Our apartment is in a great location. A short walk into the Old Quarter and a quick hop from Uncle Ho’s mausoleum and the Temple of Literature. About a 15 minute walk the other way and you’ll come to Truc Bach Lake (where the local residents fished out a young naval aviator named John McCain about 40 years ago) and the larger West Lake. Our back window faces a large tenement, mostly inhabited by military families. During the day, pajama-clad women water plants and hang clothes out to dry on makeshift balconies. On holidays, flagpoles sprout up festooned with dozens of Vietnamese flags.
As Hanoi has few neighborhoods that are strictly residential, commercial or industrial, our block sports numerous small retail establishments, a small beer hall, and many streetside stalls. In the evenings, little kids run around playing on the sidewalk, while older women set up tables to sell lottery tickets. Our apartment building on Tran Phu Street, named after an early Communist revolutionary who died in a French prison in 1931, is on property owned by the Ministry of Defense and if you turn the corner either way you quickly come to military buildings and a few streets permanently shut off to incoming traffic. Right at the end of our block are train tracks, still in active use. Trains leave the nearby station throughout the day, south to Ho Chi Minh City and north to the highland vacation spot of Sapa. Just beyond the train tracks lies Food Street, a collection of mostly modest Vietnamese restaurants, many of which specialize in hotpots. Very popular with our Vietnamese neighbors, we’ve eaten there a few times. It’s one of the few places active with patrons after 11 at night, though for a pedestrian thoroughfare there sure are a lot of motorbikes zooming by.
Early in the morning, next to our apartment building, a lively, small market attracts local housewives shopping for fruits, vegetables, meat, and flowers. Though some merchants operate out of tiny storefronts, other hawkers (almost all women) set up shop on the sidewalks. Periodically, the police come by to chase them out and I have come across them dropping their wares and running past to avoid fines. For those looking for Western products or more upscale (read: sanitary) produce, our neighborhood is a bit lacking. I can walk to the CitiMart in Hanoi Towers (next to Hoa Lo prison, John McCain’s “home” for several years), but normally need to catch a cab to do any serious shopping. Humorous side note: During Senator McCain’s recent visit to Hanoi, the local press asked residents their opinion of Senator McCain. One man said he liked McCain because he “lived in” Hanoi for several years.” Not sure that’s how the Senator would describe his stay here.
On a nice day, it’s a very easy walk to the old quarter, with only one or two potentially fatal intersection crossings. If you stay on a main street, you’ll pass by upscale art galleries, cosmopolitan silk shops, and the inevitable tourist traps. Step onto a sidestreet and you’re quickly transported into a maze of crowded, narrow alleys filled to the brim with hawkers, merchants, local shoppers and overseas visitors. It/s loud, colorful and hot. You can come back having spent 30 cents or $3,000. You never know.
As I’ve mentioned before, one of the joys of living in Hanoi is that by simply walking down the street you get such a full picture of how people live. Around the corner from our house is a small park of roughly two acres. Across the street from the Chinese Embassy, half of it is paved over in front of a large statue of Lenin. Yet, morning and evening, both the grassy walks and marble promenade fill up with our neighbors. In the morning, groups of older women gather to practice fan dancing. Middle aged men in their undershirts walk briskly in circles, while a few couples set up badminton nets. As the day wears on and heats up, small groups gather on plastic stools for a tea break. One guy pedals in on his bike to sell snakes. Tourists wander over from the military museum across the street to take pictures in front of Lenin.
Things liven up as the sun goes down. The wide area in front of Lenin is divided up roughly into three. In a leafy corner nearest our house, groups of teens gather to practice dance moves, usually hip hop, but I’ve also passed a team practicing their cheer routines, complete with pom poms. Next to them, about a dozen young Vietnamese men take up a makeshift game of soccer. Further on, local entrepreneurs have set up businesses renting out little battery powered cars for little kids and on almost any evening you can see dozens of happy 2-6 year olds slowly circling around, nervous parents or elder siblings in tow. Badminton games continue on the sidewalk and small crowds gather round men playing traditional board games.
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