A room with a view: Hanoi, Vietnam

Not a nuisance but a golden opportunity 

Hanoi, Vietnam for 10 days, by fluke. We had given ourselves only 6 days in Hanoi after spending 4 days in Luang Prabang, Laos, but our flight tickets to the latter destination was lost among the many business connections between the various companies vying for our dollars. What is there to do for 10 whole days? You'd be surprised.

Where exactly are we?

We have booked an apartment just across the old quarters. We are not in the modern, slick city with gleaming  highrises. They are tucked away in the distance. On the first day, having arrived in the evening, all Drink does is walk to the closest market ( suggested by our host) to shop for a handful of vegetables to prepare our first dinner in Hanoi. He would get more the next morning.

Going through Google maps of the area does not give us a feel for the place. We think we are in the old quarters. Nothing like a bit of physical exploration to get our bearings. And we set forth the next day hoping to negotiate the maze of streets without much difficulty. Only after a few days does it dawn upon us that we are in fact across the old city, in its periphery. And the overhead pedestrian bridge, across 12 busy lanes, connects this part to the historic part.

Realisation

Not only are we getting familiar with the terrain walking 8 to 13 km a day, but also the community. Our corner apartment on the 4th flour has large windows and French doors that give us a bird's eye view of everything that goes on throughout the day.

A few days into our visit we discover to our delight that the road, along which we had bought a variety of luscious tropical fruits from the vendours' tantalising  heaps, that our living room is actually facing the road that leads to the famed Long Bien wholesale vegetable and fruit market just about a 100m away!

The wall that separates our precinct from the 12 lanes and the old quarter, boldly marked at the portals with the large red Vietnamese flags, is part of the longest ceramic mural wall in the world! And to think that we had gone looking for it nearly 5 km away only to find that it led us back home! It is not fortification for it is not around the old quarter. It is not simply a decorative wall.  It is actually part of the dike system along the Red River that runs through Hanoi. The murals contributed to by a variety of artists from various countries was the brainchild of a diehard Hanoi citizen.

Compact eatery: up in a snap, gone in a snap

Just inside the wall, at 5:30 am, a woman briskly sets out her low plastic tables and chairs on the pavement. From her rolling cart she pulls out a bucket of water, bowls and cutlery. She already has customers. They get tea poured out from two huge thermos flasks. The hot noodle soup or porridge is served. Her customers are retailers who have come to purchase stock from the whole sale market. By 6:30am it is already getting sunny. She pulls out a beach umbrella which has a receptacle on the cart. Her customers move into the shade. For rainy days she has a much bigger tarp for a canopy. By 7:30 am she is almost sold out. She pours out the bucket of water which she has used to rinse out the bowls for her customers. She packs everything, including the stackable furniture, compactly into her cart and trundles away.

The same woman appears again in the evening and goes through the same routine under the street light. One day, when she did not appear we got worried! Was she ill? Did she have something to attend to?

Occasionally a policeman on his rounds would patronise her.

Catnap any time anywhere

The moment she cleared out motorcycles filled up the space. At one time the policeman even had a nice long nap reclined on his motorbike!

Portable retail

She is not the only vendor we become keenly interested in. A woman,  in the typical conical straw hat walks down the market street and the turns into the busy lanes and crosses them. She balances a pole across her shoulders, baskets slung at each end,  carrying paraphernalia needed for cooking and serving as well as the ingredients for the particular type of food she specialises in. Occasionally she rests the baskets on the ground, readjusts the pole and then continues to walk with her mobile kitchen until a customer hails her.

Another woman has different types of fruits, attractively arranged, in her baskets, again walking along and across the roads keeping an eye out for possible sales.

No rear view or side view mirrors for a moving mass

Then there are the women who balance two to three bamboo trays of fruit on their bicycles. When a customer hails them, they pull out a stout stick to prop up the bicycle to free their hands. They are a godsend to busy housewives and business women

Others carry loads of flowers of different types an colours. We always worry for them when they cross the busy arterial road. They are smart. They walk  the bicycle across rather than pedal.

In the afternoon two ladies each with carts tactfully loaded sky high with hats of all kinds pulls their loads through our street lined with parked motorcycles and cars whike also dodging moving vehicles. It's like driving a truck with a great sense of clearance all around the mobile store. Even if one hat slides off it could, horror of horrors, cause an avalanche of hats.

We breath a sigh of relief everytime these industrious, unrelenting business women navigate safely.

Male Chauvinism or respect for resilience and hardwork?

You'd have noticed that I spoke only of women. No, I'm not biased. This is the stark truth about Vietnamese society. Men generally  just seem to drive taxis, ride motorbikes, and sit around drinking tea or beer, depending on the time of day and depending upon whether they hold a job in mens forte as in information technology, oil and gas etc.

But the street barbers are definitely men.