It was meant to be India. But it turned out some outbreak of inter-governmental handbags had turned the usual month of Indian visa-drudgery into a full on three month nightmare, and we just didn’t have time. The hell with it: we’ll go to Vietnam!
Cab from the airport… traffic gridlocked. Half a k in half an hour? Give or take. Stationary for minutes at a time. Mad scooters everywhere, weaving through any which way, many bearing families. Two adults + one or two kids pretty routine. Babes in arms, dogs, fridge-freezers, the whole bit. Hanoi looking lively but drab, dusty, worn. Few people on foot – probably at least in part because we’ve landed in the middle of Tet – the new year.
Get to the hotel, dump the luggage, quick shower and hit the streets.
The world of beep
The horns, the horns! A World of Beep. Great careering cavalries of scooters, bearing down on you from every direction, beeping you, cars, other scooters, or just, well, why wouldn’t you.
Blimey. This world is different. This world is LOUD.
Then the peril. Traffic lights, road markings, signs and the like clearly viewed as advisory at best, generally as cheerful, whimsical decoration. I’m going this way. Now.
First, we need to cross this road. Eek! Amid the chaos, we devise a technique of sorts. Choose a non-suicidal ‘gap’ and set off. Walk. Just keep moving, steadily and predictably; look ’em in the eye; do nothing sudden; they will miss you. They will beep you, but they will miss you. They are used to it. More than once we hitched a ride with a rubbish cart, broadsiding through the swerving traffic – body language conveying ‘Is it alright if we…?’ ‘Oh, for sure – tuck in.’
Food, glorious food
What to eat, and where, not least on account of Tet, which means everyone’s everywhere but everywhere’s closed.
People on pavement corners, on little plastic stools, slurping pho – the national dish…a sort of noodle broth. We choose a corner, just down the road from our hotel. Many slurpers, a woman doing the business with piles of fresh ingredients and a super-size pan on a gaz stove, a son, presumably, taking orders. Yes please, pho. Yes, two. Yes. Thank you.
Within a minute or two, pho appears, and is delicious. We strike up conversation with a man called Nam, who tells us his friend is in England working for a company that designs missile guidance systems for missiles being used in Ukraine. I said he must be very clever. He looked surprised, thought about it for a moment, and said “No.” Cue laughter.
Welcome to Vietnam!