Hanoi Vietnam: capitol city and capital congestion

Hanoi. The capitol city of Vietnam, with as many commerce-packed, motorbike congested streets as you can fold into your mental image. Then contrast this with the royal citadel and wide tree-lined boulevards here as well. Then add gray, low skies and a charming lake.

Hanoi in the north and Ho Chi Minh City in the south: these are the two main cities of Vietnam. But they have very different characters indeed. Ho Chi Minh City seemed more preened, more modern; certainly with much wider streets for all that traffic. Hanoi feels more ancient, as if Ho Chi Minh City skipped an era, moving directly into modern, where Hanoi still has the residual feelings of oldness, of historic meaning.

Especially the Old City of Hanoi (near where the majority of museums and hotels are) with narrow streets, yellow houses (so tall and thin they are House Slices) of graceful architecture, and silk shops, jewelers, ceramics, meat and vegetables and clothing all spilling out into the traffic. I'm amazed I haven't had more than a bruised wrist (striding along, arms akimbo) from a motorbike encounter. The already tight streets are positively clogged with motorbikes weaving and dipping around everything. Walking is swimming in a sea. I am residing amongst this, currently, in a $5 a bed hostel. The streets are not a grid.

They are a plate of noodles.

I think, plan-fully to myself, "oh yes I'll stop back later at that lovely coffee shop at that corner" all wrongly assuming I'll be able to find it again. But the next day it might as well have been erased from the city. I've spent no small amount of time Being Lost here. You can't really orient yourself with any landmark, because you can't see above the narrow streets, and there's no sunshine (there's a patch stitched between the sun and the city during the spring months) for direction. Every house is a shop: even if just offering a small table displaying cigarettes and a few dusty bottles of water.

The first few days in Hanoi the weather was cold (ok, Rochester, this is relative please), gray, at saturation point, and most of the time drizzling rain. We'd been in the sunshine of August and then dumped into the blug of November. Regular, prepared humans can handle this but we'd been priding ourselves on our minuscule amount of baggage. I quickly bought myself a north-face down vest, which helped, but didn't even want to tackle buying shoes for Miss Caucasian Bigfoot here. Thus my sandals were a cold, frothy slurry from walking around in the sloppy puddled streets with drenched bits of rubbish, my feet like whitened prunes. I was so cold and grumpy the first few days I even considered rescheduling my flight home!

But that mood has passed and now I am spending my time contentedly walking the streets of Hanoi (Lady Elise has flown home and I leave this Friday). Together we visited the Museum of Ethnology, appreciating the enormous variety of culture and dress of the minority peoples displayed there. We splurged on a "tour" (neither of us like being at some guide's beck and call, but we've done enough planning of activities ourselves and it's time to sit back) to the famous and impossibly touristy Halong Bay. Legions of looming rock islands jut suddenly out of the ocean waters, looking from afar like a single wall, but as you approach you realize each is its own identity. Gliding along on a tourist boat, I felt like I was in a misty eerie film, amongst all these structures.

Everything that we've eaten in Hanoi has been delightful. Papaya salads with dried sweetened shredded beef, gloried with fresh mint and basil. Mango sticky rice with 4 gallons of coconut milk. Even my scrambled eggs with garlic were delicious. Although I had to convince Mr. Restaurant to add garlic to the eggs. "Not healthy!" he argued, "egg and garlic together not healthy!"  Well, that may be the case for Vietnamese people for some reason, but I love garlic in my eggs, thanks.

Today I walked. I needed to move and take in this abundance of a city, the last of my Vietnam, before heading back to the sanitized and regulated united states. My legs hurt yesterday, from too much sitting on tour buses. I don't understand this: I can bicycle 90 kilometers a day and they feel great, but after being still then they ache? Hm.

Women balancing shoulder pole baskets of pineapple or trash, maneuvering along through the beating of honking motorbikes. People wearing raincoat tarps which encompass themselves and their motorbike. Hawkers blocking my path with baskets of donuts. Young people--the boy's hairstyles exquisitely tended, the girls with bright pink lipstick--sit at tiny outside tables drinking beer and eating sunflower seeds. I call these areas the bird feeders, because the ground is littered with shells. Streets short--so there's more of them!--and changing names unnecessarily at intersections. If Dong Cao would just stay that way, instead of becoming Quan Nguyen, life might be a little easier. Tourists, like white towers at intersections, staring perplexedly at their unfolded maps. I've given up putting my map in my pocket even; I just keep it perpetually out so I can realize I'm going the wrong way already.

The Hoan Kiem Lake is surprisingly serene in the midst of all this. Gentlemen in suits take walking breaks, a woman sits on a bench picking at her toes, a group of old ladies flail around doing aerobics to American '70's music. A pack of soldiers in their dark green formation turn left, right, remove their hats, to barked orders.

I am ready to be away from the endless noise of Vietnam; I'm ready to have safe water available from the faucet. But I am enjoying, for a few last days, the colorful commerce, the beguiling new foods to try, the bliss of walking and musing and simply looking at everything like snow for the first and last time.