We were sailing up, looking at the water cliffs that burst into the bay. They were islands and they were mountains at the same time, an impertinent beauty, almost grotesque because it is atypical, for misplaced. We had arrived in Vietnam and decided to enter Ha Long Bay to begin the journey through Southeast Asia with a touch of lyricism..
We had a boat at our disposal and Juan accompanied us, That's what the guide called and imposed on us by the Vietnamese Tourist Office. Juan had lived in Cuba and although he did not speak Spanish as well as he thought, we were understanding each other in fits and starts.
We were pirates boarding plans in the profiles of Ha Long. It was addictive because at every turn a new silhouette appeared., a huge rock cutting out the water like a sea full of Poseidons.
We were pirates boarding plans in the profiles of Ha Long.
Three hours by car from there, The peace of the bay was about to turn into the joyous chaos of Hanoi. There is no way to abstract from the crash of motorcycles. The streets are a hornet's nest so frantic that one is unable to explain how the motorcycles may not collide. The junctions and the traffic lights are, as much, a mere way to guide the driver. Reflexes and braking are the real rules of traffic. The show is circus, the mass dodges with such mastery that it defies the law of probability.
I had to present the city of Hanoi for the documentary and I decided to do it by testing the skills of the motorcyclists. The idea was to cross a street intersection walking while talking to the camera, during peak traffic. I had to repeat the introduction six or seven times, until it was the way we wanted and on all occasions the motorcycles got around me with an inexplicable naturalness.. I lost my fear of crossing the street, what is necessary to know a city that lives outside, on the sidewalks and behind, in memory of his days of sorrows and glory.
References to war are permanent in what was the capital of North Vietnam and the war, in global terms, It is a concept that has not completely healed in the history of the country.
war, in global terms, It is a concept that has not completely healed in the history of the country.
The Vietnamese were the only ones who contained the Mongol advance of Genghis Khan, Centuries later they managed to drive out the Chinese who constantly invaded their territory. In the middle of the 20th century, The French colonized the country and the Vietnamese ended up defeating them after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, as they also did with the Japanese who attacked the country during World War II. That's when the Vietnamese clashed with each other., They won but the nation was divided with no time to recover from the wounds of the French war., the north of the country had to fight the United States, those who defeated in an exercise of strategy and resistance unique in history. As it did not seem enough to test the integrity of one of the most suffering people on the planet, between 1977 and 1978, The Khmer Rouge attacked South Vietnam, so the country, He got up from the stretcher again and decided to repel the offensive by invading Cambodia., what caused the fall of Pol Pot.
Ie, in the last century, japanese, French, Americans and Cambodians have attacked Vietnam and have ended up making the surrender difficult because of the interior jungles. Violence is in the genes of the Vietnamese, and victory too.
Violence is in the genes of the Vietnamese, and victory too.
But when we got to Hanoi, We only saw a town that smiled in the shoe stores, who repaired motorcycles with patience. We saw the long-legged girls brighten the lives of passers-by, We saw stalls where they prepared rice with vegetables, they fried an exquisite pork or roasted whole dogs.
Young people circulated without helmets, smiling in front of the displays of clothes embroidered with the national star, Men walked carrying baskets of fruit next to a pond where a B52 from the war against the United States remains sunken..
in the parks, young people dance salsa or play badminton, couples move away from each other in swan-shaped boats that look like ducks, on the waters of a bucolic lake. It is also pleasant to stop and see the Buddhist temples full of candles that appear as if nothing were wedged between a hardware store and a hairdresser., or follow the trail of cables next to the facades of very narrow French-style buildings, with peeling colors and balconies full of flowers. Hanoi is everything a city can be at any given time.
Hanoi is everything a city can be at any given time.
The cathedral has lost its luster from the stone that is now blackened, but in the square where the Christian temple maintains its dignity, one can sit on the terrace of Cong cafe to enjoy the best coffee in Southeast Asia.
As we had our less contemplative mood, We decided to visit a different place: the Pet Café. After asking for a cut, The waiters accompanied the drink with other ingredients: a lizard, a python, a tarantula or a scorpion. All, living, They were climbing my arms and getting tangled in my hands, while in a show of balance, I tried to drink the coffee avoiding stings and bites, depending on the case.
Hanoi is a fun place, a bit bizarre depending on the neighborhoods, but it crashes with the military solemnity of the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, where thousands of tourists and devotees queue to see the embalmed corpse of the communist leader. And in the almost religious reverence of the soldiers who guard it, in the magnificence of the square, the atmosphere of war resurfaces, to remind outsiders that they can drink beers with slant-eyed girls but you better keep any flags away from their boundaries, because no one there, never in history, he has beaten them the hard way.
