Hello Hanoi!

Hello and xin chào! At long last, I’ve gotten around to posting here. While you won't see any pictures of me on an anti-aircraft gun, you will see and read plenty about my experiences in Hanoi and beyond. The last few weeks have been beyond hectic with orientation, training, starting all my classes, and all the logistics of setting up my life in Vietnam, so consider this a brief introduction for what's to come.

Somewhere near work.

I’ve often heard Hanoi described as an assault on the senses. In the three or so weeks that I’ve been here, that description has been continuously bouncing around my head, and it could not be any more apt. It’s exhausting more often than not, but it’s so, so fun. You notice it more than anywhere else on the back of one of the countless motorbikes that flood the city’s streets. There’s nothing quite like being whisked through the city in the dark after a long day teaching.

As you can see, traffic in Hanoi is… an experience, to say the least. Here is a short list of things you can ignore while driving a motorbike: lanes, red lights, emergency vehicles, pedestrians, and which side of the road you’re on. And sometimes you can ignore a combination of these things at the same time! Somehow there’s still a system to it, incomprehensible as it is to foreign eyes.

Somewhere on the way to work.

In Parts Unknown’s seminal Hanoi episode, Anthony Bourdain says of Vietnam: “It grabs you and doesn't let you go.” I feel like I can say pretty confidently that I’ve been to a lot of cities, and I don’t think I’ve ever been to one that demands as much of you as Hanoi. Sure, you can find a quiet, posh coffee shop that advertises itself with the phrase “poetic order,” but you can never quite escape the repetitive megaphone recordings of the lady who goes around selling bread. From a little bakery case. Rigged to the back of her bicycle. (Yes, this is common here.)

The posh coffee shop in question.

Stay tuned for a post about sightseeing in Hanoi!

Till next time,
Gray