Headaches in Hanoi

I've lived in two of the loudest cities on the planet--New York, and New Haven, where the city song should be the wail of an ambulance siren, as my mother can attest to. Neither compare to Hanoi. Hanoi is the first city that has actually given me a headache because of how incessant the honking and the beeping is.

Traffic is horrendous, and every time you cross the street, you are taking your life into your own hands--but you get the hang of it, and the "New York Staredown" works everytime.

Woke up pre-dawn yesterday to take a cab to the Bangkok airport. Here's a tip: if you want to avoid Bangkok traffic, travel at 430 in the morning. If not, then you are bound to run into a traffic jam (don't listen to the cab drivers who want extra because of "traffic jam"--there is always a traffic jam in Bangkok, its just worse at certain times--certain cab drivers literally refused to drive me to some places because of how bad the traffic was--considering they could have had me metered and run up a big bill, that's somewhat revealing). Took us only about 30 minutes to get to the airport (took us about an hour to get from the airport to the hotel in rush hour).

Little things can sometimes reveal a lot about the place you are in. In the Bangkok airport, all the duty free liquor stores had russian cyrillic writing in their windows.

Boarded next to a Druk Air flight (the Bhutanese airline--but got no pics, since the plane was parked elsewhere).

I had mixed feelings about going to Vietnam--after getting an email from my father in regards to my query regarding some Vietnam War sites, I realized just how significant the Vietnam War is to American history and culture, and will be for quite sometime. The experiences of parents always influence their children, and this case, for my generation, the major cultural/social experience was the Vietnam War and the social upheaval that it caused in the U.S. As such, my generation has been raised on memories of the war, and this means that the full effects of the war on American culture will only be revealed when generation y hits maturity and are the main decision makers.

Descending over Vietnamese airspace, you could see some of the mountains peaking over the clouds. The cloud cover over Hanoi was easily one of the lowest I've landed in--we literally didn't see the surrounding countryside until we were about two minute from landing--and there are only two words to describe the landscape--verdant and flat. I've never seen a place with so many different, subtle shades of green than the ricefields of Vietnam.

As a sign that times have most definitely changed, as we pulled up to the terminal, sitting on the tarmac was a U.S. Government 737, painted in the same livery as air force one.

Got an airport pickup from the hostel, since I really had no desire to screw with the cabs early in the morning, which ended up costing me an arm and a leg anyway (triple what I'm paying for the hostel, but I avoided quite a bit of hassle). Hanoi's airport is far away from the city--easily about a 75 minute drive--its about 33 clicks away.

On the drive in, though, something struck me. We may have lost the physical war in Vietnam, but, nearly 30 years after pulling out the last of our troops, our capitalist ideology has indeed prevailed--tons of billboards advocating all sorts of private companies line the airport highway. Yes, Vietnam may be run by the communist party, but like Laos and China, they are CINO's--communists in name only. Lenin (and probably Uncle Ho too) would be rolling over in his grave to see the amount of capitalism taking place on the streets of Hanoi.

I pride myself on my directional ability. Hanoi is all but impossible to get oriented. I figured out bangkok after a couple of hours. Hanoi is just a maze and warren of streets. It also isn't that "walkable" either, unfortunately, because of how far the main tourist sites are spread about, and the bad traffic.

General rule for traffic in SE Asia: the greater number of motorbikes, the more chaotic the city is. Motorbikes outnumber cars in Hanoi by about 10:1. And the traffic is easily the worst in SE Asia. Another thing to keep in mind: because of the various colonial legacies in SE Asia, all countries don't drive on the same side of the road. In Indochina (laos, cambodia, Vietnam) and in Indonesia, they all drive on the right. In Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, and Malaysia, they drive on the left. Since I have been popping in and out of these countries, it often takes me a day to get used to what direction traffic is moving.

Bangkok wrap up: driving in from the airport, saw the sight of the monsoon rains streaming of the side of a lit billboard--coming in waves.

In my afternoon in Bangkok, I went to the other red light districts to see what they were like--all of them, conveniently are easily accessible via skytrain and/or subway--they really don't feel that sleazy, but that's because I was there in the daytime. Revealingly, the bar girls working outside all but ignored me and flocked to the older european males. They know where the money is.

Rant warning: I view cemeteries as sacred, especially war cemeteries. I don't care how much you paid for your Thai escort, bringing your "new girlfriend" to a war cemetery, like people did in Kanchanaburi, is inexcusable. Have some respect, for gosh sakes.

I will post my full wrap up of Hanoi later, as I don't want to waste my day.
visited Hoa Lo prison, Van Mieu, the revolutionary museum, the site of a b52 undercarriage, and the lake where mccain's plane landed.
today: visiting ho chi minh mausoleum, and various other sites, and walking around the old quarter.