We arrived into an evening Vietnamese haze, as our plane touched down at Hanoi airport. New country, new language, new customs and etiquette…….and a new sense of trepidation and adventure for us.
Hopping into the cool air of a taxi to bring us into where we are staying in the Hai ba Trung/French Quarter district gave us a false sense of security. We breezed past many farmers in their ordered fields, wearing nōn lā (the conical hats), saw gangs of labourers working the fields, the idyllic reflection of the setting sun in a large pool of water in a flooded field, micro burning of unwanted stalks, branches and leaves at the edges of crop fields – not quite the welcoming bonfires on the hilltops that greet homeward bound heroes back to Donegal, but fire is somehow reassuringly familiar. We then passed a sea of polytunnels, fields partitioned by banana trees and mangoes (the ones I could identify – undoubtedly there were other types of trees!). On the outskirts of the city, the buildings became long and skinny, with few windows on any sides other than the front. Oxen wandered through the landscapes, again no doubt according to strict grazing rules, but to the untamed eye it seemed aimlessly through and besides the crop fields.
We came off the free flowing but slow motorway (beep-beep to let the motorbike know the car was behind it, or to the side), up onto a slip road that brought us up onto a bridge…….across a set of lights…..and all of a sudden we entered the swarm of traffic – motorbikes, push bikes, tuk-tuk contraptions, pedestrians, jeeps, buses, yoks and jalopies…..every manner of vehicle, where size seems to matter in terms of taking precedence on the roads. A three laned road had seven lanes of activity. Madness, mayhem, chaos, unstructured, lawless, organic and adaptive – each road user simultaneously watching the action of perhaps 50 others moving in an unimaginable concert of flow, punctuated by the odd punter changing lanes obtrusively…..but a certain order in absolute chaos.
Adaptive like a jazz set, except the music was not so sweet……more road-runner theme song, with the incessant beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep, to let the fellow traveller know that danger is eminent!
The red of traffic lights are ignored, as the traffic moves into every available space. A process of osmosis from areas of concentrated bikes to empty space. Nonsense on stilts!
We breathed a sigh of relief when we arrived into our cool marbled floored apartment, took stock of the city we were in. When hunger took hold, we said a rosary each and checked our insurance policy as we crossed numerous roads in an attempt to venture out to get something to eat!
Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep…..the sound of Hanoi.
28th September 2015…..full moon, super moon or general madness!
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