It’s loud it’s busy it’s a messy energetic city of hope. I love it. Like I love a large amount of South East Asia but Hanoi has a special place in my heart as this was the first city we travelled to outside the expat homeland of Hong Kong.
Only an hours flying time from the glitzy, shopping centre that Hong Kong has become the contrast couldn’t be much bigger. Hong Kong is brash, bright and, in its own mind wonderfully successful while Hanoi is the little brother that it desperately hopes won’t mess up the sandwiches. Which of courseHanoi sets out to do, and does, very effectively. To the extent that it even has its own sandwich.
But it is the energy of the place that astounded me when I first arrived. Hong Kong is brash and bright and everyone wants to make money – end of the discussion. But in hanoi everyone wants to do everything, live, learn, make money, eat, teach, and shout. And mostly while riding a moped. If anyone has seen the Top Gear special that they did in Vietnam and wondered if it was really as busy as the pictures showed (surely they cut it to look busy?) well I can assure you that it is a lot worse than you see on the film. I think it was James May that compared his scooter to a US tank with the line that the scooter has freed more people than the tank ever did and in Hanoi, as a microcosm of the cities in Vietnam he was exactly right.
Mopeds are everywhere, occasionally on the tight side of the road going in the right direction but mainly coming at you from in front behind and ay other direction possible. I have yet to see one fly but its only a matter of time. Some video will give you the idea.
Crossing the road in Hanoi is an experience. Locals helpfully give you the rather distracting advice just to ‘step out and keep going straight the bikes will swerve round you’ or that is what I think they are saying as my local language skills aren’t too strong. But the advice does seem to work (testament as I am writing this after two trips to Hanoi) and the bike riders do seem to realise that killing pedestrians isn’t a good idea; especially if you are riding with Grandma, your husband, your children and your dog all on the same moped.
Cars however are another thing. 3 years ago when I went to Hanoi there were a handful of cars on the road, mainly taxis, and they had adopted the riders ideas and tended to swerve round you. Which is no mean feat in Hanoi where many of the roads are only wide enough for a couple of bikes. But I have to report that Vietnam in its headlong rush to develop has seen a rapid rise in the number of cars and the new car drives, probably never having ridden a motorbike, have not worked out that you can go round pedestrians. And so they don’t. Which makes crossing the road a far less exciting experience than wading trough mopeds doing their best to avoid you.
Hanoi sites on the Red River about 85 miles in land from the South China Sea. Hanoi is the national capital although it lost this title to Hue after 1945 following a successful take over by Ho Chi Minh. It only regained the title in 1954 after the French, who used Hanoi as their regional center for Indochina, were defeated at Dien Bien Phu. At the end of the Vietnam war in 1976 Hanoi was once again declared the capital of the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
Visiting any Asian city is always an experience and you long to write about the scents of perfumed streets, the quality restaurants and the calm of a city going about its business. And if you do you’ve never been to a developing Asian city. The noise is all mopeds and horns, the smells are two stroke fumes combined with outdoor cooking smells and the city is anything but calming. It’s noisy, smelly and exciting and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The Burble 