Flowers in Hanoi
Something noticeable in Hanoi city is the number of flower sellers and flower boutiques with exotic flowers. Vendors with cone shaped bamboo hats walk around with bamboo sticks over their shoulders carrying flowers on either side of the scales.
When I entered my room in Rising Dragon Hotel my bed was strewn with red rose petals and leaves.
‘It’s for you, the flowers,’ Sinh the receptionist informed me. I wanted give her the usual tip you give a bell-boy but she refused: ‘just enjoy your stay in our hotel,’ she asked.
The Vietnamese do not harass you in the streets; they don’t beg and do not demand that you buy their wares, no tries to sell you any phone cards or medicine. You can go for a walk without being disturbed or aggravated by street urchins.
I stumbled upon a hidden church in an alley one night. I did not understand a word and they did not understand me, but when they lifted their hands in praise I did the same.
Take a walk with me in Hoan Kiem Lake District of Hanoi and you’ll get an idea of how life is lived in that ancient part of the city.
Most café’s have kindergarten plastic chairs and tables, because people are small and used to squatting. Europeans and especially large Americans look uncomfortable on those baby chairs sipping their chosen beverage! They have the odd café where you get really good Arabic coffee, thick and black and very tasty with a strong aroma that you breathe in.
Five middle aged ladies discus some issues around two tables pushed together. At another table a family relaxes and talks. Some young men sip their beers and tea and make passes at the waitress.
On my way to the café I passed a funeral parlour. Wreathes of fake flowers and silk banners cover the caskets. There is a queue outside on the pavement where people line up to order a casket and design the banners. The coffins are piled up inside the gate.
Cremation is the normal way of disposing of the dead. The coffins are obviously removed when the cadaver is cremated. It is just there for the show.
Today the bearers look like a scene from the Boxer revolution: they are dressed in black karate suits with white sashes around their head. White is a sign of mourning in the east – the west just does the opposite.
There are sad faces all around and even some tears.
Life’s activities continue next door to the funeral parlour. There is a nail bar where toe nails are clipped and painted on the pavement, a hairdressing saloon, a woman sitting in front of her little store, with a fluffy white dog on her lap; a laundry service, a liquor store and a dressmaker surround the parlour almost as if to say death is part of life.
Although there are zebra crossings in the streets, no one pays attention to them. Pedestrians have to zig-zag their way through the oncoming traffic comprising mostly of motor bikes and scooters and the odd taxi. It’s risky business crossing a street!
The Vietnamese love tine canary like birds. There are cages hanging in front of most shops. The vendors even walk through the café with a cage or two trying to sell the birds to the customers.
Some alleys become parking lots for motor bikes and scooters. They are neatly parked and there is an official that has to be paid to look after the bikes.
Electric cables hang low over the streets like black spaghetti.
Children are hardly seen during the day. They go to school. At night they come out to play on the sidewalks. The grownups squat on flattened card board boxes and cook their meals on the sidewalks as well. The apartments are too small to house any visitors so the social life is spent on the sidewalk in the warm and sultry evening.
Most people wear jeans and T-shirts. Only vendors wear the traditional garments that hang loose like oversized pyjamas. Businessmen wear suits with open neck white dress shirts. Women pay a lot of attention to their foot wear. They wear neat, colourful shoes, even while driving their scooters. Foreigners wear slops and sandals. Only the poor wear sandals in Hanoi – they cannot afford shoes.
An elderly man with broken teeth and dirty feet in worn out sandals entertains a baby by prancing around and singing childish ditties. They baby and the mother pay little attention to him. Funny how a baby brings out the child in all of us!
Women walk arm-in-arm, three-by-three, talking incessantly about feminine interests.
A little boy picks lice from his father’s hair while the father sips his coffee. You often see women picking lice from each other’s hair as well. It is not uncommon for them to eat the lice as a form of protein.
An old lady that runs a tiny shop limps on bandaged foot and treats customers with rudeness, sometimes waving them away and shouting at them. She has no intent to impress anyone.
Old people stare at you as a foreigner with intense curiosity and when you look back they share a shy toothless smile with you.
Policemen dressed in khaki-green uniforms eye you with suspicion, fruit sellers guard their fruit with patience, bikers wait on street corners looking for a signal for you to ask for a lift and then charge you $5 wherever you want to go.
Xin Choa is hello in Vietnamese. Tam biet is goodbye. Cam un is thank you and xin moi is please.
The buildings are old and dilapidated and there are flags everywhere, the red national flag with the yellow star flaps from balconies and in front of shops wherever you go.
There are Buddhist shrines in every house, every shop, every restaurant and hotel, even in the middle of the rice fields en route to the airport. The signs above shops and buildings are all in Vietnamese, you do not understand a thing.
The music in shops or restaurants is Vietnamese; it is foreign to the Western ear. Even when string orchestras perform they pluck and stroke the strings with a different attack than musicians from abroad.
The main industries are all Japanese or Korean, even the banks are from those two colossal Eastern giants. The Vietnamese Dong is about 200 to the American Dollar.
In restaurants you won’t understand the menu unless they show the pictures of the meals. To purchase anything in shops you have to communicate with hand signals to know how much to pay for an article.
It’s so easy to get totally lost in the maze of streets and alleyways in Hanoi so it is good to keep a card with the hotel name and address handy when you need to wave a biker taxi down.
Tam biet, Vietnam!
