Vietnam
March 27th, 2006
I arrived in Hanoi yesterday. It’s nothing like I expected and difficult to describe. It’s very damp and cloudy and misty. Land prices are extremely high, so all the buildings are very tall and decorated in a mediterranean style. They are often in bright candy colors - oranges, yellows, greens. But sometimes the families can only afford to decorate one side of the building, so the rest or at least half is just plain concrete on the sides or back, without windows. It looks very strange.
There are lots of little shops and the area around the lake is very pretty. There are a number of large old buildings, like the Metropole Hotel and the old opera house. Everyone rides motor bikes and there are no real traffic laws to speak of, much like China. We visited the countryside today, which is literally the outskirts of Hanoi. The airport is in the middle of fields and fields of rice paddies.
