It’s 8am and I’m wandering the streets of Hanoi’s Old Quarter. A dawn deluge has rinsed the roads clean, and already they’re a hive of activity. Roadside stalls are setting up with the sun, while commuters crisscross the city, weaving around each other in an intricate waltz of wheels. The air is warm and soupy, thick with the smell of sizzling meat and flowers fresh from the market.
Above me, houses rise haphazardly. The history of the country is etched in their walls, the faded shutters and neoclassical balconies remnants of colonial rule. Between the mid-1800s and 1954, Vietnam was subjected to French control, though Hanoi’s newer buildings tell a more harrowing tale, constructed in the wake of the Vietnam War which, from 1955-75, saw thousands of bombs devastate the city.
Surprisingly absent in this architectural timeline are modern shopping centres or Western restaurants. Instead, street vendors and pop-up kitchens feed the population. I pass schoolgirls wearing conical hats, buying sweet, sticky rice from rickety wooden carts. And at a hole-in-the-wall eatery, I opt for a (boiled pork not too dissimilar to a Peperami, wrapped in a banana leaf) and munch in companionable silence among a gaggle of elderly gentlemen who are clearly regular patrons.
