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Published: January 11th 2011
Freezing and choking
This is me on the streets of Hanoi. Everyone wears a mask against the fumes and heavy coats against the cold.Saigon
Stoplights in Saigon tend to organize traffic into bunches, creating the impression that it is a city of crisscrossing motorcycle races. I already learned the technique for crossing the street from reading
Cay Horstmann's blog. One simply wades into the stream of rushing vehicles like Mr. Magoo. The trick is to neither hesitate nor run. Any unpredictable movement will result in being run over. I must have faith that the traffic will just flow around me.
What Cay neglected to mention is the feeling of exhilaration one experiences upon reaching the relative safety of the distant curb. It's the feeling of surviving a close shave with death. I immediately notice the absence of the here-today-gone-tomorrow drone of my usual depression. Instead, it's "Praise Jesus, I'm alive!"
Saigon is a city of sidewalk cafes and well-used parks filled with people playing badminton without nets, practicing dance routines for the upcoming Tet celebrations, and making out. Hideous socialist art is everywhere as are propaganda posters, hammers and sicles, and red stars. But these are the only signs of communism. Saigoners rush past them without notice in their fierce pursuit of commerce. It's hard to imagine that the NVA tanks rolling up to
the presidential palace in 1975 were able to get through the rush hour traffic!
Hanoi
When the Horstmanns invited me to visit them in Saigon I pictured myself being the sole recipient of Chi's nurturing hospitality. As it turned out, everyone chose January as the month to visit them. And so it came to pass that Barry Levine and I ended up fending for ourselves in the biting cold streets of Hanoi.
But Hanoi is a revelation for me, a combination of the exotic and chaotic that I haven't seen since my travels in Nepal. We are staying at the Impressive Hotel in Hanoi's Old Quarter. Surprisingly, the hotel is sort of impressive. Our room is tastefully decorated and equipped with a computer and flat screen TV. Outside, the narrow streets are a tangle of honking, fuming scooters and buses. In front of every shop is a makeshift sidewalk cafe: people sitting on small plastic stools in the middle of the sidewalk slurping from bowls of pho. It's impossible to step over them, so pedestrians are forced into the street with the traffic.
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ceiny
non-member comment
first photo--
--looks like you stole it from the saigon post office wall. is there an APB out on you yet?