Tam and I both woke up early the next morning. Tam most likely out of habit, me because of the light shining through the translucent curtains, as well an uncomfortable reminder once I stirred that I was lying on a wooden bed with no mattress or padding.
Tam suggested we go to the phở place just around the corner for breakfast. I was keen to see how it differed from the stuff I’d had around heavily touristed parts of Saigon, so jumped at the chance.
We got a bowl each while he taught me the ‘proper’ way to eat your phở, and that Hanoians make it much better than they do down south (not sure I agree, but I’m as biased these days as he was then). I ordered a very very much needed cà phê sữa đá to go with my trà đá, the iced tea served almost everywhere in Vietnam in place of the tap water a western cafe or restaurant might give you.
After fuelling up on noodles, beef and a bit of chilli we went walking through the neighbourhood again, this time in daylight and without the vicious mosquitoes that ate me alive the night before.
Tam took me to the school that he worked at and showed me the grounds. It was an impressive campus, and had apparently received some decent funding recently which had paid for a flash new swimming pool. He was keen to stress though that the school was still largely underfunded, and most of his students poor. He did a lot of work in his spare time and spent his own money on resources. The more he talked about his work, the more I was glad to have taken up his offer to meet his students and help in the minuscule way that I could.
Following the walk we hopped on his motorbike for a quick ride around the local market, as he wanted to show me another little slice of local life before sending me off back into the backpacking universe.
Riding through the market, elderly vendors stared at me and kids jumped around waving and screaming hello over and over. Pedestrians did double takes after catching a glimpse of my pale skin out the corners of their eyes. It fascinated me that this was all such a short distance from the centre of Hanoi where millions of tourists flowed through all year, yet most of the people here would rarely, some never, come into contact with any foreigners. Certainly very few made it to their part of town, judging by the attention I received.
We stopped by his Mum's stall to say hello and Tam introduced me to the vendors on either side of her. They were curious, but more concerned with looking out for their next sale than they were with me.
We did another quick lap before heading home, where Tam got in touch with one of yesterday's students to arrange for her taxi driver husband to pick me up. I was headed to the old quarter in Hanoi proper to find myself a hostel and I needed to get there quickly, as I had an event to get to that afternoon and couldn’t hang around any longer.
After a few miscommunications and wrong turns, I was dropped off in the old quarter and quickly checked into a dorm, showered (my god how I needed that shower) and changed. That afternoon was the beginning of the several days of events I’d travelled in a hurry up to Hanoi for - Arsenal were playing a pre season friendly against the Vietnam national team in a few days, and today I’d been invited to the “Super Big Offline Party” the local supporters group were throwing to celebrate.
I walked out of the hostel and a few blocks away to find a xe ôm guy lounging around on a bike, showed him the address I was headed to, and hopped on. The event was being held in the sports hall of a local university, and was a good 10-20 minute drive away from where I was staying, definitely too hot to walk without sweating buckets.
He dropped me off by the campus entrance and pointed me in the right direction to reach the hall itself, which had been closed off to traffic. He needn’t really have done so though, as there were seemingly hundreds of red shirted local Arsenal fans streaming along the road, looking just like the match day walk to a stadium during that magical hour before kick off. I followed the flow of the crowd and sent a message to the organiser who had my ticket.
We met outside the big double doors at the top of the steps leading up to the entrance, embraced, and shared some banter over my protracted efforts to pay for my match ticket online the week before, which I (rightly) blamed entirely on my Australian bank.
I hung around the entrance for a while, posing for photos with numerous local fans who seemed almost as excited to see an English Arsenal fan as they would’ve been to see a player. I was treated like a celebrity for the next few days in that regard, and it was a bizarre yet incredibly enjoyable (and mostly drunk) experience.
Someone had been assigned the task of seating myself and a small collection of other non-Vietnamese fans in a row right towards the front, and sitting with us to provide some translations and encourage us to get involved in a few of the activities. All things considered, it was probably one of the most well organised things I’d experienced in Vietnam.
The event was nothing like anything you would expect from a football related one anywhere else. There were speeches from the British ambassador, who tried and failed to feign some excitement about the match, and his deputy, a woman from London wearing a 1999 home shirt, who was much more genuine and engaging with her speech about the club (and had more impressive Vietnamese language skills, too).
