To truly appreciate the early morning calm of dawn in Hanoi you really need to endure the full frontal assault of the night before in the old city. It is here that the full gamut of bars, restaurants and nocturnal services endeavour to lure the abundance of tourists and locals alike into wallet emptying rapture. Terms like hustle and bustle don’t do justice to the relentless hard sell from personnel stationed outside each venue. Menus are thrust under your nose every few steps, with sales staff extolling the virtues of their cuisine or the delightful bargains on offer. On almost every corner a voice implores, “massage sir”? As a phone revealing the image of a well proportioned Asian lady in a state of undress is serenaded before your eyes. Clearly there was no need to consult my language app to learn the Vietnamese for happy finish.
With the remorseless tug of age, such demands on the senses have increasingly less appeal, whilst the same process simultaneously spurs my body to wake up at increasingly earlier times than required. So it was that the idea of going for a walk at 6am materialised into something almost sensible, particularly when faced with the inevitable roasting temperatures and stifling jungle of humidity which this time of year in Northern Vietnam deems necessary, once morning is well established.
If you’re looking for actual serenity you probably ought to get up before for the sun, as the large group of people line dancing at 6:30 to Aqua’s cheesy, euro pop anthem Barbie Girl, amply testify. They join the somewhat calmer early risers around Lake Hoam Kiem each morning, intent on improving body and mind, in a myriad of disciplines and exertions, free from the likely impact of motor vehicles that defines much of the city.
Westerners will no doubt be familiar with jogging and running, some of them even join the locals in this ritual. Trying it later in the day in 40C and nearing 100% humidity requires insanity and rapid hospitalisation. One local man I spoke to had been coming here for fifty years to exercise and given that he looked nowhere near his 70 years of age, it had clearly done him some good. I’m too old and knackered to take up such reckless behaviour, having never jogged or seen the inside of a gym since it was mercilessly forced upon me at school. I distinctly remember running for a bus about 20 years ago, which was enough of a deterrent.
It’s not all old ladies
The aforementioned line dancing is popular, as in neighbouring China, with western tunes often motivating the energetic feet. Sweets for my sweet by the Searchers from 1963 is evidently still a thing among Hanoi grannies, as well as the marginally more up to date sounds of Aqua. More conventional forms of dancing attract couples each day to sedately spin and bend, but again to tunes that older westerners will be familiar with, such as the Latin version of Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps.
The more gentle arts are practiced by many older ladies, the Vietnamese equivalent of Qi Gong or Tai Chi, known as Duong Sinh apparently the most popular. This mostly seems to consist of tranquil swaying and arm movements but no doubt there’s a lot of chi being focussed to beneficial effect. You’ll even see the occasional beatific smile of someone meditating but this act of individual focus is in reality more the odd one out here. Much of what goes on at this time, whether the activities above, sipping coffee or slurping noodles, is largely done communally. Few are on their own in comparison to what many westerners would be used to. Here the individual and their needs or desires take second stage to family, community or collective of colleagues. Once done with their exercise you can see groups go off to a cafe together. Not always of course but it’s clear that there’s more to it than joining some regulars in keep fit classes. I watched a group of young volunteers picking litter out of the flower beds beside the lake. I’d like to think that such things aren’t unknown back home but you could hardly say it’s hard wired into the social fabric.
Inevitably, heat, traffic and the usual demands of the day dissipated the scene into the daily chaos of honking car horns and the city’s roar of money making activity. But this hour or two of placid easing into the tumult of the day, with its welcoming faces and insight into Vietnamese culture, happily drew me back again.
