vietnam day 2

Day 2 in hanoi, Vietnam. So far nothing I've seen has impressed me. The city is run down, crowded, dirty and down right dangerous. Let me just begin with the description of the place.

There are few, if any, road markings or signs. Motorists just go wherever they wan as there are not many lane markings. The road is packed to the kerbs with vehicles, which are mostly motorcycles. Traffic rules seem to act as guidelines instead of law and u can't even trust the motorists to follow traffic lights. Every few seconds or so, a vehicle will horn for no reason whatsoever, creating a constant symphony of noise. This keeps u on ur toes, for with roads packed like this and the barrage of random honks, u can never tell if u are actually gonna get hit by a car.

The atmosphere of the place add on to the stress level. Sure, the weather is cooling and dry (between 15 to 20 degrees) but everywhere seems to covered by a thin layer of smoke. It kinda feels like Singapore during the haze season less the heat.

As mentioned earlier, the place is a run down city that reminds me of the small town my grandma lives in in Malaysia during the 1990s, but worse ( I haven been back since then due to immigrantion issues). Sometimes, u can see a whole mass of ppl squatting or sitting on super short stools in open air or a cramped space eating, and that, is their idea of a food stall. That would have been alright, except the fact that though I wan to try out the local hawker fare, I can't due to the unsanitory conditions the food are prepared in.

All these combined together makes me feel like crap whenever I'm out of the hotel. Speaking of which, is rather good. Considering that it is one of the more modern buildings in this slum of a city. AND u can't really argue with the free WiFi :) the landscape here is really weird. On one hand, most of the buildings are small and run down. On the other hand, there are some buildings that stick out from the rest like a sore thumb. These are the newly built hotels, as well as shops that sell branded stuff. Let me paint the pic for u.

Imagine a row of the oldest shop houses in sg times 5. Then imagine a shop that is dedicated to Gucci or smt, decorated in a way comparable to that of the shops in upper ion orchard, smack right in the middle of those shop houses. That, is how the landscape is like here. It is a really strange sight.

Anyway, its 10 30pm hanoi time and its been a really long day. Will continue more about my day tmr night, if I'm not too tired.

Or dead :)