Streetlife

Vietnam is the perfect place for street photography. Unfortunately that’s the type of photography that I’m worst at! City streets are an assault on the senses – noise, colour, smells. I love that you can sit and watch such a huge variety of life going past. (I’ve also got a bit of a fixation with spotting the range of things that are transported by motorbike.) I had my camera out while walking around and took some street shots but I’m not happy with any of them. Must keep practicing! This does show one thing that’s not changed here – pavements are for parking motorbikes, not for walking on!

In Saigon it was always too hot to walk anywhere that took longer than about 3 minutes to get to. You’d arrive pouring sweat and need to sit under a fan drinking iced tea for 20 minutes! Here in Hanoi it’s warm but not too hot to make walking unpleasant. So I’ve walked a lot today.

I visited Hoa Lo prison. The explanations very obviously showed the government line. I overheard several Americans who were clearly not happy about it. In China they were a bit more subtle about how they phrased things; there were a few places where you’d have to know something about the politics or how the government views an issue in order to read between the lines. But in Hoa Lo they made it very clear. Most of the display covered the early period when the French used the prison to detain those fighting for Vietnamese independence. There was a small section on the detention of US pilots by the Vietnamese.


When I lived in Saigon (sorry, you’re probably going to read this phrase a lot while I’m here as I expect I’ll be making lots of comparisons), I tried to learn Vietnamese. I could hold a basic conversation and I was pretty good at bargaining but it was a very long time ago and I've not used it for years. I’ve been trying to remember some of what I learned. I can still order drinks and it’s causing quite a bit of surprise. I went to a small cafe and when I ordered a lemon juice in Vietnamese and asked the price, the young waiter told me it would be free. He was curious to know why I could speak a little Vietnamese and sat down to ask me lots of questions which I answered in English because I don’t remember enough Vietnamese, but he was happy to practice his English!