socialist republic of scooterville

The display on my mobile shows 6:15am, and the city is buzzing. At least half of the shops have already opened, people are congregating on the cluttered pavements for breakfast, and food vendors are laying out tiny plastic chairs – no more than about 30cm high – for their customers. Not far away, foul-smelling three-wheeled garbage carts lurk in grey herds, waiting sullenly for their chance to devour whatever falls from the breakfast table.

At one edge of the throng are small groups of men, also lurking. Depending on when and where you are, they either stand expectantly waiting to spring into action, or lean back casually on their motorbikes, nursing cigarettes in their hands and calling "Hello! Xe om?" or "Moto?"* to passers-by. If you show interest,

they helpfully produce a spare helmet, which is usually just about strong enough to protect your head from a stiff breeze.

Picking your way through the chaos, you pass enormous chickens standing terrified in their bell-shaped cages, hoping not to be on today's menu, while fish, shrimps and yabbies swim in filthy plastic buckets. Dogs and cats stand tied up outside shops (or sometimes caged inside), and occasionally a rat can be seen dashing bravely through the field of engagement, from one piece of cover to the next.

The traffic, meanwhile, has yet to hit its horrible peak, but already it's thickening like blood in an unhealthy artery. Even at this early hour, a foreigner could be forgiven for doubting that so many motor-scooters actually exist on Earth, and suspecting that there are just 10,000 or so going around the same block on some kind of endless loop. The fumes are intense, and you're starting to understand why so many people opt for those ridiculous face masks – which, btw, are available here in an extensive range of colours, patterns, novelty shapes and Hello Kitty prints.

For all of this mad activity, though, the city has yet to officially begin its day.

As six-thirty rolls around, something new pierces the airwaves**. Beatific music is blasted from lo-fi loudspeakers around the city, carried on cushions of polluted air to the ears of every citizen. And then a voice begins talking: urgent, shrill, and incredibly annoying. If you live near one of these loudspeakers, this morning announcement will finish what the lack of oxygen started, giving you a headache that could last you till the evening. It continues for about 15 minutes, then dies away and allows the army of scooters to once again take pole position in the race to corrode your eardrums.

And so ... welcome to another day in Ha Noi, glorious capital of the glorious Socialist Republic of Viet Nam.

*cough, wheeze, splutter*

But why (you might just conceivably be thinking) am I telling you about early morning street life in Ha Noi? Well, the reason's pretty simple: Yuliya and I now live here.

We arrived in Viet Nam on September 10th and signed nine-month contracts with our school, which of course means that they end next June. Thing is, though, after two weeks of life in the city we're already having serious doubts. We seem to spend a lot of our time trying to convince ourselves that we don't, y'know, utterly loathe and despise the place ... and so far we're not making much headway.

To be fair, our Ha Noi experience hasn't been completely without adventure, and the city isn't entirely lacking in atmospheric spots. For the first few nights, we stayed in a hotel hidden in a maze of alleyways, which was fun to explore. The first day also saw Yuliya getting acquainted with chopsticks, as we ate in local restaurants, ordering from menus we didn't understand and hoping we'd get something edible that was neither frog, dog nor pigeon. That was kind of an adventure in itself.

(Incidentally, as with every new thing she tries, my mad genius of a wife picked up the chopstick technique almost immediately. Jealous!)

I'd also have to say that the colours of the city are pretty amazing. You don't really notice how vivid they are until you review some of your own photos and think "Wow, look at those reds, yellows and greens!" After that, you start appreciating the intense tonal contrasts.

In general, though, our first few days in Scooterville saw us inundated with relentless, deafening noise, drenched in sweat (the temp was about +30, but the humidity was just incredible), repulsed by the never-ending bad smells – especially those which emanate from the city's stomach-churningly putrid waterways – and wondering what the Hell we were doing here.

On our first weekend we decided to get out of the city, which gave us a break from the noise, but in every other way it just confirmed the ickiness. We went to Tam Coc: a place about two hours from Ha Noi, where you cycle through villages and countryside to a town beside a river, then row down the river, which goes underneath several mountains. The scenery there was rather beautiful (and quiet!), but again, the villages were ugly, with construction materials lying everywhere and reservoirs of stagnant water that stank so badly it made me want to bring up breakfast. And the weather was appalling. I lost a few litres of liquid just on the bike ride (which was only about 6km ... i.e. no distance at all, compared to my recent 'cycling days' in Finland).