There were cultural performances, girls in traditional dress dancing on stage, as well as a few songs from some of the more talented fans in the room. There was an adorably innocent, but not well executed chanting session where fans were given song sheets and taught how to perform some of the more family friendly chants in the correct tune. And finally there were a few fun and games on the stage, including some giant puzzles featuring iconic photos of the team. Myself and a few locals won one round, our prize being free entry to an event at the players hotel in two days’ time.
Throughout the afternoon I got chatting with some of the other English/foreign fans seated around me, and once the event finished, most of us clustered together and started making plans to get on the beers together.
I became part of this group for the next week or so from that point on, so some introductions are in order;
First, Phil. The most sensible and headstrong member of the group, he was absolutely the glue that held them all together. A big Arsenal fan who would usually make the trip to a pre-season friendly somewhere in Asia each year, he had lived in Vietnam previously but was now working as an English teacher somewhere in China.
Phil’s good friend James, another Arsenal supporting English teacher living in China. He brought his Chinese girlfriend along for the trip and had to be on slightly better behaviour than the rest of us as a result. I think her name was Yang, but it’s been a while. She wasn’t really into the football (or the heavy drinking) but was easygoing and happy enough to spend plenty of time laughing at the rest of us.
Phil’s Australian friend, Tom. He was living in Cambodia but knew Phil from a time when they worked as English teachers in the same place. Not a football fan, but there for some time away with mates and a few days of boozing.
Finally, Andy. Andy was...a character. Good fun to be around when you were in the right mood, but annoying as all hell when you weren’t. He was rude, sexist, and crossed the line with a few too many of his jokes at inappropriate moments. The kind of person who you will happily admit is a bit of a prick, but if he’s your friend, he’s your prick. Oh, and he was a massive Arsenal fan, and for reasons none of us could really comprehend, a highly respected English teacher in nearby Haiphong. Something didn’t quite compute there, but whatever.
So anyway. We were standing around chatting as the event wrapped up and making plans to head out together, when one of the days’ hosts approached us alongside the head of the fan group. They invited us to join them for their little afterparty later that evening to celebrate the successful running of their event.
With a few hours until then we noted down the address, grabbed some phone numbers and split a couple of cabs back to the old quarter where we were all staying. We settled into some chairs outside a cafe looking over the busy intersection it sat on, and got stuck into the first of what would be an obscene amount of beers over the course of those next few days.
I took the opportunity to get to know the others a little better over the drinks, and they pestered me about ditching my hostel bunk bed and taking the spare bed in Andy’s twin room instead. Having caught only a glimpse of what Andy was like I was reluctant, though still tempted as the dorm I’d ended up in was a bit of a dump.
Later on we hopped into one big taxi and found our way to the private venue where our hosts were enjoying their after party. It was quite low key, with only a small group of organisers along with the 2 MC’s (one of whom, a gorgeous local TV presenter and Arsenal fan, I was particularly happy to see) from the afternoon’s event there, as well as us.
We were fed endless finger food and bottles of Heineken, asked our opinions on the day and our experiences in Vietnam, shared Arsenal fandom origin stories, and discussed hopes and dreams for the season ahead.
Midway through the evening the gorgeous TV presenter broke off from one group and crossed the room to sit down next to me and introduce herself. Having spent a little longer than we should all be proud of raving about her little more than an hour ago before we all arrived, I couldn’t quite believe my good fortune that she’d bypassed all the others and sought me out alone.
She introduced herself as Huyen, and we spent the next half an hour or so in conversation before inevitably being interrupted by one of the others. She told me that she hosted the sports news on one of Vietnam’s main TV stations, and like most locals I met during my time in Vietnam was genuinely interested to know what I thought of the country. We exchanged phone numbers before our interruption, and I moved on to mingle with some of the other organisers once she was starting to gain a bit more of a fan club.
The guys and I shared a cab back to the old quarter once again after a few more hours, and stopped for a few more beers before calling it a night. I surprised the others and incurred a bit of good humoured jealousy by revealing I’d got Huyen’s phone number, inadvertently opening myself up to plenty of bad, drunken advice on how to use it. I relented on moving out of my dorm and into Andy’s twin room the following day, and soon felt good about my decision.
When I reached the hostel, I had to knock on the metal shutters that had been pulled down overnight for a good 5 minutes before someone opened up for me.
Finally up in the dorm and lying in bed, I then had to listen to my ipod to block out the unmistakable sound of bunk bed sex happening in the bunk opposite mine. Good for them I guess. And good for me I’d be ditching the dorm the following day.