Burnt Cigarette Holes In My Hostel Sheets

An Interesting Night In Hanoi

As I’m typing these last few lines, I find myself thinking about the many other layers of Hanoi I could have shared with you. However, I also think that there’s no need to force it. Hanoi is a never-ending story and my gut tells me that this isn’t my last time writing about it.

- July 21, 2019

I typed those words two and a half years ago and here I find myself with one of my favorite travel muses once again.

Within the span of two years, between 2017–19, I landed in Nội Bài International Airport on three separate occasions and it never disappointed me — not even once.

My first visit was sensory overload of the highest order. I loved every moment of it.

The smells. The flavors. The sounds. The sights. The hostels.

Upon arriving in the early afternoon, I met up with a Hanoian friend of mine to get a real local perspective of the city. Towards the end of that very long day, I got my first glimpse at the draconian, surveillance-state laws and regulations that govern Hanoian society.

My original intent was to stay at my friend’s parents’ home because he had previously mentioned that to me as an option. However, we both quickly learned that was easier said than done. Vietnamese laws dictate that if a non-citizen spends the night somewhere, then the owner or manager of that place has to register that person as a guest — regardless of their relationship to the person or how long they’ll be staying there.

In practice, this meant that if I wanted to crash at my friend’s parents’ place, he would have had to take a photo of my passport and submitted it along with some information about me to a database somewhere.

It was too short of a notice and his parents would have also had to fill out some forms that they weren’t familiar with or prepared to do. Since it was quite late, I decided just to find the closest nearby hostel that was still open.

I thanked my friend for a fun day, said goodbye, and then using Google Maps as my guide, I walked several blocks to what seemed like a cluster of hostels. All but one of them were closed for the day.

From the moment I first noticed the bright lights advertising what would end up being my lodging for the night, I knew I was about to be transported to the world of a 1980s JCVD film — except instead of Hong Kong, I was in Hanoi.

I took a sharp right down a very dimly lit alley, and came upon a chainlink metal door that was slightly ajar. I peeked through the crack and saw a faint light shining down on what appeared to be a welcome desk with a rickety, old, spiral staircase near the back wall.

The angle of my view was such that I couldn’t make out if there was a person staffing the desk. I spent a few seconds taking it all in when my silent thought was interrupted by the sound of two men speaking.

Perfect.

Someone is there that can hopefully take my money and give me a room key.

I opened the door and proceeded to walk in on the tail-end of the conversation. Not that I could understand a thing other than the closing cảm ơn (thank you) from the guest thanking the desk agent.

As he turned his head to focus his attention on me, I guessed that he must’ve been in his early twenties. He spoke enough broken English to tell me the price per night of a room.

20,000 Dong.

Those of you not familiar with the exchange rate of USD to VND may initially jump at that number assuming it’s a lot of money.

It’s less than one U.S. dollar.

After quickly doing the conversion in my head, I got really excited. I knew that for that price I was really getting myself into something good.

I handed over the cash.

The man got my room key out of a drawer and signalled for me to follow him as he began walking toward the circular staircase in the back of the reception area.

My mind began thinking of the cost of basic cleaning supplies, replacement towels, sheets and pillow covers.

I wonder how much this guy I’m following gets paid?

Is there a cleaning crew?

What if something breaks?

What is my twenty thousand Vietnamese Dong going towards here?

I mean that’s thousands of Dong. It can buy…ummm…

In the middle of my mental math gymnastics of trying to figure out how this hostel managed to function on such an extraordinarily low budget, we reached the third floor but had to pause for a moment so my guide could take out his cell phone to use the flashlight feature. As soon as the darkness retreated to the edges of the light’s circumference, I realized we were standing right in front of the door to my room.

The rooms were set up three to a floor with the first one on each floor being only a few steps away from the stairs.

After fiddling with the key, he let me into my room and gave me a brief tour.

A very brief tour. Not because of my limited Vietnamese and his limited English, but because there wasn’t much to show. There was a small room with a bed, and a bathroom.

The bed had a thin, white, tight sheet covering it. There was also a fleece blanket with a really tacky flower design, and two pillows with bright red covers accompanied by one smaller couch pillow.

In addition, I had an air-conditioner and a fan. Both looked like they could be worth some money if they found themselves in a different setting. These were real antiques. When I picked up the remote controller, I felt like I had just defeated Bowser and saved Princess Toadstool.

That feeling quickly went away after a few minutes when I realized that my vintage air-conditioner didn’t stand a chance against Hanoi’s heat and humidity. I turned on the fan for reinforcements but it could only do so much.

I decided it was time to wash off the stickiness from the day’s activites so I creeked open the squeaky door of the bathroom and turned on the light.

I was immediately greeted by an army of mosquitoes that woke up from their slumber.

My shower plans quickly pivoted to an all out assault on the bloodsuckers surrounding me.

The ceiling light bulb flickered.

A persistent electric buzz emitted from it and amplified the buzzing of the flying parasites surrounding me. I picked up one of my flip-flops and got to work. Swinging and smacking from one corner of the bathroom to another.

