Danny Gregory

Each night, I’d wander out in search of noodles and adventure.

Hanoi has a sprawling War Museum, like an auto junk yard full of the remains of captured tanks, planes and choppers. A great place to draw, despite the rain.

The French used to think they owned this country. Ha!

 

In Hanoi, you pay your real estate taxes based on the frontage of your home. Thus arose the convention of the ‘tube’ house, a narrow looking building with a small doorway that accordions out on the inside to include all sorts of added-on rooms, balconies, staircases, ladders, water tanks, a hodge-podge of a home that sprouts features over time.

Much of the  city has this higgledy-piggeldy vibe. Old and new stuff converge everywhere, ancient banyan trees sprout ethernet cables,  ancient Confucian temples fly Communist flags, crooked old ladies in conical hats stagger down the road, one hand steadying a bamboo stick hung with wicker baskets, the other poking an iPhone 6.

(To be continued, maybe tomorrow)

 

On my first morning in Hanoi, I took a jet-lagged stroll through my new ‘hood and came upon a spider’s nest of electric and phone cables on the pole at the corner.

The wires do more than carry messages. Many are decorated with twittering bird cages.

America fought and lost a war with these people and Vietnam is a Communist country. But it’s hard to say what that means any more.

Simple pleasures abound. A lake-side plastic chair, a glass of joe, a drawing as the sun goes down.

(To be continued, probably tomorrow)

The flight to Hanoi is fairly tough, especially back in economy class. You read your magazine, then your read your book, then you watch the good movies, then you nap, then you watch the bad movies, then you eat some kind of chicken, then you watch the Korean TV shows, then you read the inflight catalog, then you land in Hong Kong.

It’s a whole other day, you want breakfast but it’s dinner time, you shop for gold Rolexes and look at perfume displays and then you get back on the plane again. It’s a different plane supposedly, but whatever.

Hanoi isn’t quite like any other place I’ve been. It’s crazy like Bangkok, but more down-to-earth. It’s vibrant like Beijing, but less ambitious. It’s dusty like Kuala Lumpur, but without face veils. It’s warm like Doha, but no Maserati showrooms.

Most days seem foggy but that’s actually motor fumes and wood smoke. The Air Quality Index is 45 in New York. In Hanoi, it’s 360.

Scooters mosquito past all night and day, vast swarms of them stacked high with egg cartons, toolboxes, slim dogs, kettles of fish, and toddlers. If people wear helmets at all, they look to be made of plastic, covered with flowers, or manga characters, like inverted kindergarten lunch pails.

(To be continued, probably tomorrow)