Hanoi is a place where filthy abundance and noise follow you everywhere and the action takes place low to the ground. The fluid movement of traffic resembles a drift, like dunes. Time slows, suspended in particulate-filled air. While locals make business and take draws from traditional pipes, the sound waves of motorbike horns and tonal conversations compete for space through which to move
Some people call this relaxed and insist that Hanoi is laid back. In comparison to what, we’re not sure. Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Southeast Asia, Travel, Videos, Vietnam by: Daniel Noll
2 Comments | 15 January 2007
As I was told by the General Manager of Craft Link, Ms. Tran Tuyet Lan, not-for-profit organizations have to sell quality products in order to survive. Charity isn’t sustainable.
But Hanoi’s Hoa Sua School and Craft Link try. The customer gets quality food and handicrafts, respectively, in addition to the warm fuzzy feeling from contributing to a good social cause. It’s an ideal – and apparently sustainable – combination. Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Food, Hope for Humanity, Southeast Asia, Vietnam by: Audrey Scott
No Comments | 15 January 2007
Everyone raves about the food in Hanoi. However, we found our street-eating selves a bit stymied the first few days of our visit. Not sure if it was the fickle weather, our outlook, or the fear of being served a surprise chicken foot or pig ear, but our initial impression of the cuisine was not quite impenetrable, but less than accessible.
Many street stalls offer only one thing that is mostly hidden in big cauldrons with a sign above in Vietnamese. For the first few days, all we could discern with certainty were the pho stalls. Eventually, we got the hang of it. Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Food, Southeast Asia, Videos, Vietnam by: Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
No Comments | 15 January 2007
Our visit to Hanoi’s Vietnamese Museum of Ethnology included all the requisite colorfully embroidered and woven clothing, agriculture tools, religious artifacts and sample living quarters in an ample demonstration of Vietnam’s surprisingly wide and diverse variety of ethnic minorities. The extraordinarily honest and introspective exhibition on the difficulties of life under Vietnam’s Subsidy Economy between 1975 and 1986 – now that was exceptional! Continue Reading »
Filed Under: Perspectives, Southeast Asia, Vietnam by: Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott
No Comments | 15 January 2007
