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Restaurants :

Street-eating-houses are everywhere! Just a few kid's plastic chairs and tables on the pavement in front of your house and you have a street-eating-house! People just stop and sit to eat their lunches or dinners: spring rolls, soups, tea. Everything is folded away every night and put up every morning between 5:00-6:00 am.  All ingredients are prepared in the morning and wait in the famous plastic basins or in large pots on the pavement during the day. A quick dip of meat/fish/rice pastas in one of those pots containing different broths, and you have a delicious soup. For those who care about hygiene, do not try the food! Everything is cleaned up with the same cold water coming from tanks or, if the restaurant owner is lucky, from a tap on the pavement. Do not forget to wipe your bamboo sticks before eating or you will be considered having no manners! Tea is served using an aluminum kettle boiling water on a small handmade charcoal-pan, using a huge thermos bottle with pink decorations on it, or using a nice blue china teapot kept warm in a straw basket.

A chopping-log on the pavement and a long rectangular knife allows all cooks to chop meat, fish, herbs in small pieces for the soups. This rectangular knife is also used to peel fruits: in a few seconds you have all vegetables and fruits ready to eat or cook!

The most artistic fruit is the pineapple: cut in spirals along its length, it looks like a piece of art catching all the sun light!

          

       

       

Morning workout:

Each inhabitant living in Hanoi goes to Hoan Kiem lake between 6:00 and 7:30 am every day for some exercise: Tai Chi, temperate movements, massages, pressure points ; depending on age, movements are large and dynamic or just some hands or feet rotation (and head rotation if everything is well!)… Alone or in groups, with or without accessories (balls, fans, ribbons…), with or without music… Groups are directed by old ladies with some experience and a character!

These are also times for sharing rumors, news, and wedding pictures!

        

Transportation:

In a city like Hanoi where 2-wheel transportation reigns, everything is being moved on 2 wheel cycles! Our European movers are surpassed! Cycles and motorcycles carry loads 4 times larger… Products vary from baskets, to paper/cardboards, coca-cola bottles, bird cages with or without birds,  tons of eggs, flowers (Holland on a cycle!), trees, construction materials etc… Sometimes, metallic baskets are stuck on each side of the cycle and contain animals (chickens, dogs, pigs…) Sometimes  only 1 chicken is in a plastic bag with its head sticking up in froint of the bicycle! Some pigs are attached lying across the mud-guard of a bicycle: poor pigs yelling like if they were being strangled!

Bicyclists sometimes help one another: with heavy loads, the one in front holds one end of material, the second one holds up the back end: one pulls and one pushes!

   

     

   

   

Religious art :

Very “kitsch”…. Temples and pagodas are several centuries old. But you can see old walls, stones, timbers mixed with very modern (and tasteless) plastic decorations! False money, fruits, biscuit boxes, beer/coca/water bottles, shiny red/gold boxes placed on altars in artistic piles in front of portly gold-lacquered bronze’ statues. Everything is shining under electrical lamps, neon tubes, plastic flowers. Everyone comes adding its offering to either request a favor or thank the important bronze. Plastic plates are at your disposal at the entrance of the temples to add your offerings…  Foreigners are kindly encouraged to add their offerings in real money (for the restoration of the temples/pagodas!)

  

 

 

Vietnamese kindness:

In spite of 30+ years of war (French and American) as well as several centuries of Chinese invasions plus a communist regime, people are absolutely kind and nice. I've never seen that level of kindness.

Women are small and tiny, very graceful. Old women are very old (!) yet look very proud and dignified with very deep eyes. Small girls often have their hair breaded with small feathers sticking  out of them (funny). Many women still wear the conic hat even in cities (caps have not yet appeared on the market!)

Very beautiful faces (except when pollution masks are worn!)

Some portraits:

 

   

This is a very short summary of my trip in North Vietnam, a country full of very industrious and very nice people.