Hanoi: Life on the Streets
After covering lots of ground Monday, yesterday was focused on Kowloon, an enormous and still growing section of HK that is home to the 100-story ICC building next to my hotel.
The morning took me to Nan Lian Gardens in the Diamond Hill section of Kowloon. It is a green oasis surrounded by massive residential blocks, a shopping mall and swooping highways. Stepping inside, you realize how loud this city of 8 million is, rendering these lovingly tended gardens even more calming. The paths wind around a pagoda and a reflecting pool scented with jasmine with a small waterfall providing some white noise to block out the city's din. Although not exactly a green thumb myself, I appreciated the incredible devotion of the gardeners that dotted the area, crouching down for hours to get the plants looking just so. These capture only a little of this interesting collaboration between man and nature.
Across the street lay Chin Lin Nunnery, a Taoist/Buddhist convent done in the classic style and protected by an array of impressive Buddhist statutes, off limits for photography. I saw only monks, leading me to wonder about the nuns. None (hah!) appeared.
In Tsim Sha Tsui, the Indian and South Asian community is based in the famous (or infamous) Chungking Mansions, a fifty year-old high rise chockablock with scores of hostels, restaurants, shops and small businesses, with different nationalities featured on different floors. The Taj Mahal Club restaurant was a walk up the dingy fire staircase to the 3rd floor, where I was the only lunchtime customer. I enjoyed the mixed tandoori grill while taking in the Indian MTV equivalent on cable. Many of the music videos were shot like Bollywood features while others had a strange sort of political twist, usually involving some sort of corrupt military or government officials. One especially unusual one featured a female singer surrounded by dancers that first were dressed as vampires, then as bullfighters and then as some kind of Michael Jackson figures - including huge fake afros, blackface and pouting red lips.
I continued up Nathan Road to visit some other famous shopping sections, including Jordan Road and Mong Kok, which had one large building populated over several floors with rabbit warrens of tiny electronic stores, all advertising the iPhone 5. Mong Kok also had a live fish market where the freshness of the fish - still alive - could not be doubted. One guy had filleted the body of a large fish, leaving the head and gills intact so the fish was still breathing even as most of its body was already cut away. OK, that was gross but at least I did not include a picture of that! This is a little more tame.
Here is a street scene from Mong Kok and a sight familiar to anyone that frequents Chinatowns everywhere.
After a shower to wash off the days' sweat (yeah, its tough work on vacation), I headed down to Pier 9 to meet David Chu, a litigation partner in the HK office. Although I have spent a lot of time with David on the phone and in emails over the past few years, we had only met a few times. We hopped on a small ferry that shuttled us to Lamma, a small island off of HK's south shore that is home to a number of great seafood restaurants and the most famous of them all, Rainbow Seafood. A more impressive ferry left shortly before ours.
Set right on the water and open to the elements under a tent, Rainbow is one of those seafood restaurants with all of the fish and shellfish still alive in tanks awaiting your selection.
The food was superb and it was great to visit with David and learn more about this extraordinary city., although we spent more time talking basketball and Jeremy Lin than anything else. David put the arm on me to restart work and spend some quality time in HK and I have to say it has its appeal. The return trip afforded wonderful views of Hong Kong island with its skyscrapers all lit for maximum effect.
The drive for success in HK is impressive but its focus is more global than the big mainland cities, where internal politics and the hand of government make for a more inward focus, which perhaps has historical roots as well. Of course, the U.S. is in many respects the most insular of all. The concept of exceptionalism remains a major theme in our culture, even to the point of becoming a campaign issue. As tolerant a society as we mostly are, we are amazingly ignorant of other cultures, presuming that the virtues of our way of thinking to be self-evident and necessarily correct. The astonishing growth and infrastructure of a place like HK suggests that maybe we have something to learn.
Onward
Today found me on a Vietnam Airways flight to Hanoi and the next leg of my adventure. Despite a short flying time of about 85 minutes starting at 2:30, the flight crew efficiently gave us (in coach) a complete three course meal, free drinks and real glasses. I can't remember the last time that happened to me on a U.S. carrier. More lessons from the Vietnamese.
The ride in from the airport was also educational. Roads here are narrow and filled with a flabbergasting number of motorcycles and scooters. A guide later told me that, in this city of 8 million, there are 3 million motorcycles and scooters. Most of them seemed to be on the airport road today, weaving in and out, going the wrong way, making illegal turns and ignoring all signals. And then there was the water buffalo trying to cram its way through a narrow space in the concrete divider in the middle of the highway, blocking the left-hand lane.
Reaching the city and the Old Quarter where my hotel is, the percentage of actual cars dropped even further. Motorcycles and scooters zoom everywhere, many with small platforms for goods, others with whole families. And everyone laying on the horn as though in the cacophony, anyone would be listening. The NY Times recently had an article about hotels providing visitors with guides on how to cross the street on foot and, it must be said, there is a method, usually involving a stately predictable gait and large cojones.
Once at the hotel, I met several of the people from the adventure tour group that I had booked with and they could not have been more friendly and helpful. Hopefully that is a good sign for things to come. Dinner was on my own and, with the help of TripAdvisor and a couple of local guidebooks, I found my way to a small, narrow slot of a restaurant of surpassingly modest decor and no other tourists. I sat down at one of the long communal metal tables and, after a few minutes (without ordering or saying a word), a bowl of bun bo was placed in front of me and I ordered the local brew, Bia Ha Noi. Here, the bun bo is a north Vietnamese interpretation of a traditional south Vietnamese noodle dish, and came with fragrantly spicy beef, veggies and sweet and sour sauces. Totally delicious. The bun bo and a beer set me back 71,000 Vietnamese dong or the princely sum of about $3.75.
After dinner I wandered the streets of the Old Quarter, which are a riot of small stores and shops selling everything from silk to towels to clothing to food to arts and crafts and scores of other items. Walking on the sidewalk is impossible since vendors and scooters clog the narrow path, forcing everyone on foot into the street. I was greeted with a friendly smile or call by many, which made my slight discomfort over being an American in Hanoi an unnecessary worry.
I probably will not have internet service for a few days so sit tight - more to come!
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