The Sensory Experience of Ha Noi

Well, the first thing to say is that Ha Noi is one huge sensory overload.

You walk down any street and you have the sound of traffic, more specifically, the sound of motorbikes. The only way to describe the larger roads is to imagine yourself in the middle of a beehive and being surrounded by the intense, close quarter buzzing of hundreds of bees. Imagine that and then add into the picture that each bee has access to a horn that he/she has an inherent need to press on an irregular yet frequent basis. On some of the wider streets in the middle of rush hour, you can see 8-10 motorbikes side by side across the road (and that's going one way). And when the road becomes too congested, the bikes simple take to the pavements. But that's only during the busy times. 

The interesting thing about the horns is that NOBODY takes any notice. You just become immune to it. You know that particular sound is aimed at you and you simply carry on walking across the road or riding your bike as you would with or without the horns. During the two years that I lived in Hanoi, I stopped hearing the cacophony.

And then there are the dogs and the cockrels and the birds. I am woken up every morning to the sound of one of the other or a symphony of all of them. Not that I am complaning about the sound of birds especially as in my case, they are wild birds. However, the Vietnamese do like their caged birds and having one or three hanging outside your bedroom window can be a little disturbing at times. The worst at the cockrels. In my first apartment, I was woken every morning by a notoriously active cockrel at about 5.00am and, unlike an alarm clock, there was no off switch. 

And then there are the locals. Where there are people, there are noises. They talk, they shout at each other.

Not in an aggressive way but just as a way of making contact across an open expanse of a few feet or inches. And when they are not eating or talking, they are doing something .......mending a table, building a wall, preparing food, feeding the toddler...all accompanied by a continuous stream of chatter. In the centre of town, you also have the shops that explode their wares into the streets which can, at times, get a little challenging when you are balancing whether it is more dangerous to stay on the pavement and deal with the parked bikes, the people and the shop overload or simply step into the stream of traffic in the road. The road is often the easier option.

Feeding the toddlers is intriguing, it never failed to fascinate me. You see women following the toddler round the streets with a bowl of food. The toddler plays or just wanders and Mother or Grandmother offers a spoonful of food whenever the child stops. The process can last the length of time as dicatated by the child, in some cases a couple of hours.

The other thing you notice is a lot of laughter and smiles. Even if there is no smile evident, a greeting and a smile offered invariably elicits a response. For me, it was probably the most evident of all the differences and I have to say that I was never overwhelmed by it....bring it on! One last thing that is a little intimidating at first is their tendancy to stare. I learnt that, again, a smile and acknowledgment usually turned the stare into a huge toothy grin.

Smells? Well, food has to be at the top of the list. Walk down any road in Ha Noi and some-one is cooking on the street....a cafe or a street vendor. And if its not a commercial venture, its a local family especially on Sunday evening. They all gather around a cooking pot that simmers away with all sorts of goodies and talk and laugh and say hello to the passing ex pat as they maneuvor their way into the road, around the obstacle and back onto the pavement. 

And there are the less pleasant smells of the dead fish that gather on the edge of the lakes to rot away. And sometimes the rubblish bags that have been left out in the street can be rather unpleasant. The winter does not pose much of an issue for either but in the summer, it can be rather pungent. 

And to finish on a more pleasant note, there are always the flowers...not to forget the flowers. People love cut flowers in Viet Nam. Every family has an alter dedicated to the ancestors to which they offer flowers and fruit gifts every 1st and 15th of the lunar month with special gifts during Tet (the New Year celebrations) and so flowers are a very important part of life for everyone. You see women on cycles balancing huge bunches of flowers for sale. They collect them at the market in the morning and spend the day doing their best to sell their wares.

So while there are some less than pleasant sensory experiences, on the whole, the balance is pretty good!!