Forty years after seeing harrowing images of the Vietnam War on TV, FIONNUALA SMITHpaid a visit to Hanoi city
IN 1970S New York, when my television showed bombs dropping on Vietnam, I tended to flick to I Love Lucyas I stretched on my hotel bed, consuming frozen yogurt. Vietnam was all a bit "oh, not again" and so far away. The once or twice a week back then when I landed in the Big Apple as Aer Lingus cabin crew, my sore feet and burning eyes sought only pleasure.
My routine was to flop on to the huge bed, with its wall of white pillows, stare at the box for a bit, then doll up and sail down in the elevator to meet the crew. It might be past midnight back in Dublin, but here in throbbing New York it was still only 7pm.
Vietnam was of passing interest, and, though I remember being horrified by images of fleeing, screaming people, I still believed the US was the good guy and this war was the fault of some nasty communists.
Forty years on I’m back from a visit to Hanoi, with all its contradictions, its thrusting development, its pavement cafes (where you eat squatting on the ground) and its own throbbing pulse. Now I want to know that country’s history, but where to start? The Chinese, the French, the Japanese, the Americans?
There’s so much to see and do in Hanoi, but you could start by filing past Ho Chi Minh’s preserved body, an experience I could compare to visiting a kind of serious Disneyland. Vast gardens, hundreds of people forming orderly queues, cameras ticketed and whisked to further collection points, guards glowering at the shuffling throng until, finally, in his marble mausoleum, Great Uncle Ho sleeps in his glass case, the doll-like face younger than his pictures.
Women ahead of me dab their eyes. People behind brush away tears. This man is hugely revered. Be warned, though: he is not available to view from September to December, as during these months he goes to Russia for “maintenance”.
But back out on the streets the children of survivors of the Mai Lai massacre – the mainly under-30 Hanoians – are now ruled by Hyundai in a great sea of motorbikes. The city’s six million people have four million motorbikes, and if I tell you that they all go out at the same time, you’ll begin to get the picture.
You may be daunted at first when you step out of your hotel directly into the great sea of bikes thundering past. Most will sport two, three or even four on board. Lots of pillion passengers sleep while commuting, their heads resting on drivers’ backs. Families travel together, two tiny children squeezed between Mum and Dad. Every horn honks.
Last year, to Hanoians’ disgust, their communist rulers ordered the wearing of helmets, and they all have them now. They’re a fashion statement. Size-zero women, skirts mid-thigh as they perch on yellow or red scooters, black stilettos placed neatly on the platform, sport helmets of Burberry or Chanel, or maybe splashed with polka dots.
And the children of my long-past TV images, fleeing from scorching napalm gas, now sport face masks in pastel blues and pinks, men generally sticking to white. They are hooked over your ears by fine elastic, and off you go like the prettiest face on Casualty. No traffic fumes for you.
I spent a lot of time in Hanoi, waiting for breaks in those bike floods; as they never come, my choice was to become an authority on helmet fashion or launch into the sea of handlebars. Gripping the brother’s arm so tightly that now he’s down for cortisone injections, we launch.
Welded to his offside so they'd hit him first, I'd intone a sort of Ulyssesof Hail Marys. We make it to mid-street, still alive. I dart to his other side, as now the hordes are coming the other way. My Hail Marys morph into language I only remember using in the final stages of my daughter's birth.
Across now, the brother is rubbing his arms. I’ve blanked out on the history thing – the Tet Offensive; that little naked girl’s photo that became an icon of terror. At our hotel bar tonight the question will be: who saw the biggest thing on a motorbike today? A table and chairs? Two pigs? A cow, for God’s sake.
So now I’m snapping the descendants of the Cu Chi tunnels whizzing past. Cool dudes lighting up cigarettes on Suzukis while chatting on their mobiles; huge bunches of speeding roses almost covering two drivers; a couple with squawking hens poking off the pillion – or, best of all, a Gucci-helmeted beauty whose right hand steers while her left clamps her baby to her denim jacket.
And, for contrast, what about those chubby American tourists who stand like patient cows by the corner that happens to have a dull traffic light that only they have noticed? But they’re newly arrived, I’d say. They’ve not been across the street, like me. Bravely, and slowly, I make my way through the fascinating old town of Hanoi.
This is the first place I’ve come across where they have a street devoted to a particular item – and it’s such a good idea. It’s been this way for centuries, they tell me. So you can find the street of shoes, the street of gold and silver, the clothes street or, most amazing of all to me, the street of zips, buttons and threads – haberdashery to you and I.
Their food markets are wonderful, selling everything that grows or walks or creeps, or huge piles of grated carrot, onion or cabbage, ready for the thick breakfast soup that is Hanoians’ porridge.
But what I loved most about Hanoi was the charming water puppets that sing and dance several times a day in the municipal theatre beside the lake, where invisible puppeteers work their magic on delightful little puppets that play out their stories in water.
These ancient folk tales are brought to life with music and songs as gaily coloured figures act out their stories in water. Children and adults alike clapped and cheered like an Irish panto audience.
And then it was out into the sea of bikes again. Oh well, here goes. Never mind. The cruise we’ve booked for Halong Bay will be all silent sailing, come the weekend. Whew!