About a decade ago Chris Arnade traded in his career as a Wall Street bond trader for documenting via photography and prose the lives of poor people, first across America, more recently, across the world. He's currently reporting on his visit to Hanoi, along with some reflections on comparing life there to America. He's well worth reading on Substack or following on Twitter. This is one of his finest reports. A sample:
All of this makes walking in Hanoi a constant game of risk management. Will I trip over the cages of geese being sold, or twist my ankle on the bricks holding down the piles of clothes being sold, or will the log from the trees being trimmed by someone who looks to be charging people to do that, drop on my head? Or will the moped hauling ice hit me? Or will the moped hauling bananas be distracted by the log about to drop on the moped hauling garbage, hit me?
Despite all of that, there’s a weird counterintuitive functionality to the chaos, that once you get an intuitive feel for, becomes orderly, and you can move around quickly, crossing roads more easily than in the US.1
The biggest obstacle to walking in Hanoi isn’t the infrastructural nastiness, but the continual offers of hospitality. It is an exceedingly generous and warm city. Perhaps the most I have ever been in.
You cannot, certainly as a foreigner, pass along an alley of open homes, stores, and through the plazas of kids playing badminton, older women dancing, without being asked to join. To sit down, then given a drink (No no no way you’re paying. Absolutely not. That is clear), then offered the best cuts of what they are eating. Or even be asked to come inside their home and have a meal and do some shots of 8 year old rice wine.
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