HANOI, VIETNAM – Sidewalks in Hanoi serve many different purposes… merchandise display space for shop stalls, seating for sidewalk restaurants, parking lot for motorcycles and bicycles (and sometimes cars), work room, kitchen, grazing space for urban livestock, and occasionally as a place for pedestrians to walk.
Walking around Hanoi can be challenging. You must constantly consider where to place your next step.
For starters, many sidewalks are quite uneven, with broken or missing tiles, motorbike driveway indents, tree roots poking through the pavement and other hazards.
Adding to the sidewalk challenge, most shop stalls in Hanoi are quite small, especially in the city’s Old Quarter. They seem to serve mainly as a warehouse space, with goods piled to the ceiling, and a narrow pathway from front to back. By necessity, when they’re open for business, they display their merchandise in front of the shop, spilling out onto the sidewalk.
Of course, the shop owners also leave space on the sidewalk out front for motorbike parking – for customers, family members, and anyone else who wants to have their bike looked after (for a small fee) while they shop elsewhere in the neighborhood. Pedestrians are on their own as to how to get past the jumbled maze.
Merchandise spills out to the curb
Even when a storefront does have a front wall and a door and displays its merchandise inside instead of on the sidewalk, the walkway out front is sometimes filled with boxes and bundles of newly arrived merchandise, waiting to be unpacked, carried inside and arranged on the shelves.
After living in Hanoi for the last six months, we’ve determined that the primary use of the sidewalks around most Hanoi neighborhoods seems to be as a parking lot for the millions of motorbikes and scooters that keep the city moving (numbering some 5 million motorized two-wheelers as of mid-2017) . And sometimes the sidewalks are used as an extra traffic lane.
Pedestrians beware!
It can be quite disconcerting (and more than a little scary) when we’re walking around our nearby lake (where there’s a long stretch of wide, mostly level sidewalk) only to be startled by the sudden “beep, beep, beep” of a motorcycle horn right behind us as a rider zooms along the sidewalk instead of out in the busy street with the rest of the traffic.
And then there are the trees. Hanoi is home to hundreds of gigantic trees. While it’s wonderful that Hanoians have preserved these ancient giants, most of them are growing right smack in the middle of the sidewalks, blocking pedestrians from walking by without stepping into the street to get around.
I should also mention some of the urban livestock we see on the sidewalks of Hanoi. Melanie and I often joke about the “Jurassic” chickens that live next to our lake. Some of these gnarly-looking birds (think velociraptor) are confined in bamboo cages, but most of them are free range,
wandering around loose as they scratch for bugs in the dirt around the ancient trees or in the muck at the edge of the lake. They’ve never yet attacked us as we walk by, but I don’t like our chances should one of them decide to go rogue and strike out.
And don’t forget about dog poop. There doesn’t seem to be a poop-scoop law in Hanoi, so doggie doo is a constant hazard as we walk around town. We do see some people walking their dogs on a leash, but most of the dogs we see are untethered, so they do their business wherever they want – under a bush, next to a tree, or right smack in the middle of the sidewalk. Careful where you step!
Dog poop’s not the only hazard
Oh, did I mention the fishermen? On our daily walk around the lake we always see fishermen, singly or in groups, dangling their multi-pronged hooks into the murky water. Some of them keep their catch in a basket or a bag, but many just toss the fish onto the sidewalk where they flop around, gasping for air.
I haven’t stepped on one of these scaly hazards yet, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. After all, I’m already trying to dodge broken sidewalk tiles, avoid dog poop and watch out for motorcycles sneaking up from behind…
And sometimes I even try to look at the scenery.
I was caught in heavy rain and my progress impeded by the bikes parked on the footpath. I was tempted to topple the end one and watch the domino effect.
Yeah, I’ve been tempted to do that too. But there’s always one or two guys hanging around to keep an eye on the bikes. Wouldn’t want to get them on my bad side so I just walk around.