Still, at least we got to see foot-rowing, a skill that I was previously unaware of. Oh ... and inside a Buddhist shrine in a place called Ho Lua, we found out what Vietnamese people consider to be a suitable offering to the Gods. Not sure that, if I were a divine presence, I'd be so thrilled to receive half-a-dozen cans of coca cola. Then again ... maybe along with the vodka, it would help pass some time in the Otherworld ;-)

Back to Ha Noi for the second week, and it was more of the same: noise, smells, problems with food. We'd initially enjoyed the Asiatic flavours in some of Ha Noi's cafes and restaurants, but as we stayed longer, we noticed restaurant staff doing some really dodgy things, like sticking their hands into the middle of a dish to 'fluff it up', and handling food with filthy fingernails. Perhaps the worst thing we discovered, though, was the tendency of restaurants here to 're-use' food. This means that, for example, if you don't finish your soup, they'll take the leftover portion into their kitchen and pour it back into the pot. Result: the next customer gets part of your soup.

I'm fairly sure this happened to me once in a beer hall restaurant near our hotel. The waitress recommended chicken soup to me, then a few moments later went to clear a big table where several people had been eating what she'd recommended. A few minutes after that, my bowl of chicken soup appeared, looking unaturally thick and ... I don't know, somehow just 'wrong'. I ate it anyway, 'cause I figured it was just 'Vietnamese-style'. Then afterwards Yuliya and I put two and two together, and came up with "Euuuwww!!!".

Later we asked a couple of people about this, and they said "Yeah, you have to be careful about re-used food here". Great.

So that compromised one of the few things we were enjoying about the city up to that point. Which left ... er, our boss (who's awesome), the friendliness of Vietnamese people (who are incredibly smiley and keen to say "hello" – though their friendliness does seem quite insincere at times), and ... well, the coffee. The coffee here is beyond all expectations. I'm gonna tell you about it in a separate entry, 'cause it deserves a page of its own on The Manor.

Oh, and about those public announcements I mentioned earlier: I asked around to find out more information, 'cause they struck me as probably being a 'socialist relic', and I admit to becoming a bit fascinated (while simultaneously annoyed) by them. Far as I've worked out, the loudspeaker systems mostly date from a time when lots of Hanoians didn't have their own TV or radio at home – so I guess they were a kind of 'public service' (with an ulterior motive, of course). On the other hand, I've also heard that more have been installed during 2010, to prepare for Ha Noi's 1,000-year anniversary celebrations.

Yay   >:-[

Accounts vary as to what kind of information comes from the speakers. Back in the day they were definitely a party tool, spouting communist rhetoric and so on. I also read somewhere (don't know if it's true) that they were used for 'shaming' purposes; i.e. lists of people who hadn't paid bills were read out over the air, so that the whole city could hear about Citizen Trang's unpatriotic failure to pay for his electricity.

In recent years the flavour of the announcements has beсome more 'news of the day', with a light dusting of propaganda (stories about good things the government have done for its population recently and so on). In the lead-up to the 1,000th anniversary, morning announcements have also included some stories from Viet Nam's history, to stir up some national pride among the volk. That's also the idea of the music I mentioned before – it's mostly comprised of patriotic hymns.

On a more ordinary day, you can even hear the price of fish, rice and eggs blasted at 100s of decibels across the city. Though of course, if you happen to be one of those unlucky people with a speaker placed right outside your flat, you might not be quite as keen to know that rice is cheaper this month than last month as you are, say, to protect yourself from permanent hearing damage, or to have the option of sleeping in occasionally!

So anyway, that was our first two weeks in the city which (thanks to my boss) I've come to think of and refer to as "Scooterville".

 

Of course, we know that Viet Nam is under no obligation not to be crappy, and you could even argue that it has a kind of 'special dispensation'. I mean, it was only 40 years ago that the whole country was virtually annihilated, when the US put Operation Destroy an Entire Nation For No Good Reason And Fail Disastrously into effect. They dropped more bombs here than were dropped in the whole of WWII (by everyone, not just by the Americans), and the chemical constituents of some of those explosives were absolutely ruinous from an agricultural point of view. So the fact that the country still exists at all is a frikkin' miracle. In that sense, it isn't Viet Nam's fault that it's kind of an unpleasant place to live, and we're trying to keep that in mind.

It also has to be said that not every foreigner who comes here feels the way we do about it. We've met a couple of people who absolutely love Ha Noi and wouldn't be anywhere else, and others who say it was "difficult at first" but they "got used to it", and now "quite like it".

As to whether we'll stay ... well, of course we're gonna give it some more time. Two weeks is not enough to judge how you feel about a city. That said, I have a sneaking feeling that we won't be seeing out our contracts.

More about this soon, no doubt.  

Bye!  
 

* Xe-om / Moto = motorbike taxi

(** I wanted to say "fills the airwaves" ... but they were already full.)