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Essence, Hanoi
Author: Anothertravelguide.com
As you arrive in Hanoi, the first thing you notice is the houses: the unique tube-style buildings, huddling together like a packful of matches, each with a different façade details and colour-scheme, create one (albeit slightly surreal and chaotic) architectural whole. Your second impression will probably be motorbikes (scooters, mopeds) - or rather a sea of motorbikes, streaming past just a couple of inches away, transporting every thinkable and unthinkable cargo: a whole family complete with a newborn baby; a fridge; fruit boxes; the complete set of someone's personal effects. The third thing remarkable about Hanoi is safety helmets: wearing them while driving a motorbike was made mandatory about a year ago due to the outrageous number of road accidents; since then, helmets have become objects of style and fashion in Vietnam. You will see drivers sporting everything from vintage army-style helmets to hot pink ones adorned with Barbie stickers. True enough, these are just details - the most vivid of the first-moment glimpses of the unique Hanoi patina, the like of which you will be hard pressed to find anywhere in the world. Hanoi is a city shaped by everything that has ever happened to it: wars, colonists, geographical realities. 2010 will see Hanoi mark its 1000th anniversary; during the millennium of its history, the city has been called a variety of names: under the Chinese rule it was first known as Tong Binh to be renamed Thang Long (or the Ascending Dragon) in the 11th century. It was given the name of Hanoi in 1831 by the King Minh Mang ("ha" meaning "river", "noi" - "inside"). Geographically Hanoi is a city between two rivers - the Red River and the Lich River. It is located 5-6 metres below sea level, which explains the frequent flooding. The long and narrow city, divided into seven inner and five outer districts, used to be home to several hundred lakes. Before any roads were built, the locals used rivers and canals to get around. There are still more than 20 lakes in Hanoi, some created by nature, some man-made; they are the lungs of the city and a significant venue of its social life at the same time.
The inhabitants of the city have long since got used to its perpetual transformation. However, while the first impression is of unfettered urban construction work going on all over the place, in Hanoi, unlike other Asian metropolises, the old is not destroyed to create room for new buildings; quite the opposite, in fact - everything is integrated into a single chaotic unit, intertwining layers upon layers of styles and centuries. Between the 11th and 19th centuries, Hanoi architecture was dominated by the Vietnamese style with some Chinese accents; between the mid-1800s and the mid-1900s, the influence of French colonists was strong here - look for the most obvious signs in the districts of Hoan Kiem and Ba Dinh in the shape of wide avenues and opulent mansions. The French built "their" Hanoi as an Asian Paris, the capital of Indochina. And then, of course, there is the demonstrative presence of Socialist architecture, the Ho Chi Minh Mauseoleum being the most vivid of them. Residents of the city will claim that nothing but a vague echo of the original legendary ambience has survived; nevertheless, wandering the narrow streets of the old quarter will make you feel like a genuine time traveller (although motorbikes have replaced the bicycles) - until you set foot inside the next contemporary art gallery and find yourself living and breathing the present once again. Hanoi engulfs you with an incredible intensity of experience - be it cultural, culinary or any other kind.
Keywords: essence, Hanoi, Vietnam
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