Hanoi…the city that doesn’t stop

It’s taken me a while to sit down and write this blog. My senses were annihilated from the very first step out of the airport cab and on to the streets of Hanoi. I needed some time to process what my mind and my senses were experiencing in order to do it all justice.

In summary, the heartbeat of Hanoi is the streets.

Everything spills out of the tall narrow buildings and out onto the pavements and even into the streets. Businesses use the pavements to display their products, cafes and restaurants have chairs and tables, designed for very small people, taking up the sidewalks and this is shared as parking for a tightly squeezed long line of mopeds. The street is home to motorbikes, taxis, bicycles, pedestrians and of course, the free-roaming peddler.

It is organised chaos at it’s best. Some intersections have no stop signs or traffic lights and even those that have functioning traffic lights are adhered to at individual discretion. Crossing the street is an experience, where every step could be your last yet when you look around, cars, bikes and buses simply weave around you and each other like the uninterrupted flow of a river.

The city’s song is that of incessant hooting by all the motorised vehicles announcing their approximation or a gentle suggestion to move. Step inside a building or home and the chatter of birds kept in cages assaults your ears. The sing song sound of the Vietnamese dialogue is a strange blend to this mix of overwhelming sounds, at times soothing and in another instant very insistent when attached to the voice of a street peddler.

But back to the streets. Around every corner you can find a shoe mender applying their trade on a curbside, ladies hunched over cooking pots preparing meals on the street and dishing it out to the hungry worker sitting on a plastic stool made for a child. And the scenes we have all heard about are true…entire families on a moped and ladies walking or cycling with the typical bamboo cross bar and baskets bearing fruit, elegantly manoeuvred through traffic.

This is all mixed in with very modern shops with highly fashionable clothing, furniture and jewellery. Basic bars that serve a cold one, next door to a bar a hipster would call home. Sidewalk coffee shops where the people chat and eat sunflower seeds opposite a very chic cafe that only serves expensive coffees.

An interesting observation is that the local hangout seems to be the traffic circle in the heart of the busiest intersection. I tried it out, I’m still to figure out why it’s so popular.

Oh and fresh produce market has taken on a whole new meaning to me after seeing the one here in Hanoi. A collection of creepy crawlies for dinner, amongst very mundane fruits and vegetables and fish so fresh it’s still swimming in the bowl they are displayed in.

Get some respite from the chaos by going to the theatre and watching the water puppet performance. Unlike any show I have ever seen, the entire show is of puppets interacting with a watery stage. A unique way of transferring folklore from generation to generation and now to other continents.