For those of you who have been following our trip for a while, you have got used to seeing us pass borders and experience new countries. Every few weeks you know that there’ll be something just a little bit further East from the last time.

That’s going to change a little. You will still be able to travel with us, but for a while all the travelling is going to be in one country, Vietnam; and most of it in one city: Hanoi. For months this place has been standing before us like a demi-destination. We had to be here for a while because Hanoi is one of the world centres of lacquer and Marie-Do wanted to study this ancient Oriental craft.

But once we got here we realised that this place was more ravishing, more poetic and more delicious than any we had seen in a long time, save Luang Prabong. This is a place in which we want to stay and the recent policy of Open Door has made the English language a very sought after thing and qualified English teachers a very hot commodity. Here we are. Here we stay.

East of Eden, the adventure, has not finished for all that. There are many things to discover in Hanoi and we’ll be updating you fortnightly (or so) on things like the famous 36 streets in the old city, the best place to eat roast dog, trips down to Ho Chi Minh City, the Ha Long Bay, the Mekong Delta, the DMZ, Hamburger Hill and Dien Bien Phu. We’ll be taking you to the mountains to visit remote tribes and terraced rice paddies.

Hanoi is like a waking dream and since we both now have bicycles it is a dream in which we are rapidly becoming native. French Colonial houses stand next to bustling Oriental markets, classy restaurants which serve the finest French food are a stone’s throw from shops where you can wash down the still beating heart of a cobra with rice wine. Small temples, towering cathedrals, wine bars, cinemas…Hanoi has it all.

In the afternoons morality propaganda is broadcast through loudspeakers throughout the city: this is still the Worker’s Paradise. On our Japanese bicycles, we roll through the streets along with other cyclists, motorcycles, cars, trucks and buses. You need nerves of steel and a strong conviction that everything will be okay to ride here.

And so we’d like to welcome you all to Vietnam. It’s a Vietnam at peace with itself and with the West, a Vietnam which survived what most other nations could not even begin to imagine.

The torture of watching Robin Williams in ‘Good Morning, Vietnam’ was reserved for us, children of the West. They had the wars, the real thing. In Hanoi, which was far from the front, there are no vestiges of the conflict other than the facade of the Hanoi Hilton. But once again for us, Western visitors, it is strange to be in the place which was the backbone of resistance to our culture and our military might. You can’t help but feel a little nostalgic for the 60’s when you’re here and so it is fitting that CD shops carry all the good old music inspired by their resistance. You can buy Hendrix, the Doors, the Stones, Bobby Dylan in pirate shops for a song and it seems more than right that all our old anti-war protesters receive not one penny in royalties from the Vietnamese.

The real charm of Hanoi is Hanoi itself. She is delightful in the early sunshine when the terra cotta rooftops of the old town bake in the heat. The dark yellow facades of the French buildings break off into different shades of orange and fading red, people sit in outdoor tea shops sipping a wonderfully bitter green tea and smoking blonde tobacco in hits through a bong. She is a joy during the monsoon when washed by the tropical rain. We sit on our balcony and watch the water seeping down the sides of St. Joseph’s Cathedral which stands in its grey plaster coldness like a monument to Northern France. She is a wonder in her people who are either charming or rude in turns but not over aggressively so. She is frantic in her traffic: imagine a traffic jam composed only of bicycles along with honking motorcycles and in the middle of if all a bus roaring in anger!

Imagine being totally amazed all the time and walking the streets with a sort of stupid smile plastered on your face because everything is perfect.

Imagine being in Hanoi



Mair