i was in Vietnam for three weeks last year, and someone at work asked me to email them. i did so, and the emails were circulated around the office. Some people enjoyed them, and it was suggested i start a blog. i realised i had visited places beginning with V - so i suppose my next trip will be to Venezuela!
Thus begins a short sequence of posts with my impressions of Vietnam.
Well, not in Kansas but in Hanoi.
Here the food comes from other planets. They eat everything. You haven't lived until you've eaten mugwort. i think it is because peope here are relatively poor. Two generations ago New Zealanders ate tripe, after all. On the menu it says 'beef guts'. They sure call a spade a fucking shovel. Actually, everything is delicious.
i took daily sweaty (there is no other kind) around Hanoi. I also took a motorscooter across the river into the 'burbs, in a sunset coloured blood orange with dust and fumes. Motorscooters are the main form of transport. i so want one! The best ones are the old Hondas, hard to get now and endlessly cannibalised. The city is noisy with motorscooters, and the traffic is governed by something similar to Brownian motion. Think of it as being a bit like the salmon run, but going both ways. To cross the road, you enter a Zen state, half close your eyes, b-r-e-a-t-h-e and enter the stream, surfing, grooving, gliding. It took half a day to learn. How peculiar, that in all this wild urban madness, my best virtues are patience and calm. Truth to tell, everything travels at about 25 kms a hour so i am semi-safe.
The din is only enhanced by the twice daily patriotic lectures given through tinny loud speakers. In the same spirit, i visited the tomb of Ho Chi Minh. i genuinely think he was a great dude, and i hear he refused to live in the presidential palace, preferring a traditional hut. He would spin in his grave if he saw the tomb, a fine example of Soviet era brutalism. The best architechture here is French. The public buildings are cream coloured, rather mouldy affairs, but stately with it, set back in western style avenues. They were all guarded, and i figured that even though i was a bit lost i would not ask directions from a spotty seventeen year old with a gun. i loved the art gallery, with its patriotic paintings on silk. Some of them have gone, as the times are no longer so strident, but i especially liked the one of a tank busting through the forest and being welcomed by grateful peasants.
Everybody tried to sell me things and i found it upsetting. Partly because i was mindful of their need, and partly because whenever they saw me coming they would hold up the XXL t shirts. Marketing in Vietnam is a bit too direct. Some tact would have been nice! i was a millionaire in Dong. The zeroes bamboozled me. i would sit on the hotel bed and stack the notes in piles and scratch my head and miss my husband, who has a maths degree. Every day i would stack my dong and attempt to count it and then stash it in several places, and i actually lost some in my luggage. Water costs 2,000 dong - about 20 cents. That became my benchmark.
i missed my dog. Here there were chihuahuas of preturnatural ferocity. No wonder, given what would become of them. People sold everything, cats and dogs and bright birds in tiny cages. Next to a stall selling old shoes, there would be a smart shop displaying Blackberries. Every corner had a mechanic fixing scooters, and men would gather there. Tiny children swept doorways. Women fetched and carried every sodding thing; of course it is a well known fact that whole economies are based on the carrying power of the backs of little old ladies in black dresses.
i felt sort of conspicuous but safe. People would overcharge me in a heartbeat but i did not think they would exactly rob me. i could walk at night on my own OK in Hanoi.
i stayed for two days and then joined a tour.
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