How Many Mopeds Can One City Hold?

If the city is Hanoi, apparently as many as the streets can hold. Hanoi has hundreds, thousands, millions of people zipping around on their Vespa’s or small motorbikes. But I get ahead of myself. Hanoi. A word that belonged to M.A.S.H. To China Beach to the Thin Red Line. I remember on my very first trip to America I went to a cinema in Westwood. There was a matinee of a new film by Stanley Kubrick. It was called “ Full Metal Jacket.” The titles were coming up, the theatre was still dark but I could hear sobbing from the back of the Cinema. When the lights went up I saw it was men sitting separately probably in their forties or fifties. In the years I have lived in America the Vietnam war has been documented in films, in exhibitions, by Ken Burns in his ten part series, in the memoirs of Robert McNamara and Henry Kissinger. I have known and admired John McCain, who is perhaps the most famous survivor of imprisonment in Hanoi. And now I am here in the streets of Hanoi. There are a couple of areas which have the mark of communism. The policemen guarding the fireworks for New Year’s Eve are soldiers not to be messed with. The flags flying everywhere red with a yellow star. The vast Ba Dinh plaza in front of Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum guarded by soldiers all dressed in white. The sleazy cops in the three police stations I had to deal with when I had my phone stolen, who smoked and watched videos on their phones and would only ask “ what do I expect from them?” The strangeness of visiting the “Hanoi Hilton” the famous jail in the centre of Hanoi where the Vietnamese were imprisoned under the French Colonialists and which was then used for American servicemen who were captured in the Vietnam war from 1965 to 1973. The many descriptions of the appalling treatment by the French Colonialists. The many descriptions of the caring and thoughtful treatment given to the Americans. How they were given better food than the local population, how they played chess, and football, how they received lots of care packages from home. The photographs of happy prisoners to back it up. Strange again I say. There are fires everywhere. Little piles of red and gold paper being burned for good luck. The pavements are impassable, littered with plastic chairs and cooking pots and thousands of motorbikes. You step out into the street hopeful that no one will run you over. And they don’t. These bikes with three, four, five people squashed onto them; with shopping and dogs and babies and half a tree of peach blossom. They obey no signs, no traffic signals. They drive on the wrong side of the street, going the wrong way; but somehow they scoot and curve and brake and no one seems to hit anyone or anything else. It is one of the miracles of Asia in my book. The people with whom you come into contact are very kind. They would love you to pay full price, but allow you to bargain in a language you both make up to use between yourselves. Their money is ridiculous. The smallest note is 500 dong. That translates to 1 penny; or 2 cents. Then up to 1000 dong. Which is 3 pennies. Or 4 cents. And thereon it goes up to 10,000, equaling 34p and 42 cents. I can say no transactions are smooth. You insult people many times a day by offering to pay them an amount less than the paper it is printed on. You end up showing them what you have in your wallet and let them select what will get you out of the shop soonest. It seems that they stopped making coins because children swallowed them. Good move, I say. The bell boy in the hotel took us on a personal project. He was horrified when I was robbed. He would jump up and open the door when he saw us approaching. He snatched our bags away from a taxi man he didn’t like the look of, holding them to his chest as if they were the Crown Jewels, saying “ we don’t know you.” His uniform , which he wore proudly, was slightly puffy as if the lining had shrunk and the trousers finished an inch or two above his ankles. He was older than the rest of the staff as if he had missed a promotion somehow. “ T” he said his name was. It wasn’t, but he wanted to save us the embarrassment of getting it wrong. It will sit hard with me for the rest of my life that we tipped him what we thought was a handsome amount and it was probably less than 50p. I didn’t know about New Year. it’s enough that I avoid it in my own culture because midnight will never come and after midnight is just too silly a time to be up without pyjamas and good book. But here in Vietnam it is New Year. It is Tet. It is enormous. A six day national holiday. it is about red dresses and smart jackets and being with your family and eating special food. Everyone puts on their best and walks around eating ice creams and taking photos of each other. Many shops are closed. As are banks. Everything costs a little more. But hey! What is a few more Dong…actually I can’t answer that.