Vietnam sights and sounds

Friends have told me Vietnam is much like the Philippines. And in some ways it is. Until it isn’t.

I’ve always been drawn to the mundane. The presence of the daily Vietnam life is seen and felt in ordinary sights: locals in non la – the iconic conical hat of a culture worn by street vendors, tourists pedaled around in rickshaws known as xich lo. Dozens of mopeds and scooters who seem to come from everywhere and in every direction. Such is a crazier traffic than that of Manila’s. Locals and travelers gather in tiny chairs around low tables having coffee or drinking beer. Overhearing bits of conversations about their family back home between couples in love or a group of friends, and many other conversations in languages I can’t understand all blending into the sound of the streets of Vietnam.

It seems their history isn’t just defined by the scars of its wartime past. I doubt they have forgotten. It lives on as shaped by its people reflected through its culture. Even those who never lived through those old wartime years still carry traces of it. We often learn more from lived experiences because in them we imprint with visions shaped by emotions. That is how we remember even the mundane. And over time, memories turn into stories, and maybe one day become its own history.

But in the dusk of a bustling Vietnam twilight, I found a different kind of stillness. The Old Quarter of Hanoi can indeed take you to a different time and period. Getting lost in the narrow streets of Hanoi is better sometimes. I get to open my eyes to things I would have noticed otherwise. And in those moments, looking up and down, left and right, tracing back my steps, I realized I was not just observing Vietnam, I was already living it… right down to my “Vietnam belly.”