Ambling in an Asian area

… and encountering contradictions

Two days ago, I asked for some geographical guesswork, asking you to try and figure out where I was, based on my comments and observations, and some carefully-selected photographs. I’ve you’ve missed my challenge, click on the next link before you proceed:

I thought that many of you might have passed through the airport where I connected on the way here. A few of you got close, I saw suggestions of Singapore, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.

What is that famous quote? Close, but no cigar.

Here we go:

From Qatar, I boarded another international flight to my destination for most of this week. If you have a sharp eye, you should already see clues in my photograph at the top of this story. That was a street scene between the hotel where I’m staying, and a breakfast meeting elsewhere.

(Breakfast meetings are the best!)

I’m in a country that is governed by a Communist Party, though you wouldn’t think so if you looked around some parts of this city.

This temple to capitalism, and another one just one block away, is located in Hanoi, Vietnam. I’ve stayed here for a few nights in a hotel with a Korean name (and probably ownership?), the Daewoo Hotel. Very comfortable, it even has a German restaurant (where I ate the schnitzels I mentioned, just to throw you off the scent :) ).

This part of the city has a very international character. Yesterday I enjoyed a very nice lunch in a Japanese restaurant with some colleagues, and last night I worked my way through a huge pizza in another place, obviously owned by an Italian.

The streets are very interesting, passing between glassy tower blocks, but also smaller and more colonial-style buildings and old trees.

The large thoroughfares are clearly marked with dotted lines to organise the flow of traffic. However, all combatants in the traffic appear to see these lines as suggestions only. It is amazing, but it’s indeed possible to have four streams of cars and buses on a 3-lane road. Even to add a rather astonishing number of scooters into the mix, usually driving into the same direction. All you need is liberal use of hooting and honking, so there’s an ongoing cacophony of these sounds.

The traffic lights all indicate how many seconds they will still be green, or red, counting these seconds down in the appropriate colour. I see that it’s not done to take off across the intersection unless the red light has less than 2 seconds to go. Unless you’re on a scooter, in that case anything is possible.

Even with such sophisticated traffic lights, one still sees policemen standing in the centre of large intersections. They bravely ignore all this chaos. This morning I even saw one more interested in his phone than the streams of traffic that managed to avoid hitting him.

Away from the capital city, I spent a day at a hotel approximately 60km (and 90 minutes) to the West of Hanoi. Fantastic scenery, very different.

The Melia Ba Vi Mountain Retreat is located in the Ba Vi National Park, high up in hills sporting dense tropical vegetation. I was there to participate in an important workshop, spending most of the time surrounded by seven working groups, each with a screen and projector to assist discussions.

And yes, I had a translator :).

Interesting discussions, involving some important people. But the scenery outside was certainly more pleasant to look at.

I genuinely enjoyed my visit to Hanoi (and Ba Vi) this week, and look forward to the next time when I’m scheduled to be back. Vietnam is definitely a holiday destination, on the inwards flight there were quite a number persons clearly targeting the beaches or forests. My future trips are going to be for more work, though.

Have any of you ever visited and what was your experience?

If you like this sort of geographical guessing, then you should also play along with the game in Warren Thurlow’s recent (inaugural) story: