With prescient timing we had scheduled a walking tour for the wettest day of the year in North Vietnam. We had to concede a slightly later start but soon we were ankle deep in water. And the good news was that all the rain had caused the temperature and the humidity to drop. When we arrived in Hanoi it was 37 celsius and 98% humid - any reduction would stop us contributing to the liquid by melting.
First stop was the Revolutionary Museum which contained pictorial records of the various conflicts - involving at different times Chinese, Japanese, French, American, Cambodian and British (happily as liberators in 1945). forces - which have helped shape modern Vietnam. There were many pictures of "father of the nation" Ho Chi Minh and a handsome chap he was in his youth. Perhaps not as handsome as William Wallace (who, of course, was a dead ringer for Mel Gibson) but close.
The final part of the museum was given over to happier, more recent times with pictures of oil installations, a giant model of a hydro-electric plant and of serious looking delegations from Russia. It could do with some photographs from the frenetic streets with a multitude of overlapping advertising bill boards, swarms of scooters and the colour of local trading in everything from raw meat to fine art to complete the picture. The colours of the freedom so hard won.
And which we then witnessed first hand.
The rain had become a fine drizzle so we felt at home as we set off to explore the Old Quarter by foot. The Old Quarter dates back to the pre 1954 French period but also has the influence of:
- the Chinese with distinctive roof lines;
- a period of planning liberalisation between 2000 and 2003 when development was uncontrolled; and
- of taxes which make a narrow shop front with a very long thin building behind more desireable than the wider frontage one see in Edinburgh or London.
Combine all this with the typical Asian street life which makes every blank wall an advertising opportunity, every inch of pavement a market or a cafe or a motorbike stand and the unfinished knitting of telephone wires necessary to support all this in a digital age and you begin to have the picture of streets that teem with life.
I don't think it was always thus. In 1991 when Shona and I were in Vietnam last we were told to avoid Hanoi because it was much more strictly communist. The streets, we were told, were clean and well organised. Our impression was of a sterile and controlled environment. And yet these are the very same streets and buildings that now pulse with life. Thanks be to Moi Doi - the Communist capitalist freedom under which Vietnam now operates.
The real estate in the Old Quarter may have a small frontage. The doorways may lead to long passages and stairways containing many sub-divided dwellings - which are mainly shared "bathroom". Yet prices are very high - $3000 per square metre - and nobody is selling.
Everywhere there is activity and people. Smiling people. When Shona slipped in the market (needs to stop the morning sherry, I feel) there were many helping hands offered spontaneously. Ever the big spenders we bought a packet of sweetened dry strawberries and a grapefruit which was peeled for us with a small cleaver. But we could have bought almost anything. A memorable metaphor: colourful streets where you can buy almost anything from smiling people.
Keith
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