Date: Sun, 9 Dec 2001 05:21:28 -0800 (PST) From: colin roald Subject: notes from hanoi
I like Hanoi. It's not as big or as flashy as Bangkok, and there isn't as much to do, but it's a very pretty city (or at least the Old Quarter is -- I haven't seen too much of the rest of the city). While Vietnam is indisputably a poor country, Hanoi isn't anything like as run down as Phnom Penh. Trash is picked up, you see people in business suits, and there are lots of boutiques selling clothing, housewares, artwork, you name it.
What there *isn't*, at least that I've seen, is a big air-conditioned shopping mall with international brand-name stores. But I'm sure it's coming sooner or later, theoretically Communist country or not. The only evidences I've seen that Vietnam is still Communist, incidentally, are the red national flag, a few monuments (there's still a statue of Lenin, and of course Ho Chi Minh's ridiculously huge Mausoleum), and the loudspeakers on street corners that go off every morning at 7 am. (I am told they carry government announcements and news, though obviously I can't understand them.) Other than that, state apparatus is not unusually in evidence -- not any more so than Malaysia, say, or France.
Haven't seen an English-language newspaper, though, unfortunately, so I don't know what the issues of the moment are.
Somewhere between Phnom Penh and here I crossed a Buddhist cultural boundary -- the temples have distinctly changed. Instead of Indian-style monuments and big Buddha statues, Hanoi has Chinese-style pagodas, all wooden pillars and curling tile roofs. Inside, everything is lacquered red and gold, and there are banners draped from the rafters.
There are not many monks around (especially compared to Bangkok), and those there are wear brown and red instead of orange and yellow. I am told the lack of monks is because the government still restricts them.
You cannot, incidentally, get away from Christmas music anywhere. There isn't as much of it here as at home, of course, but it's still here, no matter how horribly inappropriate it seems to play "Jingle Bells" in a place where it never snows. The Vietnamese' favourite Christmas album, incidentally, is the one by Boney M -- one restaurant played the entire thing on endless loop, and I've heard their version of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" no less than three times. Disco is not dead in Asia.
The best part of Hanoi is the street life. Like Bangkok, people sell everything from the street corners, though there seems to be somewhat less variety in the food, and the Vietnamese are more likely to be cooking it crouched over a brazier on the sidewalk than from a cart or stall. (They have sidewalks in Hanoi, but frequently it is impossible to use them, between the parked motorcycles and the impromptu cafes. Since many houses don't have plumbing, you also see people washing dishes out of buckets by the gutters.)
Every morning, there are ladies wheeling around bicycles laden with huge baskets of flowers. You also see women carrying huge loads of bananas, oranges, pineapples, bread, you name it; and whenever you see someone carrying something heavy here, they invariably use a coolie pole -- a springy piece of bamboo about four feet long with wide baskets hung from both ends, carried over the shoulder. I've seen people carrying huge and awkward-looking loads with those things, everything from fruit to bricks -- as long as the baskets are balanced, it seems to work well.
Yesterday, a cold front came through, and the temperature dropped about ten degrees C -- for the first time, it's been too chilly for sandals, and I've had to wear a jacket. It rained all day Thursday, and has been heavily overcast since. 15C (60 F) is chilly for the Vietnamese, since they live in drafty houses, and many don't have proper blankets, never mind heating.
I took a day trip out of Hanoi Friday, to a place in the mountains called the Perfumed Pagoda. To get there, we had to get Vietnamese to row us a couple miles up a placid but steep-sided valley (there was no road), and then hike an hour uphill to a shrine in a huge cave. The place is apparently a popular pilgrimage destination, because there were a huge number of tables and stalls set up to cater to a vast crowd of pilgrims, but this seems not to be the season for it. A few dozen Westerners were about the only people out today -- I think we were outnumbered by the Vietnamese hoping to sell stuff to us.
Today I just got back from the famous scenery of Ha Long Bay -- I spent 24 hours on a boat amid thousands of fantastical cliff-sided islands. (Southeast Asia doesn't go in for gentle slopes to its hills.) Sleeping on the boat was worth the trip -- we anchored in a wide roughly circular lagoon, a kilometer across maybe, surrounded by cliffs. We shared the bay with a squid boat that kept a couple brilliant arc lights on all evening, making the entire bay glow faintly in the mist.
Tomorrow at dawn I am on a train for China, which is rather unknown territory for me at the moment. For the first time on the trip, I have no reports from travellers who have recently come in the other direction.
c. -- colin | opportunity calls from a payphone, bruno. you never roald | get a chance to call it back. (christopher baldwin)