Hanoi, 8th December 2019
After my first week in Vietnam had flurried past in a whirl of new sights, sounds, tastes and colours, I found myself on a sunny Sunday morning rattling along on the bus to Hanoi. I was accompanied by Yasmin, one of the other teachers at Sun School where I had begun to teach. We had set out for Hanoi and planned to meet Maika, another volunteer, who had taken an earlier bus before us. Maika had been teaching at Sun School for almost three months. She was Vietnamese, and her bilingual fluency had made adjusting to life in the rural town of Chu significantly easier. Yasmin had been at the school for almost nine months, and I could tell she was very comfortably living the same life as the locals.
Together, we made a merry band of travellers marching through the streets of Hanoi’s old town, eyes peeled with wonder. Even Maika had not spent a great time in Hanoi and so there were many new things to discover. The instant I stepped out from the tailor’s shop above which our little hostel perched; I was assaulted by the noise of the city. It was an onslaught of sound. From the whirring of motorbike engines to countless horns ringing over each other to the hollering street vendors and the thumping music played on large speakers in the doorways of restaurants. I barely knew where to look first, gazing around in excitement but without really taking in the details. Before my mesmerised stupor dragged me into an early grave, I was tugged out of the way of an oncoming motorcycle and we set off down the street towards the cathedral.
A beautiful building with two vast towers to left and right, the place was swarming with tourists. We pressed on into the crowded streets and alleyways of Hanoi.
Hanoi feels like a city where you can find absolutely anything you want, but it is often incredibly difficult to find. As we walked past crossroads after crossroads, Maika explained that streets in this part of Hanoi were named after what is sold on them. For example, one of the first streets we walked down translates roughly to “tin aisle”, and we shortly proceeded onto “fabric aisle”. There was something new and completely unexpected around every corner; I had long since given up keeping track of where we had come from and surrendered myself to the fact that I had no single clue where I was.
Wherever you look someone is trying to sell you something. Every single building is some form of shop, eatery, café, bar or hotel. And this extends beyond mere buildings, as the pavements are rammed full of little plastic tables and chairs to accommodate customers looking for a cheaper meal, as old women tend pans over camping stoves and pour dirty dishwater directly into the street. Every square metre of pavement not occupied by one such pop-up restaurant is inevitably filled with the rows and rows of parked motorcycles which dominate the whole flow of movement in the city. Crossing the street is more a leap of faith than an exercise in timing, as you can almost be certain that if you step out boldly, you will be avoided. Nevertheless, the crowds of motorbikes flooding through the narrow streets are threatening, and the feeling of stepping out with no real assurance of safety was alien and unnerving to me.
As the afternoon wore on, we stopped for an invigorating bowl of noodles in a tiny restaurant featuring the bare minimum: stools, chopsticks and bowls. The experience felt truly authentic, and I could tell from the other people eating there, the way they chattered away to the two cooks and their not-so-subtle glances in my direction that this was the sort of place the locals came to eat.
Heavy in stomach and heavy in pocket, we continued into the darkening city, stopping for one of Hanoi’s trademark drinks, the egg coffee; which, to my surprise, was utterly delicious. We headed in the direction of Hoàn Kiếm Lake in the centre of the city. It was Sunday evening, and we arrived by the lake just in time to witness policemen in smart green uniforms sliding barriers across the roads creating a fully pedestrianised loop around the lake. This was the Hanoi night market.
Having only arrived in Vietnam the previous Sunday, culture shock was still hitting hard and as I walked around, eyes gazing at the lights and sights, jaw dropping at every wonderful street performer or musician, I remember thinking that it was simply all too much to process. The market stalls were enough by themselves, selling everything from fake Adidas and $5 Coco Chanel to handcrafted jewellery and woodwork. Each stall had its individual character, and I was touched when we stopped by a stall selling plastic keyrings with the accompanying sign “BUY 10 FREE 1”. Behind the counter stood a man who could have been in his early twenties, and next to him, an early teenage boy scribbled away in his notepad. Excitedly he passed it over to his older brother, chattering away optimistically in Vietnamese. His brother squinted at the book, laughed a great belly-laugh and slammed the book down on the table, shouting rapidly. He laughed again and cuffed the little boy around the ear, jabbing a finger at what looked to be some physics homework or possibly maths. The little boy looked forlorn and squinted down at his work, unsure of what mistake he had made. His older brother began eating a hotdog on a stick and laughed again, offering one to his brother before whisking it out of his grasp. “No food until you finish your homework” Maika translated for us.
