Morning scenery on my way to work.
August, 2023
I love leaving the house early in the morning. I wish the doorman a good day and cycle off to work. In the narrow lane leading to my house, not four meters wide, I am immediately part of everyday Vietnamese life. First the neighbor’s dog crosses my way, then several chickens "living" a few houses away, and then the very old lady with the traditional nón lá (the conical leaf hat) and the ao ba ba (I would say street-pajamas). Whenever I see her, she is already on her way home from the morning market, carrying two small plastic bags: A small piece of meat in one, herbs and a few vegetables in the other.
The morning market is held 7 days a week until noon and is a pretty straightforward affair. The vendors, mostly women, sell directly on the street, from their bicycles or from the entrance of their house. I could buy the whole range of seasonal fruit and vegetables and common foods like whole chickens, pigs' legs and ears, meat, but also fish, frogs, crabs and snails. Apparently, most of the vendors resell what they bought at the central market, and I assume that the one or other chicken and some of the vegetables and herbs are home-grown. Where the fish comes from, I don't want to know. I sincerely hope, not from the lake nearby, because it doesn't look and smell healthy at all. A “stall” with household goods and one with knickers and slippers and one or two flower sellers complete the offer for daily needs. For my breakfast I regularly stop briefly to buy one peeled pineapple and a portion of sticky rice, topped with fried shallots and crushed peanuts, wrapped in a banana leave and a piece of paper.
My neighborhood with its many small alleys is just great, but the larger Yên Phụ Street that I take to work is also great. It’s the characteristic mix of shops that make the street interesting at any time of day, with supermarkets, nail salons, tailors, milk shops, cafés, pharmacies, food stalls with the tiny red and blue stools, repair shops and bike washes – more or less all of them using the sidewalk for their business. At the end of the road and just before I arrive at the office, I have to cross a big road without traffic lights. It's my daily challenge to make it without having to stop, which I usually manage to do by riding very close to or behind a car or motorbike and ringing like crazy. A few more meters, then I turn right, roll down to the road by the lake and I'm in the office.
Morning exercise and foot badminton
Also in my neighborhood, not on the way to work but in the opposite direction, there is a public square in front of a small altar. This place is used for different activities. The elderly use it for early morning exercise with music, a group of westerners for high intensity workout, families for children's birthday parties, couples like to play early morning badminton and groups for foot badminton. For this popular street game, a Vietnamese national sport, all you need is a birdie, a net and a ready foot. So far, I have only seen men playing it, kicking a small birdie made of rubber and plastic back and forth. Apparently, it’s an ancient game that dates back to the 11th century. Cô Lien told me that the sport was neglected between 1950 and 1970 and only revived when a well-known pediatrician in Hanoi started campaigning to revive the sport, especially among children, in the mid-1970s. No matter how hot and humid it is, these players meet there and play endless games and it's totally awesome to stop and watch for a moment.
Evening art tour
During the time when I worked in another office and rode home on my bike, I experienced a completely different scenery. I had to take a big street that runs parallel to the Red River, with a long, interrupted wall, that is part of the dike system. I have to confess that I only really noticed the wall after a few weeks when the last rays of sunlight fell on it and threw light on a colorful and shiny mosaic. In fact, this wall is an artwork, an around 6,5-kilometer-long mural with images depicting history, peace messages, local legends, fantasy flowers, all kind of animals from elephants and water buffalo, to crabs and crayfish, to turtles and fish, as well as graphic patterns. The idea for this public artwork on the occasion of the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of Hanoi came from a journalist. In 2007, national and international artists started the mural and finished it for the anniversary in 2010.
You don't see any tourists on the narrow footpath in front of the mural. I already wrote in the other blog article that Hanoi is not made for pedestrians, but people do stop. Not so much because of the mural itself, but because of the vendors who set up their businesses here in the evening. My favorite vendor sells an amazing number of goldfish directly from his bike. For me, this man represents all the people in the city who (over)load large quantities of goods on motorbikes, carrying them to sell around the city. There is nothing the Vietnamese cannot transport by motorbike, from tall stacks of flowers to child-sized vases from the pottery village of Bat Trang, where the mosaic tiles come from, to huge gas bottles and egg cartons stacked high and live fish swimming in plastic bags. Love it!
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