maurizio caduto V i e t n a m

Hanoi

I like the old Vietnamese center of Hanoi, with its markets popping up at every corner. I like the geography of the area, spread around a nice little lake with a tiny island in the middle. It takes only a short and relaxing walk to go around it. The one thing that strikes me about Hanoi is the way the city lives with the Communism. As you might expect you see here and there red flags with the yellow star. During celebrations they pop up at every window like one obsessive note repeated on the same music paper. In Hanoi this single note gets lost in the visual cacophony of the city. Flags disappear amidst rows of laundry drying up; banner become a decoration surrounded by plants and writings on the wall and cables and god knows what else. The noisy, never sleeping Hanoi takes over; busy with bicycles and scooters, busy chatting, smoking and trading. The city becomes like a roots that slowly cover everything.

Hanoi is a city almost without cars. However it is not a pedestrian paradise - rather his hell. Hordes of bicycles and motorbikes, mythical Hond-uzuky-kawa-maha 100-something cc, greet you at every crossing. Jaywalking should be left only to fools and poets. Motorists politely wait in line at the red light while engines and exhaust tubes scream like horns on the battlefield. And you cross, hoping that the light won't turn green while you're crossing. For me, having grown up in the South of Italy, this is quite familiar. I know that they won't even touch you if I go with the flow; but for my friends this was like a war zone.

In this apparent chaos gracefully slow figures cut the crowd with their loads of fruit and veggies. Hardly they sell more then one produce: if it's mango then it's mango. Period. If it's lime what you want then you must look for someone else. They all wear the typical cone shaped hat and price is not necessarily cheap; certainly not if you don't bargain furiously. As a tourist you are by definition wealthier than them - which is true anyway - therefore can afford to pay more. At the end of the day the starting price is still cheaper then what you would pay back home but a little bargain is necessary. It's the Asian way to establish a communication. It is not a way to show that you're stronger and better. It's not an attitude test nor a colonist invention. And it must be worth its while and carried on in a fair way. You must play with the rules. Rule one: saving few more dong on a fairly priced mango doesn't make you smarter. Rule two: walking away just because you cannot get that extra discount after you got the price reasonably down it's a silly matter of principle. Bargaining is an Asian culture not a clash of personalities. That'd be western.

No matter what you want to buy and when, there is always a market in Hanoi to please you. Even if you don't want to buy anything. What amuses me is that two vendors already create a market: the front table to sell goods, the area on the back to store more stuff. On one side they clean, say, the rice to be sold; on the other side is the little kitchen where one of them is having lunch (or dinner? supper? In South East Asia there is always someone having a meal at any time of the day and night ). Every stall overlapping the next one until you don't know which stall belongs to whom. The wonderful Asian order.