Hanoi in B&W
A few more random shots of Hanoi courtesy of Hipstamatic - above and below are from the alley we've been living in, near West Lake.
The early morning vegetable market.
Scarecrows at the Museum of Ethnology: with all this free time in Hanoi, we are finally getting in all the tourist sights we never bothered with when we actually lived here.
Another thing we never managed to see when we lived here: the remains of the American B-52 that was shot down during the Christmas Bombings in 1968. Though there isn't much to see, it's striking nonetheless to see such a physical remnant of the war sitting quietly in the middle of a busy square.
Oh, Hanoi traffic. There are more cars on the road now - big, expensive-looking SUVs in particular - which complicate driving somewhat, since they clog up the streets and disrupt the flow of motorbikes, making driving much more stressful. It also makes crossing the street a bit more difficult, since the big cars can't quite weave around you the way motorbikes do. Also, the endless honking from cars is way more annoying than the endless honking from bikes- possibly because no matter how aggressively they drive, they can't overtake you as smoothly as a honking motorcyclist, who fades in and out of earshot pretty quickly, which means you have to listen to their incessant honking for a lot longer as they trundle impatiently behind you. While rationally I know the sound of a horn here means something different than the sound of a horn back home, it's still pretty hard to disassociate - much like I was never able to get used to the "thank you" honks in Japan. One thing I didn't miss about this place: the Hanoise.*
* That was a terrible pun! I'm sorry.
