Noisy Ballet

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With another brief stop to that oh-so modern metropolis of Kuala Lumpur, we have found ourselves in a city that is completely different. Hanoi, while only having embraced tourism 10 years ago, is a bustling city of service and shopping completely outside the mold. When it comes to getting around, going out to eat, and buying goods, the Vietnamese follow their own set of rules, and it takes some getting used to.

The streets put us in a panic from day one. Motorbike is the choice of transport here, and there is never a time of day when there isn't a constant stream of them running through the streets. On first impression, there is no rhyme or reason to driving in Hanoi: traffic moves as fast as possible; lines, signs, and signals are ignored; driving head-on into oncoming traffic is acceptable so long as you swerve dramatically at the last possible second. The Capitol just installed it's first traffic light in 1999, and for right now it seems that they are optional. When two streets meet at an intersection, people slow down, but nobody actually stops. It's chaos.

But after watching the mayhem awhile, it actually starts to make sense. The Vietnamese are constantly honking and beeping at each other. While it sounds like everybody's pissed off, it's more of a friendly "hey, I'm right behind you", and it works to keep everyone from crashing (or even bumping) into each other. It's kind of like bats using sound to fly around in the dark. Motos are always honking, readjusting, speeding up, slowing down, honking again - thousands of them all at once to form a kind of noisy ballet that resembles schools of fish swimming off to some unknown destination. It's quite hypnotizing to watch from a balcony.

The real problem is what to do as a pedestrian in Hanoi. Crossing the steet suddenly gets placed in the same category as jumping off a building or eating rat poison. If you wait for a break in traffic, you'll be waiting for hours. If you try to run acrosss, you'll be mowed down like an undecisive squirrel. The thing to do - the ONLY thing to do - is to ignore all those years of training that your mother instilled in your brain and simply step off the curb into the oncoming traffic. You then SLOWLY walk across the street and allow the fish to compensate and swim around you. A little eye contact doesn't hurt, just to make sure everyone's on the same page. In rush hour traffic, or when you're trying to get across a ridiculous traffic circle that some city planner must have designed as a joke, you have to force your legs to make those slow steps. It's like bungee jumping; you know everything will turn out fine, but all your senses tell you it's suicide.

After a few days we became enfatuated with the thrill of it. We no longer hesitated before crossing, and would hardly even look to see what was headed our way. It seemed like Mark was purposely finding the widest part to cross at, or even crossing for no reason whatsoever. It was a great feeling of power, to know that you could just saunter into the road and everyone would have to adjust to give you some room. We would walk across a 5-lane one-way road without breaking conversation. That is until some huge truck would come flying down, laying on it's horn and forcing you to scramble. It's painfully obvious in Vietnam that bigger always wins out when it comes to the heirarchy of the road.

Life on the streets was definately the main attraction in Hanoi. We tried other activities, but nothing peaked our interest like the bustle of what was going on outside. We visited Uncle Ho (he still looks good for 117 years old), saw the water puppets (culturally interesting, but not very stimulating), and even tried a couple museums (Mark would rather have been eating glass), but we always had a better time observing Hanoi from a street corner of a balcony.

There's an intersection in the Old Quarter of Hanoi where every corner is packed with little plastic chairs. This is without a doubt the best place for people watching. All you have to do is sit down and watch the show unfold in front of you from these popular front row seats. The best part is once you sit down, the lady behind you hands you a pint glass of freshly brewed, unpasteurized "Bai Hoi". For the whopping price of 12 cents.

This floored me the first time we tried it with Mark. For half the price of a beer back home, the three of us had 3 rounds, and I bought a round for the two guys sitting next to us. How was this not dangerous to society? How did people go about their daily business with cheap beer so easily accessible? How come riots weren't breaking out (the 5 cent beer night at Cleveland Stadium come to mind)? What's to stop people from sitting there all day?

The answer became painfully apparent when, after our three rounds, we found out that the nearest toilet was 6 blocks away.

Navigating around Hanoi takes practice and a keen awareness of your surroundings. The name of a street can be one thing for 2-3 blocks, and then change to something else entirely. Sidewalk restaurants, ancient trees, and certain businesses become your landmarks, and this is especially true in the Old Quarter. Back in the day, Hanoi divided up it's major trades, placed them on specific blocks, and then named the steets after them. A very easy way to know where to go to buy our clam-worms or woven baskets. While the trades have changed over the years, the practice of keeping all your competition close by has not. If you need luggage, you go to luggage street. If you want to shop for jewelry, you go to jewelry steet. If you need shoes, you head over to shoe street (a very long street).