Leaving the narrow, crowded avenue of stalls and proceeding onto the wide blocked off streets that ran around the lake, I caught my first glimpse of what I feel is the true character of Hanoi. Everywhere you looked there was a different group of strangers participating in the same event. We stopped to listen to a group of teenagers with guitars singing and playing beautifully from where they sat on the pavement. I watched strangers come and go, joining in the singing for a song or two before drifting on in the crowds of people. These songs were known to all Vietnamese and carried something sweet and heartfelt with them. On past the skipping ropes, past people building towers seven-foot-high out of thin wooden sticks, past the public karaoke, past the ballroom and salsa dancing, past the vendors selling ice-cream and balloons and on further still we wandered. A dance troupe of teenagers shocked me with their ferocious energy and grace of movement, as around twenty of them swapped in and out of the stage as a non-stop train of songs played from large speakers.
There was altogether too much to see, hear, taste, smell, and do, but we carried on through the evening enjoying ourselves thoroughly. After a couple of drinks in a rooftop bar overlooking streets bustling with nightlife, we wandered our way through the quiet hubbub of Hanoi at three in the morning. We crossed paths with revellers on their way home after a long night, followed by street sweepers, rising early to make the most of the quiet. The whole assortment of Vietnamese I saw in the streets at that ghostly hour of the morning was indescribable. Many plastic stools were occupied by locals sitting back smoking tobacco from long bamboo pipes, nibbling at sunflower seeds, looking so comfortable I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that they had been sitting their chatting since as long as they could remember.
Suddenly ravenous, we turned our noses in the direction of a well-known pho restaurant which began serving at four in the morning. The chill air now began to attack us with its icy knives, and I couldn’t help shivering as we sat at the low plastic table outside on the pavement, last in a line five tables long. As each group received their steaming hot bowl, and the waitresses began working their way down the pavement towards us, I began to get colder and hungrier by the second. When it finally arrived, we all gulped down the hot noodles and broth, not pausing for a second to exclaim how delicious it was. Full, and satisfied that my first pho had been exceptional as well as delicious, I spooned the last of the broth into my mouth before we stood, stamped some warmth into our feet and marched back to our hostel and into bed.
9th December 2019
A bright sunny morning breezed past before we had a chance to wake up and check out of the hostel, but we continued our exploration throughout the city. I was drowsy and tired after the previous night, and the hot dusty air was beginning to stick in my throat. Thankfully we managed to escape the busy streets with their noise and pollution and found our way into a mall. It was eerily quiet, and after picking up some ingredients such as butter, cheese, and pasta which are hard to come by outside of the city, we continued through the city.
A highlight came when, after walking down the “medical street”, lined by dozens of pharmacies on one side and a sprawling hospital complex on the other, we reached the trainline. We were just in time to witness the attendant pull the gate across the road, staunching the flow of motorbikes and instantly rendering the road on either side of the tracks rammed full of vehicles with patiently chugging engines. We waited as the iconic reunification express trundled past with its many passenger carriages followed by a postal car and caboose. This train is a powerful symbol to many Vietnamese, running from Ho Chi Minh in the South to Hanoi in the North. Final construction of the line was completed in the 1970s after miles of track had been lost and damaged during the Vietnam War. The reopening of the trainline provided a representation of unity to the people of Vietnam as much as equally as it offered transport from one end of the country to the other.
After dragging our weary feet to the union park, we sat watching the warm red sun slowly sinking below Hanoi’s jumbled, confusing skyline. The lake shone with the colours of fire, and bonsai trees in the park caught the dying light of the day, creating utterly beautiful scenes.
My mind was turning towards the comfort of a shower, fresh clothes and my room in Chu, and we caught a Grab to the bus stop before finally boarding the bus to Luc Ngan and settling in for three hours of being bumped and bounced till our stomachs turned.
My first glimpse of Hanoi had been, in a word, overwhelming. Having barely adjusted to the relatively quiet atmosphere in the little village of Chu, I could barely process everything I saw and heard. But as we trundled on through the darkness to the tune of loud EDM music played by the driver, I couldn’t help but look forward to spending more time in Vietnam’s capital city.
Arrival – Vietnam Blog #1