Locusts are off

The pagoda at West Lake, just after 7am. Giant water lilies in the foreground.

I went cycling this morning. This was an idea I got from Derek who tried it a month or so back. Rise early on a Sunday and enjoy the city before the bedlam starts. Getting up was easy – despite the recent rains I was hot and couldn’t sleep properly so by 6.15am I was getting into the saddle and heading through the back streets. The local market was just setting up – a motorbike loaded with enormous quantities of fruit and veg was being unloaded and blocked the whole of the road in the process. The fish seller had three metal bowls all full to overflowing with river fish.

Whilst the side streets were busy the main roads were virtually empty. Only the Pho sellers were in evidence setting up their urns of boiling beef broth and putting out the tiny stools for their customers. As I went slowly up Pho Hue I passed a woman on a bicycle. She had the seat so low her knees came up higher than her elbows and she was wearing high heels. The sight was familiar, and it came to me a couple of seconds later. She reminded me of Roger, a six foot something guy with learning disabilities who was an integral part of a small community I lived in the early 80’s. Roger liked to dress up as a woman, but he didn’t like shaving and he had a child’s bicycle, so he would be seen in a scarlet dress and high heels, hair and Moses beard flowing in the breeze, cycling along the high street with his handbag round his neck and knees around his ears.

When I arrived at Hoen Kim Lake the difference was noticeable – morning is the time of the older generation here. There were very few youngsters and therefore fewer motorbikes. People were jogging in the road or doing exercises reminiscent of 1940’s war time newsreels. Where, last night, there had been a stage and sound system for a live performance there were now three badminton courts and a dozen elderly residents were enthusiastically competing. As 7am passed the first buses started to go by and the level of horn noise started to increase. More young people were in evidence, a small group of young women were doing aerobics to a ghetto-blaster at the side of the road. Last night this whole area was one seething mass of late teenagers cruising the strip on their polished motorbikes and scooters.

Speaking of last night, we went out with a newly arrived volunteer for a welcome meal, eight of us in total. The restaurant of choice has an interesting section to its menu, which fortunately is in both Vietnamese and English. They do a range of fried, roast and grilled insects. Rather than everyone choose we let a couple of the party order for all of us and inevitably the insect Rubicon had to be crossed. A portion of locusts were duly ordered. Minutes later the waiter returned – locusts were off. Relief didn’t last long – they had silkworms, yum! In the event they were actually very yummy, tasting a bit like pasta in a delicious sauce. After the meal the last four standing, which for once include me, headed for a cocktail bar where a variety of drinks were tried and a couple from Finland drinking Tequila slammers engaged us in conversation.

Cycling out of the old quarter and up towards West Lake I couldn’t actually remember any of the conversation from the previous night, neither did I know where I was. I realised the road I was on was not going anywhere when the number of chickens grubbing around began to exceed the number of motorbikes, the road ran out and I turned round and tried another route. Eventually I stopped and got out the map. I was 50 metres from the lake I wanted to get to, but such is the maze of streets and buildings here I couldn’t see it. The lake was full of trash, dead rats and many fish which were popping up to catch mosquitoes, not a place to stop and sit. After a couple more navigation errors I arrived at the main lake with views of the pagoda, the swan boats and the floating restaurants.

Looking for the Lake View Hotel, reputedly the home of a yoga class, I wandered into the Lake View Apartments causing consternation amongst the security staff, who whilst they are pedantic about their duties, don’t actually like to challenge westerners. The relief on the man’s face when I explained why I was there, and no he had not heard of the hotel but I should leave now as this was not it. I complied.

I cycled back past Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum, not open as it was still only just after 7.30am and through the wide boulevards that border the presidential palace and some of the bigger embassies (not the British embassy, which is on the 7th floor of a downtown office block). I made one more map stop and soon found myself back in familiar territory and familiar levels of traffic – Sunday is like any other day in Hanoi. Stopping briefly to pick up some baguettes for my bacon sandwich I got back to the house on the dot of 8am, just a few minutes before the heavens opened again and the day’s tropical downpour started.