Maybe I should get a bird...(written by HO)

Hello, Vietnam! I arrived in Hanoi the day before yesterday. It's cold... I had been looking forward to being able to wear my winter clothes, but I've become terribly weak against the cold. This time, my purpose in coming to Hanoi was a trip to look at birdcages. The reason I say "was" — in the past tense — is because I couldn't fully recover from my cold, and I decided it would be too difficult to go visit the birdcage craftsmen. When you're stuck stocking up on cold medicine at the pharmacy, it's just not possible. It's frustrating, but I still had to check out birdcages while strolling through Hanoi's Old Quarter... at least in my own way. So I walked around the area near my hotel. Glancing around and nibbling on snacks as I went. And then... As I was led deeper and deeper down a narrow alley (hẻm), suddenly there was greenery bursting out everywhere— and chirping, too... As I stood there in a daze, listening to the voices of the birds,

A man beckoned to me from inside. A shopkeeper who was surely younger than me, smiling and saying, "Come in, come in." Suddenly, on the left side of the entrance, there were a parrot and three little birds, kept in a big cage that must have been at least a meter long, restlessly hopping about on the perches, tilting their heads this way and that, and chirping constantly. As I went further inside, it opened into a courtyard, which felt lovely. When I looked up, small birdcages were hanging here and there.

Whoaaa~~~ I haven't come across a bird café like this in Ho Chi Minh City yet. There are about ten birdcages hanging around (with birds in them, of course — and they're chirping). What I thought showed such great taste wasn't just the arrangement of the birdcages, but also the design of the walls with plants embedded in them. It's not quite a jungle, but it feels lovely, like being inside a little forest. The space isn't spacious at all, yet it feels open — maybe because there's no ceiling (it's a courtyard). The background music was Vietnamese pop songs... Partway through they switched it to Western music for us, but the birds sure do sing a lot. Tweet-tweet, cheep-cheep, chirp-chirp-chirp~~~

That birdcage down at the lower spot — is it a Japanese white-eye? It's looking over here with the most blank, wide-eyed expression. How adorable. When I checked each of the birdcages, I found that some designs are bamboo cages with carvings all the way down to the bottom. Feeding trays, feeders, perches... there are so many different combinations. I see, I see — depending on how you choose each of the parts, the combinations really are endless. As my curiosity grew, I tried to picture what keeping a bird would be like. There's so little greenery at my apartment in Ho Chi Minh City... Should I keep a bird, could I keep one, would it even be okay to keep one...? Listening to the birds' chirping, I read absentmindedly. I daydream absentmindedly. How lovely this is. Relocation-life ranking