Organizing Chaos
I (Allen) strolled into Hanoi like I knew exactly what I was doing. We got off the plane, bargained with the taxi official, and made our way into the Hanoi French Quarter with only minor hiccups. I had this SouthEast Asia thing figured out. I’d done this before. I wasn’t going to have any issues with this at all.
Ha! Surprise, idiot!
Rachel’s parents very graciously told us that they’d pay for our first couple of nights in Hanoi in a decent hotel instead of the shitty guesthouses that we’d be staying in henceforth, and I cannot thank them enough for this. Our hotel (the lovely Lapis Hotel, with it’s outdoor rooftop infinity pool, indoor spa, and fantastic hospitality) was situated in the French Quarter of Hanoi, about a mile from the Old Quarter, and we were well pleased with the buffer.
The Old Quarter; almost as old as this bicycle.
You see, Hanoi is a very old city. Parts of the Old Quarter date back a thousand years -- the Emperor who originally unified Vietnam, Le Thai To, named it his capital in AD 1010 – and has since been through several wars, a French occupation, a Communist revolution, and American bombing raids throughout the 1960s. It still reigns as the capital of the country of Vietnam, and is the final resting place of her founder, Ho Chi Minh (or Uncle Ho, to the locals).
Buying flowers for Rachel on the 'Cafe Street;' the lady selling them is so short you can only see her hat.
The heart of the city, the Old Quarter, is located just North of a lake called Hoan Kiem; this lake sports two islands – one has a temple with a beautiful red bridge that you definitely should visit, and the other is inaccessible but has a monument to a legend regarding a sword in the lake. The lake is beautiful; there’s broad boulevards and gardens surrounding it, with locals running or doing Tai Chi in the mornings, and its tranquil waters aren’t disturbed by boat or swimmer.
However, don’t let this relative peace fool you, as the Old Quarter is anything but quiet. Chaos and insanity rule in this small area, with motorcycles and cars zooming by pedestrians with inches to spare in the twisted corridors and “one-way” streets that make up the spiritual center of this town. This assault on the senses is where we spent most of our time in Hanoi.
We had a laundry list of things to do in Hanoi, foremost of which was procure some motorcycles in order to continue our trek into the wild Northern provinces of Vietnam. However, we got distracted by the history, and the café culture on the way.
Cafe culture in Hanoi was off the charts.
The vibrant history of Hanoi is self evident down whichever alleyway you decide to turn, but the café culture came as somewhat of a surprise. Hanoi, being the capital of French Indochina, inherited a bit of a coffee addiction from it’s former French inhabitants, and it shows. Black coffee, white coffee, egg coffee, coconut coffee; you name it, they’ve got it.
With the French occupation came other monuments, one of which was the French Quarter in which we were staying. With wide, paved streets, baroque architecture, and a serious Banh My (Vietnamese sandwiches inside French baguettes – more on the food here in another post) fixation we couldn’t shake, our first hotel was surrounded by the memory of these former occupants.
The 'old railroad' still had trains running down it, though you wouldn't have known this by how close the houses were on either side, or the lady sitting in the middle of the tracks...
But, ever present was the Old Quarter, and the sights, sounds, smells and tastes here. We spent our days walking through these streets, down unfamiliar alleyways, trying foods we didn’t know, sitting down with Vietnamese families for breakfast without really understanding what was going on. It was the best and worst first experience of Asia, and the constant motion of this area of the city mirrored our farewell from North America so much that it almost felt like we were still on that same speed we were on back home, rather than having finally escaped into the (dis)comfort of travel.
Hanoi was the beginning of our trip, and the beginning of Vietnam. Trying to wrangle the chaos that we experienced here to fit our plans was like herding cats, but after four days in the city we finally procured our two mighty steeds and headed out. I still don’t even really feel like we scratched the surface of what this city had to offer in our time here, but I do feel that we captured the pulse of the place. We will be back to Hanoi!
Even in all of the chaos, you can still find some tranquility.
