Hanoi
is full of sounds, the streets are humming at a very early hour of the
morning. Communist propaganda blares from the megaphones strapped atop
telephone poles. It starts with singing and changing at 6:00 a.m. The
megaphone is prominently placed right outside the window of our
guesthouse room, so it's what we awake to each morning. The
food-wallahs are out in force, we hear their musical voices ringing
through the streets, telling of the goods for sale in their heavy bins
they cary. The sounds of motorbikes and horns are now white noise,
it's there wherever we travel in Asia. I am reminded of it, however,
whole speaking with my parents this morning over our skype computer
connection. They ask about the horrible background noise... and I
reply, "it's just the street sounds." We're staying on a fairly busy
street, Ma May and many bikes, cars and touts are out in force all day,
every day. The sound that's the most annoying and difficult for us to
drone out, however, is the musical jingle played over and over again by
the Kem Man (ice cream man). There must be thousands of Kem Men out on
the streets here. They have a megaphone strapped to their bicycle
carts that blares out the very short jingle, and it repeats over and
over again, from early morning until late in the evening, and is really
annoying. Like one of those jingles you then can't get out of your
head... yep, they're the Hanoi Kem Men, and we wish they would give it
a rest for awhile.
As
we walk out of our guest house, we're overwhelmed by Vietnamese ladies
calling out in high little voices, "hello banana, hello mango, hello
pineapple." We joke with them, as by now, they see us all the time,
and know who we are, and when we come and go... leaning over close to
their baskets, right next to the piece of fruit, and say hello to each
piece by name. They laugh along with us, all in good fun. They know
eventually we will buy fruit from then when we're hungry. As we leave
them, we yell out, "goodbye banana, goodbye mango, goodbye pineapple,"
and leave the ladies laughing. The streets of Hanoi do not sleep, and
we learn to fall to sleep to the usual sounds, despite dreaming about
how to silence the Kem Man.
