Dodging traffic in Hanoi

I have the body of a vietnamese - an observation from the women selling slices of sweet carrot cake from a window of the bakery in Hanoi. Thin and short, although to be fair, I'm a little heavier set than your average Vietnamese person - they are small people and on more than one occation I've been glad that I do conform to their proportions. The seats on buses and in theatres for example are tiny. The currency (Vietnamese Dong) is very weak - when I exchanged the few Thai Baht notes at the airport I instantly became a multi-millionare. People really do wear conical bamboo hats and carry goods in twin baskets suspended over their shoulders by a length of wood. The architeture is different - tall skinny buildings 4 m wide and 3 - 4 storeys high seem to be the norm. My hotel for example has the ground floor as the reception area, then a staircase spirals upwards to two rooms on each floor. I'm quite close to Ho Kim lake, a small body of water with a temple in the middle and it seems to be a gathering place for people living here, in late afternoon Hanoians sit in small groups along the lake edge chatting, some playing badminton (without a net), and children playing games together. There doesn't appear to be a great deal to do around here (or it's too expensive), its too hot in the buildings so there's quite a social street life.

The traffic in Hanoi is unlike anything I've seen before. Most of Hanoi seems to be mobilised of scooters and they are on the move 90% of the time. The streets are a metallic writhing snake of scooters weaving in every direction. The pavements are not for pedestrians - no the pavement is where you park thousands of scooters. In the NZ it is often proposed that motorbikes and scooters will alleviate traffic congestion. From what I've seen, they only make things worse. Your average 50 - 100 cc scooter is much slower than a car so the scooters are all clustered in the inner lane. However, the narrow lanes do not allow easy passage for cars and buses, so cars and buses spend their time driving in the wrong lane towards oncoming traffic, weaving back into the correct lane at the last moment to avoid a head-on collision. Adherance to traffic regulations is entirely volantary, it seems that everyone obeys and breaks every law simultaneously. Stopping at red traffic lights - volantary. Driving the correct direction up one-way streets - volantary. The result is a cacophony of horns which only seem to announce, "Here I am, please don't crash into me today". I sat on a coffee shop balcony watching an intersection for half an hour or more, mesmerised. Whole families went past on scooters, while others drove past one-handed - the other hand texting on a cellphone, throw in rickshaws, bicycles, buses and taxis and you have quite a show. Crossing the street is a leap of faith because nobody ever seems to stop at intersections but I'm pleased to report that the drivers are very adept at avoiding pedestrians.

Micro enterprises are the way of life here. Resturants with 4 - 5 tables, clothes stores with 3 - 4 racks of clothes, and bars with a bench and 4 - 5 barstools. Some are squeezed into an alleyway, but most use the ground floor as the shop and they then live upstairs. The old quarter of Hanoi is chaotic but it did start to show its charm after a couple of days.

I visited the Ho Chi Minh Museum (ex president of Vietnam) which was a bizare collection of photographs from his life, articles of clothing, socialist party propaganda and strange sculptures. Ho Chi Minh died about 40 years ago and I find this devotion to him a little odd. Just around the corner you can visit his embalmed, preserved body - I didn't go to this as the queue to get in was thousands deep and they closed the mausoleum before midday. They also had the place surrounded by uniformed army officers whose only duty appeared to be to keep people off the grass and make sure there were no queue jumpers. I also went to the Confucius temple complex, recognised as Vietnam's first educational institution and the Fine Arts Museum where you can see examples of Vietnamese ceramics from 14th century to present day. There were also examples of sculpture and paintings. The paintings were dark, using earthy colours - probably a result of using the natural dyes available to the artists. My favourite were the etched lacquer paintings due to the fine detail the artist achieved with this technique - dark background with white scratch marks.

The highlight of my visit to Hanoi was the Water Puppet performance. As I mentioned earlier, the seats were tiny and it was amusing watching some of the longer legged foreigners trying to fit into them. Water puppetry was an artform developed by rice farmers - pupperteers behind screens in waist-deep water manipulate wooden puppets (using levers underwater, instead of strings supsended from above) while a live band provide the sound track. Although I didn't understand the songs or dialogue, the scenes of farming life were cleverly executed and it was entertaining. The stand out performance for me however was the solo performance of the woman on the Dan Bau - a vietnamese single stringed instrument. The narrator explained that in years past only men were permitted to play the Dan Bau and that parents forbid their daughters from listening to the Dan Bau in case they fell in love with the musician. The sound was pure, extraordinary, infinately sad and devastingly beautiful. I thought of the history of the people in this nation, at war with themselves and their neighbours for centuries. Repeatedly repelling Chinese, French and American invasions. Alone in the dark of the theatre, anonimous, tears crept along the contours of my face, I have never been so easily moved by a piece of music.

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