Hanoi's Old Quarter - a living, breathing musical.

by Shaan - (India)

I didn't expect to find Vietnam

The first time I ever felt like I was in a song from a Bollywood movie was not in Mumbai or even anywhere in India. Unexpectedly, it was in Hanoi, Vietnam. It was a cloudy day in April when I first stepped into the Old Quarter. I was lodging in an unremarkable little hotel, tucked into one of the original "36 streets" that the place was composed of. Each lane was tightly packed with numerous open shop fronts, lined with motorbikes beyond the pavement. The roads were full and lively with a mix of the usual buses, vans, motorbikes, and people. Every few minutes it seemed like there was a mini carnival in procession, as a line of red tuk-tuks with tourists in the back seat, tried to navigate the path. Adding authenticity and a blast of colour were Vietnamese flower sellers who walked along with their cycles donning their traditionally conical Non La hats. The dense neighbourhood was a culmination of well preserved old temples and buildings with french architecture juxtaposed against shops of all kinds, clothing boutiques, hotels, hostels, eateries and artsy cafes. Vibrant little Vietnamese restaurants occupied the pavements with tiny stools that people slouched over to finish their meals. In my first few hours of walking around, I came across two noticeable highlights - one, that each street was dedicated to a certain kind of product to shop for - in a couple of turns, I was able to spot distinct shopping lanes - there was a first with a myriad of designs in silks, second with a strong smell of spices, and a third, loaded with plastics. And two, that amusingly, for some reason, everyone took pride in the fact that Barack Obama had once been there. At the centre of it all was an alluring nucleus - the Hoan Kiem lake. On one side within the lake, rested a picturesque pagoda and on an island on the other side - Hanoi’s most popular temple. The lake tied the whole place together with a garden running across its circumference, bustling with activities. Despite the warnings of scams and ripoffs, it largely felt like a tourist haven which required no struggle at all. Everything I needed or wanted to see was astonishingly packed into just one compact square kilometre. Around the lake, I witnessed what I didn’t expect to find. Right outside the Water Puppet Theatre, there was a group of people casually indulging in a salsa routine. In front of one of the coffee shops, children were playing what I would call a giant Vietnamese version of Jenga. And, in the garden, two musicians played the violin. There was so much happening in this space that it was overwhelming to even try and register it all. This was something that I had only seen in musicals - for me, it was like an Indian movie had come to life - where I was the protagonist and my entire background represented how I felt in a series of dance, song, and children playing. I had seen people perform on streets in other cities before, but what stood out was that this was not an elaborate set up meant for the entertainment of the tourists. These were ordinary people of Hanoi, and this was a way of life of, by and for themselves. The Old Quarter is an old soul with a modern spirit, but, what makes it bizarrely unique is it’s the ability to cross-weave local Vietnamese life with a place riddled with tourists, seamlessly. In musicals, the song is integral to the story and, on an average weekend in the Old Quarter, the song is out on the streets.