Good Morning Hanoi
Today we got to experience morning in Hanoi. Let me tell you, it was quite a way to spend our first morning abroad. Tourists don't tend to be up to see all hustle and bustle of the early morning, but, thanks to a mostly sleepless 30 hours in transit and the resulting jet lag, we both found ourselves wide awake at 545. This means we got to experience some of what happens in the early morning in a major city of a developing country. It was fascinating. In fact it lead me to write a little about the sights and sounds of it all. Check it out if you care. If not, I recommend checking out our photo gallery to see some of Hanoi for yourself!
Sights and Sounds
The sun is not up yet but the city is most definitely awake. We strike out down the narrow alley where our hostel is located heading for Hoan Kiem lake. Roosters cry out to announce the morning. It seems almost cliche. There are plenty of motorbikes out on the road, many strapped with impossibly large packages teetering on the back. We see Vietnamese young and old doing strange-looking (at least to us) calestenics by the water. We see so many that I have a favorite exercise where you move your hips 360 degrees with your hands on your back. It ends up looking like you are hula hooping at half speed with a giant hula hoop. I try it myself and my back feels better after sleeping on a hard mattress. A clump of men and women dressed in the millitary uniforms of the Communist Party wait outside of a government building to be let in. There is a group of mostly women working out to loud pop music accross the street. Amusing doesn't even being to cover how they look. Picture Japanese game show levels of energy.
Calisthenics are all the rage in the morning
We turn away from the lake and walk down another long alley, this one is lined with food vendors selling everything under the sun (which is somewhere beyond the heavy fog and clouds of Hanoi - brrrr, its cold). We see fish heads lopped off; buckets of live crabs; raw red meat being chopped by tiny Vietnamese ladies with large cleavers; live roosters wondering around unattended; vegetables and eggs picked and laid (we suspect) that very morning. I imagine we are looking at everything the your local grocer doesn't really let you see anymore. Food in its rawest forms. We finish the morning with some mystery breakfast (pretty much all the food I've ordered so far is a complete mystery before I eat it) and head back to the hostel feeling excited and ready for five more months of the same wonder and excitement that this one morning brought. I can't believe it only took one day. Decision to travel validated.