May 9, 2012
It’s almost midnight.
Valerie and I are in our room in small guesthouse, buried at the end of one of the countless narrow alleyways of Hanoi.
I began to become familiar with this city, getting to learn how to cross the roads. That’s way harder than it sounds.
Valerie and I, too, began to become familiar to each other. We got to share a bed, and it will only make the process easier.
You can’t expect much more from a first day. We managed to survive the crazy traffic the crowds the streets, and we’re slowly getting to know each other. The outset is promising.
May 10
6pm.
We’re in the bar of Hanoi Cinématique, a nice, cozy place that was hard to find, hidden in one of the thousand narrow streets that connect this city like a spiderweb. You never really know for sure whether you’re still on the street, or perhaps in the backyard of somebody’s house.
Besides the omnipresent chaos of a dense traffic of cars, motorbikes, pedestrians, bikes and carts, some sort of hidden, and highly interesting, side of the city is slowly appearing before my eyes.
May 17
I didn’t collect any particular impression or memory of Hanoi, where, after all, we only spent few days. We spent most of the time in the old city, especially around Hoam Kiem lake, during the day, and around our guesthouse at night.
I saw the thousand alleyways, the small restaurants at the crossroads of the streets, with dwarf-size chairs where locals sit to eat and play cards; village women selling fruits and vegetables that they carry on two plates at the two sides of a thick bamboo stick, like a libra; thousands and thousands of motorbikes, that are literally everywhere, at every time of the day, flowing in every direction, completely unaware of traffic lights, lanes, roundabouts and sidewalks, crossing each other in the most arduous way.
A travel always has to have a starting point, which is perhaps doomed to be unfavoured to the traveller’s eyes. You need to physically and mentally get in touch with the place, learn the many little customs and practices, get used to the climate, and get culturally shocked.
My impression was that Hanoi isn’t a particularly interesting city. With some places, we fall in love immediately, we cherish memories; sometimes, we discover places we will wish to visit again, places that we part from, saying in our heart see you soon, see you soon again.
Other places cross our experience quite much like strangers who cross our path on a street, without almost noticing them. Hanoi has been like this to me, merely a passageway, a place which didn’t awake any emotions in me.
However, there’s maybe much more. Maybe it was due to my attitude and mindset, that I was unable to discover the most interesting aspects of Hanoi. Maybe it would have been different, if my travel didn’t start from there, and I were to visit it later, when I got used to Asian cities already.
But it doesn’t matter in the end. A travel isn’t about going to some place and having to like it, no matter what. A travel doesn’t even necessarily require to move somewhere. Travelling is all about getting disorientated, getting lost in order to find a new direction, a new placement; and even if the starting point isn’t thrilling, it’s still a start.
-
-
Hoam Kiem lake
-
-
Hoam Kiem lake
-
-
Barber
-
-
Street marketer
-
-
Ngoc Son Temple
-
-
Ngoc Son Temple
-
-
Street marketer
-
-
Street marketer
-
-
Laundry
at walking distance 