Where have all these people come from?

  Hanoi, Vietnam
Thursday, December 21, 2006

We arrived in Hanoi by bus after crossing the border from China with relative ease. It seems that with each checkpoint we come to, we get a bit less "British" about queuing. We first noticed this skill - that seems innate to all other nationalities - when crossing from Turkey into Georgia back in June. We were dutifully waiting our turn when we realised that we were getting nowhere so we devised a rolling queue blocking action to make sure no wily locals could get their passports stamped ahead of us. It seemed to work and we've employed it to varying degrees ever since. We take it so much for granted now that we didn't realise how adept at it we've become, until we noticed that we had made so much more progress than the only other two Westerners (he was British she was American) on the bus.

01 Bananaman

Now until we'd arrived in the Vietnamese capital we could have sworn that there were only a handful of other backpackers in the whole of Asia - at least if our experiences in China, Korea and to a certain extent Japan were anything to go by. So you can imagine the shock we had when we got to Hanoi and kept seeing white faces everywhere. What, we asked, were these people doing here? The place was alive with holidaymakers. Many of them were clearly here for a short break, but a few people we met in our hostel were on longer trips. A couple had also crossed from China and they too looked a bit shell-shocked.

02 Santa Outfits (and Mopeds)

As well as being mesmerised by all the western faces we were immediately entranced by Vietnam. We were struck by all the differences between it and her Northern neighbour. The architecture was one of the most noticeable things - in China five decades of Communist rule has led to an alarming lack of architectural aesthetics - white bathroom tiles and blue glass windows abound. In Hanoi old colonial style buildings with whitewashed fronts and shuttered windows vie for space with brightly painted curiously skinny modern buildings. The variety is really noticeable after the strange uniformity of Chinese cities.

04 These people take no prisoners

If the buildings appeared photogenic, then so too were the people - you don't realise until you get here that people really do wear those conical bamboo hats you see in old pictures. I'd imagined it was a stereotype, but we saw hundreds of women wearing them as they walked the streets of the old town hawking their wares. They carrying yolks over their shoulders with two baskets hanging from either end, full of everything from fruit and flowers to brooms and bicycle parts. We also saw some resourceful women carrying full kitchens around with them - they were able to cook up a complete meal and serve it with fresh juice to customers sitting on small plastic stools on the pavements all with what they had in their baskets. Extraordinary.

If the people and the buildings were different to China then the traffic and the way you have to take your life in your hands when crossing the road is all to reminiscent of Beijing. Except here, instead of cars and bikes, you're dodging mopeds - hundreds of them. Neither of us have seen so may in one place - they must outnumber cars by about a hundred to one, if not more.

03 Flower lady amidst the chaos

We intend to come back to Hanoi early in the new year so we spent our brief stopover here shopping for Christmas presents - the handicrafts on sale are beautiful - and eating baguettes and drinking coffee in French style cafés. We decided to save serious sightseeing until our return, as we had tickets for the Reunification Express: the train from Hanoi all the way down to Ho Chi Minh City. We needed to get down to Saigon to meet Jim's parents for Christmas Eve as they're passing through on a cruise. So with this in mind we boarded the train for the 34 and a half hour journey South. We must be crazy!