A Harrowing Stroll Through Old Hanoi

by John Nirenberg (United States of America)

A leap into the unknown Vietnam

I walked into a neighborhood semi-covered market in Hanoi. Entrails and animal parts were everywhere. Some were strewn about on old wooden tables; pigs’ intestines mostly. They were hand washed in wide metal basins, then laid out in squiggly piles for purchase. The hawkers and a throng of customers poking along the various stalls all seemed amazingly chaordic - chaotic yet oddly ordered. Buyers and sellers volubly negotiated; people mingled casually; others, like myself passed through feeding their curiosity. And, in the midst of all this, motorbikes and bicycles miraculously made their way bobbing and weaving through the entire football-field-length of the market without so much as a graze against any of the myriad obstacles. I exited the far end of the market and had no idea where I was; I didn’t care either. I kept walking, eyes wide open. People from the market were pouring into the residential neighborhood and I, the only tourist, just let myself be swept along. Suddenly the crowds thinned to a trickle into a smaller road and as I ambled along the road it turned into an even smaller street, then into an alley. Finally, it came to an abrupt end at a cement bridge over a 20’ wide drainage ditch. I was now facing a narrow ledge on the backside of a row of town houses separated from me by the flow of putrid waste water. I was obviously at a dead end and had unwittingly transformed myself from visitor to intruder. I clearly had entered an area I didn’t belong. There was no apparent way out. If I had not been thinking myself invisible, I would have simply turned around and retraced my steps to the market. Instead, I pushed on believing there had to be a way out further down, on the other side of the ditch. So, I crossed over it to the narrow ledge between the back of a row of dirty old cement townhouses and the ditch. On that narrow ledge, each townhouse’s ersatz backyard was filled with all manner of household detritus: wood shards, garbage and assorted broken appliances, furniture, and bicycles. Now sweating and anxious, I pushed on walking over broken equipment, damaged umbrellas, and old baby strollers, hugging the backs of their houses desperately hoping not to draw attention to myself. I was sure I lost my mind as I persisted in moving on instead of being respectful and turning back. Somehow I was convinced I’d soon see a path that would lead me back into a main road. I was getting further and further into this indefensible trespass when, finally, an alley appeared and I prayed for an exit. The relief was orgasmic. I came upon people heading to those townhouses, looking at me as the stranger I was, no doubt wondering what the hell I was doing there. Then bicycles and motorbikes snaked in, proving I would soon be free of the intrusion and on a public road; saved from serious embarrassment had residents come upon me in their backyards. In a few minutes I was still without any clearer sense of where I was but overjoyed that the quest for an exit was over. I picked up my pace without even checking a map just to be on my way again. Relieved, I wanted to scream out, YYEEEESSSSSS and high-five someone. After I berated myself for my stubborn encroachment I selfishly thought about how much I enjoy the unusual markets, getting lost, and navigating through an urban maze without a map all while deep in thought forgetting all about home. Imagine you are a free-roaming explorer. Imagine you are so filled by curiosity that you can’t stop walking – even where you shouldn’t be. Imagine time being filled so fully that if the adventure only lasts one day it is more rewarding than a year of the “same ol', same ol', fine, and you?” Imagine… never being able to take it all in, yet taking in as much as you can every day never gets tiring and because it never allows one iota of boredom makes you know you have really lived. That’s why I travel.