’s okay” she whispers, casting me in the role of shy affable sexually-unfurled English lover and I think “Christ love, you should see me in Berlin, marinated in lube, rolling around with boys in rattling chains, slings ablaze, Depeche Mode flooding our veins.

As she turns me around like an omelette, I consciously keep my eyes closed, my hands firmly by my side. Inevitably she starts to colour outside of the lines a little, tracing me with her fingers, and to stay soft I think of my Grandma’s body in her cold grave. At some point I must have tired from this war of nerves and I drifted off into a semi-conscious sleep state, partly knocked out by the perfume. But at one point I faintly recall her playing with my chest hair lightly, and I think she asked me if I wanted to cut it, briefly waving an A5 placard of treatments and extras, to which I think, in a sort of coma…. I said yes to?

I do trim my body hair with scissors, so that I am less Donkey Kong and more mediterranean tennis player, but I like my body hair too, it goes golden in the sun and I can roll around feeling like a sort of Aslan.

THEN. Out of NOWHERE, I feel a scalding flash across my pubis. I leap up onto my elbows with a yelp and see that she has poured boiling hot wax all across me! I look down. Fucking hell. I look like Pompeii Barbie, smothered in grey molten slime.

"You no want?” she says coquettishly. But it is too late.

"Erm..."

"It okay, you relax" she says smiling and then she begins systematically ripping clumps of my flesh off, giving me a Hollywood, while I whimple, welling with tears, and sink my teeth into a jasmine-scented flannel. It’s not going to kill me, I tell myself, the time will pass. It will grow back.

Eventually, clump by clump, twenty or so stifled screams later, the ordeal is over, our horrendous task complete.

“You ok Sir?” She asks, and she looks happy, privately I wonder if she was punishing me for not greenlighting a happy ending, or perhaps the entire scene was some dark subconscious satire of my irregular, non-conforming, masculinity.

“Yes, it’s fine” I stand up, stroking myself. I feel like a glass ornament, a lifesize Campino, a crash dummy on the shelf in Toys R Us. Each touch gives me a strange pang of primary school trauma, memories of sharing baths with my Mum thirty years ago, hugging my knees in the long grass watching the other boys play football.

I picked a luxury hotel because I wanted to start the trip with a clean slate. Perhaps I manifested too hard.

I have been in Vietnam for nearly six hours and all I’ve seen is a taxi, a marble reception, and my pubes in a bin. It is time to pull some shorts over my new plastic body and hit the Hanoi night….

I crave male eyelashes

I want noodles

I need strobes