This pattern goes on and on all over the Old Quarter. Some interesting versions of this include: cigarettes and liquor street, cemetary headstone street, counterfeit money street (for burning during rituals), rope street, bamboo ladder street, tire repair street (not to be confused with moto exhaust repair street), towel street (not to be confused with bedsheet street), party-favor street, doornob street, baby clothes street.....you get the picture. While it doesn't seem to make sense to place your business in a section of town where everybody is selling the EXACT same thing as you are, it does make sense for the population to know exactly where to go when they need to purchase something. And in a Socialist country, it is the people who collectively come first, right?

Not all people are lucky enough to have a yarn store on yarn street. Many people depend on the old door-to-door salemsan routine. Only because there aren't really houses, and cars are too expensive to lug stuff around in, people have to get much more creative. While sitting on the "Bia Hoi" corner, we saw whole stores' worth of goods stacked onto a single bicycle, leaving no room for a rider. Just imagine your local dollar store: plastic bowls, collanders, spatulas, stools, cleaning products, brooms - all piled high on an ancient two-wheeler with a single wooden plank to keep it standing. The vendor parks the overloaded monstrosity at a curb, then walks around and asks everyone if the need something.

Even more incredible are the hundreds of women that walk around selling fruit and vegetables. They wear the stereotypical cone-shaped hats, balancing a long pole on one shoulder which is balanced by a woven basket on each side, each loaded with 30 pounds of produce. Other than rice farming, there can be no more physically exhausting job in all of Vietnam. From dawn untill dusk these lean and hardened women walk the streets; peeling pineapples with a machete, preparing bunches of flowers, or even steaming off a fertilized chicken egg (I wasn't brave enough to try one). And because they earn such little money doing it, the only motivation to sell comes from the opportunity to lighten the load. They do have two tricks up their sleeves however. One is to simply triple the price to newly arrived foreigners looking for a quick snack. The other involves an ambush. While walking past, they simply throw the pole onto your shoulder, quickly followed by the cone hat. You are now in a "tourist photo" situation, and you had better buy some ovrpriced pineapple for the opportunity. Every day I would look behind me to see Suzanne saying "No thank you! No thank you!", as a woman was chasing her down with her pole extended and crying "photo! photo!".

Sadly, these overworked ladies are somehow considered outlaws. Whenever a canvas covered truck rolls up the steet, and the police emerge from the back wearing their military green and holding red and white striped batons, it's the basket women who flee the scene. They scramble out of sight, darting around the next corner with the weight of their goods bouncing high and hard on their sweaty necks. It's certainly tough, thankless work that these women have, but I fully consider them to be the mascots of Vietnam. The country just wouldn't be the same without them.

With all the eating, drinking, conducting of business, and insane traffic going on in the streets of Hanoi, you would expect them to be absolutely filthy. Not so. The Vietnamese have a real pride in being very tidy, and it wins out over anything our high city taxes could ever accomplish. All business owners are constantly sweeping and washing off the sidewalks in front of their establishments. Gutters are cleared of debris. Trash pick-up works all day, every day. All cans and plastic bottles are seperated by people looking to make a few extra pennies. Street cleaning trucks polish off the last remaining dust and grime into the late hours of the night (the only time that traffic will allow). It's a real team effort here, people and government working hand in hand. It has to. At five a.m., before the sun starts it's day, 4 million people will take to the steets once more, to create a scene that is unique only to Hanoi.

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Photos

Rush Hour
Motorbike mayhem

Nighttime Traffic
Noisy chaotic ballet

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum
He still looks like he did in 1969

Bia Hoi
Best place to watch the action

Excellent View
Checking out the streets

Tourist Photo
Suz finds a new career

Taking a Break
Banana lady takes a load off

Walking the Streets
Mark and Suz outside the Temple of Literature

Looking Over Central Hanoi
View from a tiny bridge

Gossip
Old friends catch up

Peace and Quiet
Cat nap away from the busy streets

Comments

[Fay]

unbelievable
I have not had time to read all your blogs, but read this one and am truly fascinated by your adventures, (not that I would be one for joining in, give me a Marriott and king bed) but your writing, pictures and descriptions defy comment other than UNBELIEVABLE. have a blast, Fay

[Maggie]

go Cavs!
hey kids, you should write a book. its amazing. we are all so lucky that you guys are taking time to write about your travels - besides making us jealous we get a little tiny glimpse into life over there thru your fabulous accounts! i saved the 2 older ladies chatting on the curb as a screensaver - like national geographic....write MORE!! we love and miss you guys - stay clean...