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Vietnam Travel  > Travel Special Features  > Hanoi - The Ancient Capital  > Hanoi and Counting

Hanoi and Counting

After regaining consciousness and checking for contact senses and teeth, I noticed a worried man hovering over me. He’s the motorbike driver. I was told "you really should apologize to him", I am also told. He could get in a lot of trouble for running over a tourist. I apologized, he gallantly forgave me and a tiny scar under my left eyebrow accompanied me for many years before disappearing under a convenient wrinkle.

Eighty motorbikes, ten bicycles, five cars and lone cyclo. Cyclos, relics of French colonialism, once wound leisurely everywhere in Hanoi. Drivers pedaled away on their bicycles pushing attached carriages piled high with entire families, great bolts of silk and other goods. When it rained, a sheet of plastic was tucked around the passengers to keep them dry and in the pierce midday sun; an accordion canopy was opened for shade. Cyclos were once king of the road, but the Hanoi authorities have decided they slow down traffic and are bad for the city's modern image, so the downtown area is now off limits.

You can still find low-tech transport near the marketplaces. Cyclo drivers ring their bells, looking for business. A peddler walks his bicycle, which he has outfitted with display cases. Over the front wheel are hammers, pestles and knives. The back wheel display rope pins and ribbons. Market women, straining under 25 kilo baskets balanced from a pole across their shoulders, offer sugar cane and oranges. Another cyclo passes, twenty chicken heads peeping out of their bamboo cages.

A silver-haired orange seller points to her pyramid of fruit. Very sweet, she insists, and pushes an orange into my hand. No, I say, I really don't need any oranges. No problem, she smiles, peering into my face. How old are you? Fifty. You look young, she says. Here, we're old at fifty. Are you sure you don't want to by my oranges?

About the author: Raquelle Azran, the daughter of a US lieutenant colonel, divides her time between Tel Aviv Israel, where she writes, and Hanoi Vietnam, where she specializes in Vietnamese fine art.