V for Viet Nam

It’s great to be back in Vietnam after a gap of more years than I want to think about. This is the country that started my fascination with, and love of, Asia when I spent almost all of 1998 living in Saigon and teaching English.

The train arrived in Hanoi at 5.30am. It was still dark but the city was beginning to wake up. I shared a taxi to the Old Quarter with two other travellers who were in my cabin on the train. When we arrived there were a few street stalls setting up and several shops just opening including one selling nothing but Christmas decorations! I wonder how many people buy their decorations before 6am on a Sunday?!

I only spent a couple of days in Hanoi while I lived in Vietnam so don’t know the city well. After a day of walking around exploring there are some things that have changed since I was last in the country and a lot that’s still the same. The traffic is much worse; lots more cars and motorbikes, fewer bicycles, people talking on their mobiles while riding motorbikes. Cafes now sell lots of different types of herbal tea but no Vietnamese tea. Street stalls still sell it though. Prices of food have gone up a lot. 100,000 and 500,000 Dong notes are now used; when I lived here the largest note I saw was 50,000 (then worth £2.50, now worth £1.70). Over-laden bicycles are still used as mobile stalls selling a range of fruit or flowers. Women in conical hats still carry shallow baskets of goods balanced on a wooden pole on one shoulder. The noise, smells and general craziness are still the same.

I walked around the lake and found an exhibition of photographs of Hanoi street scenes with some great photos. I also discovered that Sunday is when lots of students go to the lake to practice their English by talking to foreigners. These are two of the students who came to talk to me. They are both 18 and in their first year at university. Making a V sign in photos is very popular, especially with teenagers in South Korea, Japan and, slightly less often, in China. I asked some Japanese girls about it and they said they didn’t know why they did it but everyone did it! When I asked these two, they said it was V for Vietnam!


And I bought a new phone and a Vietnamese sim card.