Hanoi

After our two days in Hoi An, we caught another flight from Da Nang north to Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi. I was excited but not quite prepared for the next level of sensory overload; nearly everything I knew of Hanoi was gleaned from TV, mostly food documentaries like Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown series. It all seemed condensed into the Old Quarter, a district of the city totally alive at all hours of the night with the smells of food grilling over charcoal, live music, and of course, the never-ending drone of motorbikes. Waking up in the morning, I could crane my neck down from our hotel balcony into the cacophony of people cooking, shouting, and tending their wares, and of birds chirping in cages dangling from shopfronts. There was nothing like walking through this chaos, where even crossing the street took a certain confidence; there are no sidewalks, and traffic signals are more of a suggestion. We were quickly forced to learn the trick of making strong eye contact with a motorist, finding a space, and moving — those who are already moving will find a way around you.
 
The representations of Hanoi on TV turned out to be completely true, but nothing could prepare me for the real thing. For example, sitting on a sidewalk on a tiny plastic stool crouched over a steaming bowl of pho — you can’t replicate that anywhere else. The crowds, the traffic, the thick air, the droplets of sweat that form on your upper lip…it doesn’t sound romantic or even all that appealing, but for me it was love at first sight, and everything I had read and watched about Vietnam suddenly made sense.