A little bit about Hanoi

I can say at this point that I am pretty used to Hanoi. I have secured employment which is good. It’s nice to know that I will have some sort of income coming my way as long as I show up to the English lessons I’m supposed to teach. I’ll probably be teaching little kids which I don’t know if I’m prepared for but you never learn unless you’re in over your head right? It’s a nice feeling to get accustomed to something that you thought you couldn’t do. Manila was also quite intimidating but learning how to get around the city was an accomplishment that made me warm inside (it was plenty warm outside though).

Hanoi is more user friendly than Manila is some ways but not in others. There is a regular bus system here which I will probably be using every day. I probably won’t rent a motorbike because of my budget but I wouldn’t be against the idea. It looks fun. Manila had its idiosyncratic bus and jeepney system which took a couple months to get used to. Hanoi’s bus system is not easy to understand but it is regular and regulated. The problem here is that buses only stop every half a kilometer so you end up having to walk twenty minutes to a bus stop anyway. I like the Filipino system where you could flag down buses wherever you were and you could get off wherever you wanted to.

Unlike when I was in the Philippines I have a kitchen here which is nice. I go to the local market where you can buy everything such as eggs, meat, vegetables, and even dog if you want. They just skewer the dogs whole and roast them and it looks like you buy either the bottom or top half. It is kind of sad because all the dog faces look like they’re screaming; like they were roasted while they were still alive. I ate dog in Seoul and it was real rough on my stomach. There are ample amounts of pork, beef, and chicken around so I don’t think I’ll have to resort to eating dog.

My major problem with Hanoi is that old men urinate all over the place. I have gotten into the habit of walking around the city a lot and I have seen a lot of this. I don’t have any problem with guys peeing outside in principle but it gets on my nerves when they piss on the sidewalk right in front of me as I’m jogging. Everyone here must be really dehydrated too because it smells terrible; very concentrated. It’s annoying because people will usually piss on the sidewalks so if you’re walking it smells like piss. People also drive their motorbikes on sidewalks when there is traffic so even though you’re walking you get stuck in traffic. I get annoyed by this but if people in America did half of what people here do to me I would flip out. I don’t want to get in a fight with local and get bum rushed by everyone around me.

The other thing that annoys me about Hanoi is getting ripped off. Hanoi is notorious for not posting prices and it is kind of expected that foreigners will pay more for things. I have been trying to fight this by asking how much things cost in Vietnamese and emphasizing that I’m not a tourist but I still get ripped off from time to time. I swear that I wasn’t scammed that much in Manila. Filipinos seem to have better business ethics but it could just be my perception.

Aside from those minor complaints I really like Hanoi. It’s a nice city with plenty to see and do. I think it is more interesting than Saigon but I’m biased since I was only in Saigon for a couple weeks. One thing that strikes me about Hanoi is how businesses are organized. Stores seem to be segregated depending on what they sell. For example, we were trying to find some ping pong balls and I couldn’t find one store that had them until we stumbled across a block which had only sport stores. I walk past blocks where there will be 4 stores in a row selling luxury whiskey. I can’t help but think this is a really stupid way to place businesses. Why would they purposefully concentrate all the same kind of store in one area? You would think they could get a larger market share if they spread out to different parts. I thought it was some kind of government regulation but apparently it’s part of Vietnamese culture. I was talking to a Vietnamese friend of Kristine who happens to also live in Hanoi and she enlightened me. In the old quarter of Hanoi which has existed for over a thousand years all of the streets are named after what kind of artisan worked there. So there is “Shoe Street”, “Noodle Street”, etc. Nowadays the street names are just names and don’t dictate what kind of store but there is still lingering presence of this ancient organization. When someone opens a sunglasses store somewhere and it is successful people think that that spot is lucky for sunglass stores so they invest in opening other stores there. This kind of common sense seems counterintuitive to me but hey whatever works, works even if it is inconvenient for me.