Hanoi versus Toronto

As my colleagues and I were driving back from Huong Son (Perfume Pagoda) I couldn’t help but think about the differences there are between Hanoi and Toronto. It doesn’t take much imagination really. Just average vision and nerves of steel. There are usually about a dozen motorcycles roaring right at you coming in the wrong lane. At this time, I usual close my eyes, although realizing, unlike a Disneyland ride, it may not turn out with me walking off the ride with both legs and arms intact! There is so much vehicular traffic of all sorts it is absolutely shocking there are not dead bodies lying all over the road.

Everyone in Hanoi, as I told you last year, has at least one motorbike and they constantly let you know it. The honk incessantly, I think, just to keep themselves awake. As I was driving along the main road between the Fragrance Pagoda and Hanoi the traffic was absolutely mad. Kids were playing soccer or badminton along the side of the road absolutely oblivious of the mayhem just one swerve away. I can’t imagine any self-respecting Toronto mother even letting their kid outside in such traffic! Of course, even though it is probably about 18 degrees and drizzling, everyone is eating outside on the tiniest stools you ever saw in your life(unless you have been to Vietnam). Assuming you could bend low enough to sit on these little stools, would you eat your meals outside at Yonge and Bloor? For those few eating inside, they usually have a storefront and one little divider and they are calmly eating just behind the screen while customers are shopping in their store.

In Asia, you have either just eaten or are going to eat. The common refrain when they see you is not “how are you?” but “have you eaten yet?” Concomitant to that is the heaps of garbage everywhere. At night, as I walk home to my hotel in the Old Quarter, garbage collectors shovel up garbage which is determined to keep falling out of their wheelbarrow, only to supply someone else with a job tomorrow. When I think how clean Singapore is I realize the government or government initiatives can make a real difference.

In Singapore, there are tons of banners flying everywhere lauding education or women or whatever. In Hanoi, there are as many banners furled across the road as in Singapore. I am not sure exactly what they are saying, but I assume they are glorifying some communist initiative or other. If they said something like, “clean up your garbage” who knows what the results could be. I wonder what it takes to change a culture other than propaganda posters?

As we were passing miles and miles of rice paddies we saw a funeral seemingly walking in the middle of the paddy. When I asked my colleagues what was happening , they told me the body or the ashes were likely to be buried in the rice paddy probably owned by the deceased. Indeed, I saw lots of cemeteries in rice fields with headstones in no particular order as you might see in any cemetery in the west. A stone here or there at some jaunty angle.

Of course, there were the ubiquitous buffalo walking along the side of the road and drinking from the canals that run beside the road. Buses are chock full of people hanging out the doors, not quite as bad as Myanmar but nearly. The infrastructure clearly does not support the population and how anything ever moves is amazing to me.

Motorcycles are either full of people (like whole families) riding on one bike or animals. I saw one motorcycle with four pigs tressed up in 4 baskets hanging over the side of the cycle. I presume they were going to market but those live pigs had to be under tremendous stress.

I did spend the day on a beautiful river ride in the mountains going to the Perfume Pagoda if you are wondering where those pictures were taken. I went with my teaching colleagues on a day excursion from Hanoi to the countryside which was fun as you can see from the pictures. What was especially great is that you can escape the tremendous din of horns blowing and the smog of fumes I presume. Of course, the Vietnamese say it the pollution from China, as we claim our smog is pollution from the United States.

I am writing this from the plane going to Ho Chi Minh City. Let’s see if I can notice any changes from last December. Hopefully I can give my jacket a rest until I come up north again and just patiently wait the cold I am going to get. I can feel my throat getting sore already.