19 April 2009

First Impressions of Hanoi

These photos (click here) are a random sampling of my first couple of weeks in Hanoi. I've been lucky to arrive when the nice days of early summer have yet to turn swelteringly hot and humid. I hope the pictures can speak for themselves, but a few comments follow, though as a disclaimer, please remember that my first impressions of a place (or a job, person, trip, etc.) are invariably superficial, overly comparative to other places, and skewed toward what I read before arriving.



I love my high-rise apartment with ample space for that piano I bought, and sporting not one but two balconies overlooking not one but two lakes ringed with small shops, beer and seafood stalls, and paddleboats that look like swans. A lot of the mornings and evenings are foggy/smoggy/cloudy, but it's still pretty hot.

Nothing is far apart in Hanoi city proper, I've already crossed traffic on foot many times, taken the public buses, ridden on the back of a motorbike "taxi," and used my stuttering Vietnamese to make fun of cab drivers for getting lost.


People seem quite friendly and easy-going, even when they can't understand my mangling of the Vietnamese language. I have the luxury of continuing language courses full time for a while before starting full-time at the office. By full time I mean 24/7, which even on the most difficult days of being misunderstood by a street vendor is more entertaining than a classroom-only experience.


There's plenty of history in Vietnam and Hanoi that precedes the Communists, the Americans, or the French, and next year Hanoi will celebrate its 1000th anniversary. The old citadel isn't far and with many other parks and lakes the city is very green, which still doesn't offset the mushrooming number of motorbikes, mopeds, and other vehicles on the roads. There are sidewalks, more than I recall there ever being in Chennai, but they are inconvenient to use because they are used for motorbike parking. Tonight I saw an ice cream shop and an eyeglasses store, both drive-up/drive-through with your motorbike.


Streets are lined with shops, and similar to Chennai, you often all the shops that sell similar things on one street (houseplants, cell phones, maternity clothes, plastic flowers, bamboo products, shoes, etc.).

I think I'm going to like it here, a lot.