Beep Beep, You want? We have, we have! Hanoi in the old quarter, the smell of woodsmoke and food and perfume and exhaust fumes and mould and pure essence of exotica.... and we are surrounded by it! We began our day in the Classic Street Hotel with fruit, watermelon juice and fragrant Pho before setting off to find Indochina Junk, who are taking us to Halong Bay next week.... and wove our way through alleys and back streets for three hours en route. Crossing the street is an act of courage here: we discovered that a crowd works better than an individual and clustering close to old people works best of all. You simply move out into the scooter stream and they move around you, as if you are the ferry and they are the water-of-life... whereas, in fact, they are the whirlpool that may suck you down and into oblvion! But never mind... keep walking, never stop, and look-them-in-the-eye-while-you-go seems to work whatever magic is necessary.... And we're still here, so it all works somehow....!
Right now, sprawled on our big bed after a lunch of duck and Hanoi-style spring rolls, the stench of sewerage is wafting past our window but we try to ignore that and find the undernote of Chrysanthemum and Lotus flower, which is also there....and this may be the key to getting the most out of this noisy, colourful, mysterious city. But it's too early to tell, yet. More on this later....
