Day 4: French Quarter

Despite no dinner last night, I wasn’t hungry for breakfast, but one simply cannot let hotel breakfast go to waste. I forced down some scrambled eggs, bacon, steamed sweet potato (classic combo), then returned to my room to pack before checking out. In the evening, I’d board the overnight train to Da Nang, then a taxi to Hoi An.

I had to kill time until 6 p.m. at least before returning to the hotel for my bags. At first, I wandered from cafe to cafe, starting back at Tranquil Books & Coffee, but the one down the alleyway, and later, after a long wander to nowhere, to Tenement Coffee in the French Quarter.

In between, I started walking in the direction of the Vincom Contemporary Art Center, but after forty-five minutes of increasingly scant sidewalk and too many blind alleys with scooters bursting through them, I decided: these streets were not meant for pedestrians. I turned onto a calmer street and walked perpendicularly toward another larger lake that I’d seen on the map, then back up toward the French Quarter.

I sat at Tenement Coffee with a fancy kombucha as long as I could before getting stir-crazy, reading I Went to See My Father by Kyung-Sook Shin, one of my new faves, and trying not to cry. Her descriptions of her aging father caring for two abandoned cats so lovingly even though he pretended not to care about them—too much.

From Tenement, I walked to a banh mi spot I’d bookmarked, Rural Tonkin, a place you’d never notice unless you were looking for it specifically. Up a set of stairs and into a tiny narrow room I went. A couple speaking a language I didn’t recognize sat at the nice table up front in the window overlooking the street, leaving me the back table in the windowless area next to the kitchen where the sole proprietor, a kind woman with thick glasses, toiled away on her sandwiches as carefully as if they were works of art.

I had the chicken banh mi (only 30.000 vnd, $1.20 usd), and true to the reviews, the bread was crispy on the outside but did not tear up my mouth. Inside, the pillowy soft bread, pickled julienned vegetables, and slices of cucumber balanced out the honey-grilled chicken nicely. It wasn’t too spicy, but had plenty of cilantro. Delicious.

Happy with my choice and full of baguette, I walked back toward the Old Quarter and down Silk Street to yes, you might have guessed it, another spa. Ugh, I know! But hear me out: I had many more hours to kill before my train! And hotel-less, I had no choice but to wander or pay to pass the time somewhere.

I considered returning to the first spa, but my hair felt too greasy to submit another human to. I also briefly thought about finding a theater and seeing Dune 2 (I finished the book and the first movie on the flight over), but that seemed an even more absurd thing to do. A head spa, though, with a shampoo first… This is the beauty of traveling alone: I can do whatever the eff I want with no one to judge! (Ahem, blog-reading friends aside.)

Ninety minutes later, I left the JM Spa with no regrets, just silky-smooth hair, a moisturized face, and only a half hour more to waste before heading back to the hotel. Was it as good as head massage #1? No. I’ve decided that was a small miracle, never to be repeated.

En route back to my familiar streets, I searched for a pleasant-looking cafe to sit at and almost too easily, I found a dreamy spot with a balcony set in the treetops, lit by warm glowing lights. The sun was setting, the storefronts illuminating, and I enjoyed it all from my perch, people-watching without inhibition and imbibing more caffeine than is probably wise. But I fear the lag.

I’m not sure yet if I’ll sleep tonight. A little after 7 p.m., I boarded the Lotus Train to Da Nang, a very smooth and non-stressful experience, but for the string of boisterous Russian men boarding just ahead of me and blocking the narrow corridor. They filled the rest of the compartments in my train car—lucky me.

Because I’m scared of strangers, I booked a private car, a fact I’m ashamed of because it makes me look way too fancy and extravagant, confirmed by the “wow” the conductor said as he checked my ticket. But if the alternative is sharing a tiny space with strange Russian men—I’ll take the wow, thank you very much.

Noisy Russians aside, I’m quite charmed by my little train car with its four bunks, little table full of snacks, and personal chargers and reading lights over each of the gold-and-red-blanketed beds. And the views—now I see only darkness out my window, but on the way out of Hanoi, I rode alongside buses and scooters past a tree-lined lake and rows of blinking storefronts. Tonight, I’ve decided, I’ll leave the curtains open so that tomorrow, I’ll be greeted by the sunrise.