Moving to Vietnam helps illustrate Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. After my physiological and safety needs were met with an apartment, food, employment, and transportation, I moved up to love and belonging and esteem. These needs are often met through activities, hobbies, and a cult, ahem, I mean a club, or maybe a volunteer organization, not sure what to call it.
When we were considering moving to Hanoi, I wanted to make sure they had at least some of the things I spend my time doing. They do, they’re just different.
Gym Fitness and Yoga
There are two or three big gyms by our apartment. I heard good things about California Centuryon, so I went in, got a tour, and signed up.
I realized after a day or two, I basically joined Globo Gym from the movie Dodgeball. That’s the conglomerate gym owned by Ben Stiller’s character. The villain gym. It is very different from my little Champion Fitness gym in Meridian that is more akin to Average Joe’s.
People are pretty nice, but everything is very shiny gold (including the toilets), it is huge, and all staff wear branded uniforms.
They have lots of classes, several yoga classes per day and other familiar favorites like Body Pump, Body Jam, and Zumba.
Yoga here is different than what I’ve experienced in America. For example, my gym is having a Yoga Championship Competition. I’ve never known yoga to be competitive, I mean, of course, I can make anything competitive and have compared my poses to my neighbor’s countless times, but you’re not supposed to say these things out loud.
In the states, Yoga seemed to be about getting in touch with your body, listening to your body, and being gentle and kind with your body. Here, it is about “Maximum Try” as the Indian yoga teacher says, and getting as deep into the pose as possible. The first yoga class I took here, the instructor was feigning to grunt and push people’s body to their limit.
The yoga classes are in English, but they don’t use the pose names like Upward Dog, Downward Dog, Warrior, or Half Moon pose, they just describe what they want you to do with your body and demonstrate. They don’t do sun salutations in Vinyasa classes. They don’t use any Sanskrit pose names either.
I’ve done some active classes too like Body Combat and Zumba. The Vietnamese ladies love Zumba. Outside of the gym, we’ve noticed coordinated meetups by the lake where they do Zumba or dance aerobics.
The thing I love about class activities is that I can have a shared experience with locals without speaking the language. Though still I feel a bit like Joan of Arc in the aerobics class in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
In November, I’m going to go for a 28 day yoga retreat in Hoi An. I have been looking forward to doing something like that for many years.
Muscle Beach
Josh sets up his DoJosh at what we call Muscle Beach. There are several outdoor workout areas by the lake near our apartment. He has made a great impression with the septuagenarian set at 5am.
The issue he has not been able to solve is how to stop sweating through his teacher clothes an hour after the workout is finished and he’s taken a cold shower.
Skating
There is almost no where to roller skate in Hanoi. The sidewalks are made of uneven stone or partially unfinished, but that doesn’t matter because they are full of parked motorbikes.
If you want to skate, you need to skate in the road, but that may also be made of broken up asphalt, steel plates, piles of dirt and gravel. Plus, there are vehicles and bikes going every which way. The final hazard is the chance of a random downpour of rain appearing out of nowhere. A bicycle is a much better zero-emissions vehicle for Hanoi.
I did skate on the road by the lake to meet a friend for coffee. It is doable, but asphalt is not the most pleasant skating surface. When she saw my skates she asked, “But, how do you skate here with all this…chaos?”
There is a roller rink south of town, but I haven’t been yet. What I did find with the help of Josh’s coworker, is the roads around Hoan Kiem Lake in the city center are closed to car traffic on the weekends.
Yarn Arts
So far I’ve found one little yarn store in town. They have lots of thin gauge yarns in cotton and synthetics. Some heavy wooly yarns also. They do crochet in the back, making little plushie-type toys. Several hands just crocheting up a storm in the back of a tiny yarn store.
Many of the yarn labels are in Vietnamese, but I would say half are in Italian. None are in English. I stood in that tiny shop for a long time trying to choose yarn for my next project. After I bought my yarn, I asked if they had a yarn winder and she said no, so then I asked again in Google translate and she looked at me like I was crazy. So I did charades of a yarn winder with the sound the little handle makes and she still said no. I said, “So you wind all your yarn by hand?” And she was basically, like, yes, what’s the big deal?
For my non-yarn arts readers: when you buy a nice skein of yarn, you need to wind it into a ball when you are ready to use it. You should wait until you are ready to use it because being wound in a ball stresses the yarn out, like most of us. Winding hundreds of meters of yarn by hand is, to use a technical term, a pain in the ass.
Near my apartment is a crafting shop. They do art classes of all kinds like terrariums, macrame, leather arts, etc. At night when I walk by sometimes, I can see the owner in there crocheting her little heart out. I think I will learn to crochet, that seems to be more popular here which makes sense. You can make really cute beachy coverups with crochet. Maybe she has a yarn winder.
The Cult
There is a joke that A.A. is a cult. Maybe it is. I wanted to join the local group as soon as possible to get an immediate network of people willing to help me if I get in a bind. Everyone I have met there is an ex-pat or a tourist.
This group meets in a French bakery where they have macaroons, cakes, beautiful baked bread, hummus, and more. People come in and quickly slink upstairs to the back corner booth meeting area.
I’ve never been to a meeting in such a fancy setting. Waiters bring you as many cappuccinos as you would like, you can get hearty sandwiches, and there is crushed velvet fuchsia tufted booth seating. It is a little hard to hear people quietly share over the pop music being piped in from the speakers, but it also kind of breaks up the awkward silences between shares.
Within the first couple of meetings, I picked up a sponsee. Until the end of August, I was the only female sponsor known in Hanoi as the other one was out of town for the summer. It is nice to be useful.
Other Activities
Josh and I have not been out to the mountains yet for a hike. We have been working a lot so weekends are for catching up. The tandem rides on the motorbikes have gone ok, we are working up our confidence to take longer rides.
There is a chapter of the Hash House Harriers – the runners who follow white flour hash marks on the pavement, and also yell and drink, but they don’t run in Hanoi city limits. They run out in the wilderness where you only use GPS coordinates to find the meet up spot after the run. I’m not ready for that as I run too slow and I’m afraid I will be left behind by the bus.
Kickboxing and Muay Thai are very popular here. It is not usual for martial arts studios to blast music into the street late in the evening to attract attention to their floor to ceiling windows showcasing young men sparring. It is good advertising.
Casey Space 
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