Hanoi with 36 streets

I’m a hard woman I know – but you should not expect a tip for just doing your job. Yes I know how poorly people are paid here, and yes I would have given a tip because I enjoyed the experience, I just don’t like to be asked.

First a little bit of history. Thăng Long (vietnam hanoi) was an Imperial City, it was built during the Lý Dynasty, it had a wall 4 – 5 m high and a 10 – 12 m wide moat that separated it from the Merchant or Commoner City. This lay to the east of the Imperial City and was made up of a collection of small villages, markets and administrative units.

The craftsmen, merchants and traders came from specific outlying craft villages and built stilted houses on the swampy ground, they stayed close to each other so they could share knowledge and resources of their individual craft. These individual groups of houses became known as wards (phường). As commercial activities thrived and expanded, the people in wards established stores on the fringes of main roads in order to sell the goods they produced.

The craftsmen in the individual wards created guilds, during the Trần dynasty (1225 – 1400), Thăng Long had 61 guilds or wards which was reduced to 36 in the Lê dynasty. The wards and streets are named after the item that they produced and although the area is called the ’36 Streets’ this is thought to refer to the guilds or wards as there are probably more, I have seen estimates that range between 40 – 50 but I cannot find a definitive answer.

I was most surprised that ML wanted to try out a bicycle rickshaw ride, not sure that he had thought this through carefully enough. Giving somebody else control of his forward or backward movement has always been a difficult task for ML. His driver has learnt very quickly that if ML asks him to either slow down, speed up, overtake or get out of his beloved fifth gear that he does it – tout de suite!

ML has been known to raise his voice occasionally when stressed when somebody else isn’t driving up to the standards he expects.

It didn’t take long for the reality of the experience to hit home as the person maneuvering  his rickshaw began to weave in and out of the traffic, and after the first couple of times of him in his front seat slowly being driven across the traffic flow I could see him pale slightly under his tan. For a while he concentrated on taking photographs and looking around but his knuckles were getting whiter and I began to worry for his camera.

Just before the halfway point of our ride his rickshaw pulled into the side of the road and ML was back on the ground. We paid up and although we were going to give a tip they got a smaller one for asking for it.

I’m a hard woman I know – but you should not expect a tip for just doing your job. Yes I know how poorly people are paid here, and yes I would have given a tip because I enjoyed the experience, I just don’t like to be asked.

Enough of this we set off on foot and just wandered up and down, weaving in and out of people and cycles. The whole of life could be seen on the pavements, business is conducted, friends greeted, food eaten, people washed,  papers read all while sitting on the pavement or on the ubiquitous small plastic stools that are everywhere in Hanoi.

People set up business on the pavement, on a street corner selling bread, vegetables, cut out cards. Others are selling from bicycles, flowers, kitchen bowls, vegetables, brooms and plastic items,  I could go on and describe the profusion of different flowers in huge baskets, a giant splash of moving colour through the streets. Or the bicycle covered in balloons, or the conical straw hats.

The buildings have a small frontage but can go back up to 70 m (230 ft) behind the shop, there could contain workshops, living quarters for many families, often cramped conditions prevail in the ‘tube’ house. The authorities have been trying to move people out but they don’t seem to want to go. Within the old quarter according to a recent census there are 21,900 households some of them living in one room.

This isn’t what the international visitor sees though, we see the hustle and bustle, visit the renovated houses, dip in for a short period, snap away with our cameras and then tell every one of our adventures. But on the other hand without the tourists of which there were many, could they make so much profit?

Enough of the serious, if you are interested there are plenty of academic papers available online to inform.

Back to the streets and the tourist experience.

So much is happening around you that it is difficult to take it all in, we both took some photographs but eventually we stopped and just looked and experienced. You hear the constant noise of bike traffic, people are everywhere chattering, calling out, depending on which street you are on you hear the noise of the tools used in their craft, you’ll even hear the odd chicken or two and the faint buzz of electricity.

The same goes for the smells, depending on where you are as to what you smell, herbs, cooking meat and noodles, fresh baked bread the list goes on.

A huge boiling caldron of sounds, sights and smells, it is chaotic, colourful and an experience not to be missed and one that I won’t forget. We are off to Hanoi again in a few weeks en route to the UK. I am hoping to visit the night market which ML visited when he first arrived.

Knowing what to expect I will definitely visit vietnam travel again in the day time as well, especially now I have read a little of the history behind the Old Quarter, I know what to look for now, the signs of long occupation, what a tube house looks like. I think it is probably a place you can visit again and again and always be surprised by something new.