If it's Tuesday, This Must be Belgium - 2/12/08

A few weeks ago I talked about a trip I made to Bangkok and Hong Kong.  On a completely separate trip my travels took me to Hanoi, Beijing and Hong Kong.   So, as a departure from my weekly "preparations for the move" pieces I thought I'd give you a bit of a travelogue.  To keep the length reasonable, I'm just going to hit some of the highlights of the Hanoi and suburbs portion...I'll talk about Beijing and Hong Kong in the weeks ahead.

Hanoi, the capitol of Vietnam, which was a lot bigger than I expected.  It was incredibly busy, with thousands of people on motor scooters and bicycles crowding every street. Many of them wore scarfs over their mouths and noses because the air is so polluted.  As I rode around town on my Xe Om (a kind of motor scooter taxi), it was interesting to contrast the many tiny streets teeming with people doing business on the sidewalks and in alcoves, with the ornate mustard-yellow official buildings left over from the many years occupied by the French. 

The mausoleum of Vietnam's revered former leader Ho Chi Minh (called "Uncle Ho" by the locals), also has a prominent place in a large square.  Usually visitors can see his preserved body there, but at this time he was in the middle of an official face-lift so a visit to the adjacent museum had to suffice.  Within its halls I wandered into a back room where local musicians played traditional Vietnamese instruments and sang (after which one attractive musician handed yours truly a beautiful red rose).

I had the privilege of joining a friend in Hanoi, which meant that I lived in the midst of the locals (i.e., not in one of the rare "western" style hotels) and experienced Vietnamese life first hand.  That included the local kids begging for money (one 4 year old put on her saddest looking face for my benefit) and the occasional swarm of 10 year olds offering their shoe-shining prowess to me.  Many of my meals took place on the streets. 

And I mean this literally - squatting on the sidewalk eating Bun Nhan (duck noodle soup), Bun Oc (snail and noodle soup) or Bun Mum Tom (noodles dipped into a ghastly smelling shrimp paste).  The "proprietor" would grab a handful of noodles, throw it briefly in boiling broth (with the chicken or duck bones still swimming around), and then ladle it into a bowl.  You grabbed your own chopsticks from a cup holding a dozen or so of them (making sure you wiped them off before using).  Clean up is easy, you just throw everything on the ground.  Generally an open sewer ran along the curb and everything went into it (including children relieving themselves).  As startling as this may seem to westerners, it appears to be normal for them. 

Vietnam's greatest resource seems to be its people - there are so many people in Hanoi that each evening an army of men and women comes out with large straw brooms and sweep up the city.  They even separate out usable materials from materials that have unquestionably reached the final state of being trash.  Quite amazing.

Another interesting feature of Hanoi is that shops are clumped by item.  In the US we're used to seeing strip malls with one drug store, one shoe store, one clothing store, etc.  In Hanoi, one street is dedicated to selling shoes and every alcove on that street sells shoes and nothing but shoes.  Other streets are designated to sell coats or silk or "gifts for the tourists". 

Besides my time in Hanoi, I also ventured far out from the city to two of the small villages.  One (Bach Trang) specialized in making pottery, most of which was brought into Hanoi on bicycles or carts pulled by an ox or pony.  The other village was called Nhing Heip, which was reached by an extremely bumpy Xe Om ride over rough roads.  Nhing Heip is where they make fabric, and was the location of one of my fondest memories from the trip.  Because very few westerners ever make it there, my white face attracted a great deal of attention.  This was especially true with 3 little girls of about 4 years old who would run up to me and then run away and push their friends toward me, all the while laughing.  My companion informed me that they kept saying "Look how white he is."  The commotion they were causing led to one of the girls' grandfather seeing us and inviting us into his house for tea.  So we spent the next 20 minutes or so drinking many cups of tea while he chatted away in Vietnamese about how America is rich and Vietnam is very poor but they work very hard, etc. (he was obviously proud of his culture).  Of course, most of this I found out after the fact from my companion, since I had learned only about 10 words in my four days in Vietnam.  All the same, it was a most delightful and memorable experience and one that I will treasure forever.

[Hopefully the photos are okay.  They were taken with a film camera and seem to get fuzzy if I enlarge them too much.]