Hanoi

December. Blog theme: celebrations. Time to talk about Christmas. Wait a minute, stop. There is no Christmas here. At least not in Hanoi. December is not a month of celebration in Vietnam. This doesn’t mean that there are no Christmas decorations. There are a lot. The city is full of them. Probably a kind of universal December ornamentation. But real Christmas spirit appears rarely. And why should it? After all, the majority of Vietnamese are not Christians.

The big celebration takes place in January or February, as I wrote in my first blog entry. So this closes the circle. Tet is the main festival of the year. The festival that is the central event of the annual calendar. The festival during which the entire country falls into a deep sleep for at least a week. At least outwardly. Inside the homes there is plenty of time for family gatherings, food, family gatherings, food and more food. In my experience it is not unusual for families to buy bigger refrigerators before Tet, just to make sure that the frozen chickens will last for three weeks. Because it can take up to three weeks before the shops have reopened all over the city and holiday prices have returned to normal.

Continue reading "Hanoi: Christmas and Tet" »

It is quite possible that Hanoi's women dress fashionably. The high heels would at least seem to indicate it. High-heeled shoes are not exactly the most practical footwear on a motorcycle, and yet you see them everywhere. Also the fact that many women prefer the clunky automatic scooter, on which one does not sit with legs apart in order to operate the clutch, suggests a certain fashion sense. After all, these scooters do permit them to wear short skirts. So probably Hanoi women do dress fashionably. It’s just that – you don’t know. You can hardly see it. Because the most important piece of clothing on Hanoi's streets is something that we will simply call the sun protection shirt. Continue reading "Hanoi: Sun shirts and pajamas" »

Hanoians don’t like plastic. At least not when it comes to money. In Hanoi, you don’t pay by card. You pay cash. As often as possible.

This obviously applies to food (many restaurants don’t even have a card machine, and if they do, then it is often mysteriously broken), but it also applies to the purchase of a refrigerator. Or the purchase of stocks and bonds. Or cars. A friend always carried a suspiciously large handbag with them, and when asked about it one day casually answered: "Oh, that's the money for today’s stock purchases. I'm on my way to the bank.". Continue reading "Hanoi: Paper and plastic" »

One of the best places to relax in Hanoi is green.

But it doesn’t consist of plants or grass. It consists of water. And the green is probably from an overgrowth of algae. But that doesn’t matter. Hoan Kiem Lake in the city center is still a green oasis, in the truest sense of the word.

The lake isn’t large. If you walk briskly you can go all the way around it in a good half hour. And unlike most places in Hanoi, you can actually do that here: walk. The sidewalk around the lake is free of parked motorcycles, free of street restaurants on the pavement, free of local residents who "just want to put this piece of furniture here for a few minutes". There is space. Continue reading "Green spot in Hanoi: Of Turtles and weddings" »

The trouble with culture is always that no one can precisely define it. Culture - what is that actually? Are centuries-old poems culture, even if hardly anyone knows them today? Or is Vietnamese pop music culture? Meeting with friends and family, is this not just as much a part of Hanoi culture as museums are? Or maybe even more culture - popular culture.

Hanoi likes to consider itself the cultural center of the country. After all, the city did become the capital 1,000 years ago. After such a long time, of course, a lot of culture accumulates. And over the course of history Hanoians were true masters in absorbing cultural influences from outside, and making them their own. Other countries and cities may have looked askance at the "foreign" and stewed in their own juices. As far as I can see that was rarely the case in Hanoi.
Continue reading "Hanoi: Center of classical Vietnamese culture?" »