The Long March

Another day of slogging throught the streets of Hanoi.  It’s more a dash through an episode of the Squid Game. If you survive you get to move on to the next episode but if you don’t survive then you might get lucky to be be sent home on a stretcher.

Connie says that for every car on the road there are 100 scooters. They are everywhere – they are parked on the sidewalks so one has to walk on the roadway. Crossing a street is like being a skittle and the ball is rolling towards you. The only advantage you have over being a skittle is that you can try and move out of the way but that doesn’t always work. Today we survived.

I think it was another 12 mile walking marathon taking us past all sorts of stores. It appears that goods are sold in clusters. That is, walk down one street and it specializes in Christmas ornaments. Walk down another and they specialize in Ao Dais. I wish there was a map that dilineated the areas where products were sold. However, I’m not buying anything except food! I hunt for the galleries and museums but being Monday many of them are closed.

However, we started off the day in a gallery around the corner from where we are staying. It was a photo exhibition displaying the work of Andy Soloman. He lived in Vietnam about 30 years ago, took pictures of lots of people and then recently returned and took photos of them again holding pictures that had been taken in the past. Beautiful black and white photos and fascinating.

we walked and walked and walked stopping every once and a while for a coffee and/or cold drink and finally collapsed back at the hotel at 1500hrs trying to gather strength to head out for dinner and another walk around the lake.

A great day.