If on a winter's night two travelers
A counting game
Dear friends
We took a stroll along Tràng Tiền Street after warming ourselves up with two cups of hot cocoa spiced with chili and cinnamon at Maison Marou, located on a corner of Thợ Nhuộm Street.
The night was cold, and the streets were empty.
It was almost Christmas time. Shops showcased their best seasonal decorations, and sales were everywhere.
“Oops, L’Espace is gone,” my friend suddenly exclaimed. I was startled.
“Well, now we have Hugo Boss,” I joked in reply.
The entire façade of what was once Hà Nội’s French Cultural Center had been transformed into smaller, big-name fashion boutiques. My friend had been away when that disaster swept through town.
“Then where can I go to the bathroom when I’m in the Hoàn Kiếm Lake area?” she asked, genuinely concerned.
“You figure it out yourself.”
Hoàn Kiếm Lake is the heart of Hà Nội, considered the central hub of the capital’s public and cultural life.
It gets busier during weekends when some nearby streets are closed to vehicles, allowing pedestrians to enjoy the scenic spot and participate in various activities.
Hanoians know three places around Hoàn Kiếm Lake where toilets are accessible—unlike the public ones, which are usually crowded and dirty: Tràng Tiền Plaza, Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi Hotel, and L’Espace.
Tràng Tiền Plaza is a legendary department store—Hà Nội’s iconic landmark with a history dating back to the early 20th century, and a prestigious location where luxury fashion houses set up their first shops in the country.
Practically speaking, the toilets are on the second floor, meaning you need to enter the store through one of its heavy, kitschy doors, pass stooping security guards, keep your chin up, and avoid the judging eyes of high-end cosmetics store managers. Then, you can take the escalator up to the second floor, where the toilets are located deep behind leather shops. You must then repeat the process in reverse to escape the scene after you finish.
For Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi Hotel, the process is somewhat similar since the toilets are also hidden, although they are conveniently on the ground floor. The requirements are to be a bit dressed up and to act like you are in a hurry. People are usually dressed up for dates around the city center anyway and are in a hurry for obvious reasons. However, you need to know the hotel’s layout to navigate the entrance through one gate, figure out where the toilets are, walk through the inner garden, and exit through another gate. This process often requires a hands-on tutorial and can be challenging for first-timers who find it difficult to use Google Maps.
Of all these places, L’Espace generously offered the most accessible, non-pompous toilets. After freshening up, my friends and I would take naps, read a couple of pages, or simply enjoy the air conditioning under the center’s staircases. We also usually stayed for a while to view some random hallway exhibitions featuring artists we had never heard of. We learned a lot, thanks to those trips.
The lack of accessible public cultural spaces has paved the way for what a friend called “intellectual masturbation,” where online discussions of cultural works—books, films, music, or paintings—become a makeshift stage for a few people to show off their knowledge and impose limited judgments instead of exchanging perspectives.
Is art reserved for the minority?
I tagged along with another friend to an auction at Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi Hotel this weekend.
We were late because I had messed up my personal schedule.
The receptionist turned us away, as they wanted to “preserve the best experience for bidders,” but my friend’s business partner somehow got us in.
“The exclusivity made me want to see how it goes more,” my friend explained why she insisted on staying, as our decade-long friendship had already shown me she would be impatient with that kind of pretentiousness.
As we expected, people clapped joyfully whenever the auctioneer tapped the hammer. The room was filled with masterpieces created by famed names from the legendary Indochina School of Fine Arts. No one paid any attention to the paintings around them; instead, they observed scanned versions of artworks, screened next to the auctioneer along with information of starting prices.
Did they have enough of art? Was it all just a numbers game?
“Go see it before it enters someone’s private collection,” I told my friend after a bidder put €80,000 down on Nguyễn Tiến Trinh’s lacquer painting of Thầy Temple.
We immersed ourselves in the majestic redness of the broad sky recreated by Trinh.
“Do you know where my hometown—Quốc Oai District—is? It is where Thầy Temple is located,” a patient with systemic lupus erythematosus I met at the National Institute of Hematology and Blood Transfusion asked me as I was waiting for my family member this week.
At that moment, it was the only thing I recalled.
Till next time,
T.
I went to Hương Pagoda last week
This week’s top picks
La Grande Maison Tokyo
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10845290/
One of the best series I’ve watched in a while – very technical aspects of running an F&B business mentioned.
On careerism