no huy! - hanoi, vietnam - vacation notes five

i think the honking of scooter horns is going to haunt my dreams for awhile. the traffic noise of new york city is nothing compared to the constant haranguing of horns. this place is like a perpetual shriner's parade, with fleets of scooters having took over the streets. the whole world rides scooters here, and in order to cross the street, even at lights and crosswalks, you take a little bit of your life in your hands trying to navigate around them. anarchy rules hanoi, and no where is it more prevalent then getting from one side of the road to another. when we first arrived, we made maddening dashes across, scooters and taxis bearing down on us as we shrieked and ran. but you get used to it, and soon learn to stroll out and make it across "frogger" style. two steps forward, one to the left, three ahead, one back...

if hong kong was asia lite, then vietnam is a foreign country intensive. immediately after exiting the airplane, you can tell this ain't a country to mess around. the communist guards give you beady stares as you walk the tarmac to customs, you don't want to go to jail here. i think this is the exact sort of thing my mother worries about when i travel. after you pass through to the main section of the airport, it is insanity, with mobs upon mobs of people crushing forward to embrace relatives newly arriving to the country. although it is a great sentiment, it feels fairly oppressing, being an american with a overtly-sensitive sense of personal space, these people push into you, grab past you and generally act as if you're an inanimate object. although its not scary, its a bit unpleasant and certainly overwhelming first few moments in a new country.

after realizing from the exchange rate - $100,000 VD (Vietnamese Dongs) = $6 USD - made us multi-millionaires, we tried to find a taxi, a legal taxi, to take us to our hotel. a half hour ride through rice fields and countless towns with thin, high, five storied colonial style houses, all painted bright colors, yet most tarnished by years of neglect. we found out later in a guide book that vietnamese used to be taxed on the width of their home, so they built them narrow and high. soon after leaving the airport, we noticed a few scooters surrounding our taxi, but he beeped at them and passed them. we were going about 50mph and it was difficult for them to keep up. but as we hit central hanoi (still no where near our hotel) it seemed like there were 12 scooters for every car, and 70% of the cars were taxis. and no one followed any sort of rules of the road. people made lefts from the right lane, cutting off 10 people, crossing over sidewalks, on sidewalks, just general mass hysteria. it was amazing there were no accidents, we saw about 10 near-misses just heading from the airport.

the sofitel metropole is in the center of old hanoi, just two blocks from the hoam kiem lake, also at center of old hanoi. this hotel was built in 1901 and its the epitome of posh. marble floors, oak paneling, and chandeliers as far as the eye could see, it felt like we were in some movie set. WE were staying HERE?! we checked in, dumped our stuff in the fancy room and set off to explore.

i was somewhat shell shocked, having realized i had never actually been in a foreign country without a native guide, and now walking around in someplace so far from any previous point of reference to me, i was just to overwhelmed to react. thankfully, todd, having just spent time in indonesia and turkey, took charge. he led us down the streets to try and find our way around. we were the only anglos around, and provoked both stares and lots of offerings. women walked by with a yokes on their shoulders and two baskets on either end, filled with a variety of offerings, including fruit, vegetables and various other food. some westerns must enjoy taking pictures wearing what constitutes as their livelihood, because many of them kept trying to just place the yokes on tara and my shoulders. i started what would become our main form of communication on this trip, saying, "no, no thank you, no!" while waving my right hand in a low "no" back and forth gesture. this photo opportunity was not the only thing we were offered. guidebooks, postcards, lighters, dolls, shirts, scooter rides, rickshaw rides, taxi rides, donuts were also proffered, and the seller was typically insistent, a bit forceful, and i little too familiar.

i hated that i was so caught off guard, disappointed with myself for getting flustered, trying not to stare at the plates of the vietnamese clustered on little stools every five feet, sitting on the sidewalk, eating cuisine cooked on kettles and barbecues directly next to them. webber had been kind enough to give me instructions on which of the famous vietnamese street food to eat, but i was way to chicken to break into these circles. i wondered, bemused, where my sense of adventure had dissapeared to as i watched women itch their feet, then add rice noodles to a pot, or rinse off a just used plate with water from a street faucet to serve another serving. i guess i'm a spoiled westerner, but i just couldn't do it. later on, we read on our guide book about the tap water in hanoi causing some westerners to have, ehem, "the world fall out of their bottem" so i wasn't too upset with my decision.

at one point we paused to try and catch our bearings and this old lady came up to me and started admonishing me in vietnamese. not yelling, but not friendly. she spoke rapidly at me and kept touching my shoulder bag. of course, i had no idea what she was upset about and could do nothing but just stand there. as we walked past rows of appliance "stores" basically interiors, no fronts, with dishwashers and stereos stacked inside and "mechanics" -- store interiors with seven guys pulling apart pieces of motorbikes, navigating around rows and rows of scooters parked on the sidewalk, i was stunned with the worlds apart this was from me. i've never visited the slums of any foreign country before, but this wasn't the slum, it was the central part of a major city. this was their life.

we visited the temple on the lake, and tara decided to rest up, so todd and i walked her back to the hotel, then set out to explore more. i was still somewhat nervous, and we decided to just hit one of the bar balconies surrounding one of the main intersections by the lake. it was sponsored by legends beer, and their "weisen" had a faint pineapple aftertaste which refreshed in this muggy 90degree F heat. we watched the scooter brigades go by, and more importantly, watching the locals cross six lanes of traffic. ok, THAT's how they do it. we realized that the "parting of the red sea" mentality needed to be employed in the future. todd and i caught up on people we knew and things going on, and people watched the scooters. you could tell which scooters were "big pimpin" and which were laggin. the gasoline and pollution was palatable here, so lots of people wore surgical masks, many in designer (burberry!) patterns and colors. around 5pm we started seeing whole families riding by, a baby standing in between the handlebars in front, followed by a man driving, with another kid sitting between him and his wife at the back. schoolkids in uniform drove by three on a scooter, and there must have been a sale on toilet paper somewhere because we saw countless people driving by with Costco worthy palates on their scooter.

fortified with some beers, i finally calmed down and was able to enjoy the walk back to the hotel. we tried a local place for dinner, by local, it was pretty much the same atmosphere and service you'd expect from any tourist town. the staff of teenagers laughing and hanging out with each other and basically ignoring the guests, which seeing that, bridged some of the culture gap, and we still had a decent meal, if one that required a little prodding. (who forgets to serve rice in vietnam?!) we retired to the bamboo bar at the pool at our fancy hotel, and enjoyed some cocktails. two more days in hanoi.

(huy is a city in the middle of vietnam, pronounced "way" - i learned how to make springrolls in huy-style but that's another story...)