Hanoi: Street Life — Roaming with Roth

This morning we departed Hanoi traveling 3 1/2 hours northwest to the small village of Mai Chau. Hanoi gives new meaning to the word "bustling". London bustles. New York bustles. Hanoi moves with a hasty, unrelenting fury. With a population of over 7 million people, and half as many motor scooters, the city is crammed. A cacophony of honks, bells, beeps and putters. The city streets are literally choking with activity, fumes and noise. Adele and I didn't exactly 'walk' the streets, we haltingly navigated them with extreme caution. Movement 'forward', as in a direct line, was unthinkable. Instead, we had to metaphysically sense the convergence of cars, motor bikes and bicycles at every corner and work our way in the general direction we were heading. The congestion is stifling. The pollution massively suffocating. Yet, in this most strange existence there is a rhythm, that if not desirable in any lasting sense, is appealing to the visiting traveler.

Streets themselves do not exist for pedestrians. Storefronts, food stalls, cafes and 'hawkers' own the streets. Pedestrians must maneuver around motor bikes lined like soldiers curbside, wares displayed from hanging poles, garbage strewn waiting for pickup, and cars that have no other place to park. There is no 'right of way' for foot traffickers. You proceed at your own risk in circuitous lines avoiding obstacles, concrete crags, shipping boxes and broken stones.

The natives, on the other hand, move about with unselfconscious ease, like rats having grown familiar with the maze. Acclimated to the frenzied obstacle course, locals saunter, seemingly oblivious, ignoring the potential doom of crash and collision. This calamity appears normal due to the anomalous calm of the inhabitants. We often followed lock-step behind a local staying as near as Velcro, stepping on and off curbsides wending our way to destinations. Finding our turns was not always easy because aside from the tumult and stress of the streets, street names were often obscured by their similarities - Hang Ga; Hang Ca; Hang Gai; Hang Cai. Some streets were not streets at all, but lanes or alleys that disappeared from view due to the congestion. We would pass these and have to double back, retrace our steps realizing to our surprise a nondescript opening between buildings darkened with soot, grime, and time.

Hanoians live on the streets. Take, as an example, the traditional food 'Pho' (pronounced 'fuh') is made from cooking a broth (typically beef), now known to urban sophisticates as 'bone broth', for hours. To that is added beef or chicken and rice noodles. The broth is deeply flavored bathing rather nondescript rice noodles in a richness that belies description. But the stock, if made at home, would take hours and hours to prepare for a meal. So, locals eat their pho outside in the endless multitude of stalls, which means that the local population is in the streets for much of the day. At 6AM, when the food stalls open up, it is typical for people to be sitting on low plastic stools having their morning pho. The burners are by the edge of the stalls with owners attending the pots and cutting meat to go into the pho. The other ingredients, sometime greens or shoots or herbs or hot peppers, are in plastic containers waiting to be sliced, diced or chopped for the soup.

The streets of Hanoi are virtual extensions of the 'home' - kitchen, dining room, market, mall, entertainment center, den like your family room and social gathering space like your living room. Everything but for the bedroom. And the activity seems endless. From early morning to late at night. On our first evening, returning from dinner, we discovered a major series of streets being set up for night market at about 8:30 PM. With ease and deftness, each marketer popped open a large, collapsible, sideless folding tent (think humungous beach umbrella) to sell nearly anything you could desire from clothing to toys to tools.

During one of our daily sojourns, Vinh, our personal guide, took us to a very special food market outside the 'Old Hanoi' area, a place where 'foreigners' simply do not go. We watched as vendors killed chickens (slitting their throats in a device made for partial decapitation), dipping them in some boiling liquid, and manually feathering them before gutting. Other tables displayed all cuts (and parts) of beef and pork. Fish were sold ‘live’, laid out on newspaper mats, leaping as their gulls lifted and fell and their mouths puckered. Local fruit was delicious, of course. Yet, for all the food and scraps in the street, there was no noxious smell of rot or decay.

Adele and I found Hanoi difficult but enchanting, keeping us captivated, if constantly looking over shoulder. We were ready to leave Hanoi, but there is another side to the story which will come in the next blog post.