With my intimate parts wildly flopping around in the air I imagine that I probably killed a few of my enemies unintentionally but I have no evidence to back up my hunch — not that I would share the evidence here anyway. After about twenty minutes of mosquito warfare, I managed to neutralize most of them — or at least enough to take a shower.

The bulb continued to flicker.

As for the shower, it dispensed warm water at a decent water pressure. For 20,000 Dong, that’s a check mark for exceeding standards.

I finished up, dried off, and went back into my moderately cool, humid room.

That’s when I noticed it.

Actually, not quite then, but almost then. It was after I lifted the fleece blanket to reveal the rest of the thin sheet underneath.

There it was, in all its splendid hol(e)y glory.

A very clear cigarette burn that, despite having been put through a washing machine, could not hide its true origins. The faint touches of orange, brown, and black surrounding the hole gave it away.

I just sat there staring at. It fascinated me. That hole had a story.

Before my mind had a chance to wander off, my fascination with the hole was interrupted by the sound of fornication in the room next door.

It was like consuming porn, but with my eyes closed. Except they were open. Staring at my cigarette hole.

The sensory input from my eyes and my ears couldn’t have been any more different, but it was also quite possible that the hole in my sheet was a byproduct of similar activities in the past.

I continued to listen to the increasingly louder sounds coming from next door when I heard a double knock on my door. I ignored it but knew that whoever it was would most likely persist given that the light was on in my room.

My speculation was accurate.

Another knock. And another.

”Esk-youz me. You want boom-boom?!?”

I partially opened the door and in front of me was a young girl with entirely too much make up. Her eyes locked with mine and she gave me a suggestive smile.

”You want boom-boom?” she asked again.

“Not espenseeve. I give you good time.”

I smiled and politely declined while slowly closing the door. With just a crease remaining open, I saw her turn around and proceed onward to the next floor up.

I came to the conclusion that my 20,000 Dong wasn’t really how this place paid its bills. That was the entrance fee to the amusement park. The rides were how they made their real money.

That realization motivated me to start looking for alternate lodging solutions for the remainder of my time. I had originally planned to do it the following day but given that sleep wasn’t really an option at that moment, I figured I might as well do it now.

I opened my laptop and went straight to Airbnb to see if I could find anything in Hanoi’s historic Old Quarter. Not even 5 minutes into browsing, I hear another knock on the door.

”Boom-boom?”

It was a distinctly different voice, but with the same money hungry undertones permeating through the door.

Another knock. Another boom-boom.

I walked up to the door and without opening softly yelled: “No boom-boom. Cảm ơn.”

In that moment, it came to me that the light being on in my room was acting like a magnet for these entrepreneurs knocking on my door. I turned it off.

The door-to-door saleswoman must’ve gotten the hint because I heard her walk off. The aging floorboards gave her away.

I resumed my searching and managed to find a decent hotel with a nice balcony view of the Old Quarter down below. I decided to book it.

Just as I was about to press the reserve button, yet another knock.

I guess the light off wasn’t enough of a deterrent.

What else could I do?

The knocking continued. Curiously, it wasn’t accompanied by boom-boom calls this time.

I got an idea.

Surely if there was already activity in my room, that would be a clear enough no solicitation signal to whomever was walking by my door.

So to PornHub I went.

Naughty Nurse Has A Special Surprise For Patient

Sounded convincing enough. Click. Fast forward to the action. Volume all the way up.

So far so good.

…

A louder knock.

Oh, c’mon!

I paused the naughty nurse mid-climax and walked over to the door to open it.

Standing there was a middle aged man with a conspicuously layered outfit given the heat and humidity. Initially he didn’t say a word. Instead, he lifted up to show me the palms of his hands, which were filled with several different kinds of baggies.

”I give you good price.”

My first thought was that I wish I could speak enough Vietnamese to ask him how much it would cost to not have him or anyone else knock on my door. I used my most convincing body language along with several “no, no, no’s” to indicate that I was not interested in whatever girl scout cookies he was selling and slowly closed the door.

At this point it was close to midnight.

They had to stop coming at some point, right?

Was there a cut-off time?

I went back to my laptop to quickly review the details of my booking for the next day before hitting submit. The place I reserved was decent, but my level of excitement far outweighed the awesomeness of the hotel itself under normal circumstances.

Although I was looking forward to relocating to my new accommodation in the morning, I didn’t regret that I ended up here for the night. Experiences like these are part of what make life and traveling interesting. They give us stories to tell. They make us grateful for what we have.

I knew that there were likely people who stayed in this hostel for extended periods of time not because of a one-off event due to circumstances like mine, but because they didn’t have any other choice. While the solicitation was annoying, it was also entertaining in a sense, but I knew if I had to stay there longer, the ratio of being annoyed to being entertained would gradually shift to being disproportionately annoyed.

Luckily, the man with the baggies and too many layers was my last visitor of the night.

I closed my laptop, lied down next to my cigarette hole, and dozed off to the soothing orchestra of my fan humming and my ancient AC blowing, dreaming of the delicious egg coffee I’d be having in the morning.

I will never know the true story of the burnt cigarette hole or how it got there, but I’ll leave that to our collective imagination.

Until next time friends.

The Calisthenics Nomad

NOTE: All photographs taken by the author. Please don’t use without permission.