The environment, which shows itself to the sleepy look from the window, could not be more different. Yesterday birdsong, sunshine and the prospect of a hot day, today a grey foggy morning. Honking, roaring, clearly the cacophony of a big city.
It's Mid-February, I have arrived in Hanoi and in the cold. So then with Adrian Cronauer aka Robin Williams: Gooooood Morning Vietnam!
Back in the Vietnam War
The flight was short, barely 50 minutes, but enough to take me from paradise to the first level of the underworld. A rather old, propeller-driven airplane. Are these rusty spots on the wings, or do I just imagine the worst? It is expecting a mixed bunch of travellers, and a mixed bunch it is indeed.
This is how I imagine the passengers in one of those machines that took American soldiers from one war to the next. The men next to me seem to be the last survivors of this long-forgotten war: Americans, British, other indefinable nationalities. In any case, they look like mercenaries: hardened, mean, dark, tough. “The Expendables” comes to mind.
These are the planes or airlines being warned about. That they are dangerous. At the forefront of the statistics of aviation accidents.
What the hell.
Hanoi by Night
An endless drive - astonishingly much longer than the flight - brings me at an exorbitant speed over a never-ending motorway. It leads in a straight line to Hanoi.
There are a couple of moments when you just have to hold your breath. But I survive and finally arrive at a very respectable hotel with everything the heart desires. Large flat screen TV, huge bathroom, breakfast included, a bed the width of a gym.
By now it is ten o'clock in the evening, and my stomach is empty like that of a dead cow. So I look for a restaurant, but surprisingly the Vietnamese seem to be sleeping at this time of night, as I can only find closed doors. No other way but to go to bed without dinner, which also means sleeping like a dog. By the way, it's so cold in the room that I'm glad there's a heating.
Hot Southeast Asia? That must be a joke.
Survival of the Fittest
As already mentioned, orientation is definitely not one of my outstanding abilities, but I start today’s exploration with fresh courage, map in hand, but after five minutes I no longer know where I am. But the roads are well marked, and so even a blind chicken like me finds – after some initial sorrows – the way through the dense net of streets.
Everything else is hard to describe, but I try it anyway.
To give the inclined reader a picture of what is going on in the narrow streets, just imagine sidewalks. They are full of motorbikes, bicycles, cars and tables or chairs, whereupon people, cuddled close together, bend over their plates.
There is absolutely no room for pedestrians, so you have to find your way across the street. But this is disputed by hundreds of scooters, cars, rischkas and other pedestrians. This is Darwin, Survival of the Fittest. All others flee back to their hotels and immediately book the onward flight to quieter areas.
I like it. I really do. Not that I don't have to secure my survival every few seconds with a dive to the side, oh no. But you get used to it very quickly, to the noise, the constant shrill honking of horns from all sides, the dense clusters of moving objects, all of which having one goal: to get ahead somehow.
A strange dance
Which does not mean in the same direction of course, far from it, and so at the crossroads there’s the literal battle of Waterloo. Surprisingly the attempts to cross the intersection succeed in most cases, thereby performing swings to the left, to the right, contrary to the intention of all the others. An odd, yet elegant wild dance, a ritual that takes place every day at a thousand corners and intersections, and millions of participants are part of the game.
A quiet oasis
Eventually, thousands of heart-stopping moments later, a lake. A quiet oasis in the midst of the noisy puffs. I take a deep breath and sit down on one of the benches at the shore but it’s quite cold. Slightly shivering but feeling OK, I look out on the grey water.
According to the Travel Guide, there are a thousand stories about this lake, one of them about a huge turtle, a true monster of an animal (whose deceased relative lies embalmed in a museum on a tiny little island on the lake). A few years ago it was fished out of the lake to treat the effects of the contaminated water (admittedly the lake is one single sewer). Well then, good luck, old friend!
Fried noodles
There’s so much to see, so much to understand, while strolling through dark and overcrowded alleys, along colorful stalls and tiny soup kitchen, repair shops and restaurants and all kinds of premises and stores and shops. In one of the truly small restaurants (as mentioned in the Lonely Planet) I sit down and order fried noodles which turn out to be an overwhelming experience. Noodles with a big exclamation mark! The pretty young girls, giggling all the time, are happy about my compliments and so I get the first photograph of myself, showing me brutally that the cap, bought five minutes before, is much too small for my big head.
There is also a church, a huge and ancient, that reflects the colonial heritage of French origin. The door is closed, so I circle around and admire the still impressive walls, while pious people, mostly in Sunday clothes, gather at the stairs, take pictures and have fun.
I also have a good time like most people do. Although it is freezing cold, they sit on tiny chairs, wearing thick coats and woolen hats, enjoying the food and laughing and chatting. It reminds me of Jinghong and I suddenly wished I was one of them ...
PS Matching film: Robin Williams - Good Morning Vietnam (best Scenes)
And here the journey continues ...
