I was getting cocky on my bicycle, hopping kerbs, gesturing at car drivers whilst happily breaking road rules, trying to feel all Melbourne biker like when i noticed a loud hissing coming from my bike. I stopped to find a little prickly thing sticking into my front tyre and stupdily pulled it out to allow for even more gushing of air out of the tyre. I found myself cycling as fast i could for another few hundred metres to a friend’s house where i could stop and make repairs.

I realised at that point that i hadn’t actually repaired a puncture for about 20 years. In my last couple years in Hanoi i would have had close to 10 punctures, and each time i was only ever around the corner from a bike repair guy, not because i was particularly lucky, but there just happens to be one around every corner.

(thanks Jim Tran, whoever you may be for the photo)

Thirty minutes of fumbling around passed before i had my wheel back on and inflated and ready to head off to my barber. In the same amount of time in Hanoi i would have had my bike fixed, my hair trimmed, sideburns shaven way too short, nose hairs clipped, an unnecessary shave probably followed by a quick bun cha. Oh well, at least i am learning how to do things myself again.

With two days of continual downpour at a rapid rate, the streets of hanoi were swimmable, parts of the city were under various levels of flooding. This left movement by motorbike or car almost impossible with scenes of people pushing their vehicles along and major queues at motor repair shops. My movements however were largely unaffected seeing as i didn’t move much, deciding that the streets would be too flooded to get around. I was happily enjoying the pounding of the rain which was a nice change from honking traffic horns, until my neighbourhood also decided to blackout. With almost no food in the house, no power, a suggestion of dinner and an otherwise early friday evening on hand, i set out with my housemate to see if we could get across town for dinner. Riding my honda wave, we made it 500m before hitting the intersection shown above. I turned back rather than risk joining the throngs of dead motorbikes. Sure we could have just eaten around the corner from my house, but that wouldn’t have been an adventure. It was time to bring pretty lady back out. Our bicycles were thriving in the rain and flood leaving in our wake hesitant and or broken down cars and motorcycles. We picked up a friend who was stuck in town as the road back to his town was chest deep in water (unfortunately he was already half way to his town before finding this out, which resulted in a lonely delirious several hours walk back to hanoi!). Taking advantage of his delirium we convinced him that spending the rest of the evening cycling would be in his best interest. We managed to travel across town quite easily in the end with only a few stretches of flood to deal with. My 85000 dong three course meal was well earned that night. With this new found sense of pedal powered freedom, Saturday was spent in the company of pretty lady and now less delirious friend, cycling up to and around West Lake. The above pic is of Hoan Kiem lake in the centre of Hanoi which overflowed. People are standing on what is normally a few metres wide footpath around the lake. As the rain started weakening, there was almost a sense of disappointment that the flooding was subsiding (this sentiment was probably not shared by many, especially for those who where knee deep in water standing in their kitchen). Being overtaken by motorbikes and cars was once again the norm. At the top of westlake we came across graffiti street (everything in Hanoi has a street, e.g Chicken Street, Shoe Street, Creme Caramel Street, female motorbike taxi?? street), not the usual gritty inner city graffiti you might get around a major city, it was more the etching person a loves person b into a tree kind of graffiti. Along graffiti street on a 10 metre stretch of lake a whole bunch of fishermen were gathered. They all stood body to body as opposed to spread out across the lake, for warmth? probably not, perhaps it was the best fishing spot and not unlike shops in Hanoi, when someone is onto a good idea, then you’ll get a whole bunch of copy cats, or perhaps they were just being sociable. The fishermen don’t use any bait but have this spider like hook, not really sure how it encouraged fish to hook themselves, but it seemed to work. And thus ends the flooded weekend. More flood and fishing pics from the vietnamese press here. Apparently fishing and floods go hand in hand, in some cases the overflowed (or overflown?) lakes mean fish end up getting washed down drains, so waiting with nets outside a drain is a good idea. There did seem to be an unusually large amount of people fishing around west lake matched by the amount of people spectating too.

I am the proud owner of a wave alpha! The pretty lady may be a little jealous, but i still take her shopping, nothing could replace her basket.

Here are some pics of my current route to work. North up Đường Nguyễn Trãi for about 10-15 mins, depending on how leisurely i like to take it. The bike lane tends not to be so busy as compared to the actual road, usually just a scattering of ladies burdened with large potentially smelly fruit (eg. durian as per the pic) or school kids and the rare species of helmet wearing overgrown Vietnamese Australian.








Today was actually quite a light traffic day, the bikes were only banked up about 10 deep. After these generally leisurely 15 minutes i make a right turn onto dreaded Đường Trường Chinh (pictured below).










A couple weeks ago i spent about 2 hours on this road to travel about 1.5 km, i was at least grateful that it didn’t rain and my organs were behaving. I was also grateful for the old guy that told me off, something along the lines of “you helmet wearing cycling sissy, get your arse on the footpath”. So i stared him in the eye, which i’m sure subdued him, grabbed my “pretty lady” and made for what turned out to be a much faster path along the blurred distinction between footpath, road and shop front.
What a riveting post, stay tuned for Long takes an elevator…

Alright, so i’ve bought a bike. It may in fact be a ladies bike, the “Pretty Lady” text scrawled across it probably should have given it away. But really, what is the difference? the bar is angled down, as opposed to straight across? is that it? does lifting your leg up to get over your bike make you more of a man? i can really only compare it to a dog pissing. Male dogs lift up one leg, female dogs don’t, should we be following the lead of dogs? given their status as a delicacy over here?

Frankly, i think i’ll enjoy not having to lift my leg up so high, the amount of squatting required over here will be more than enough legwork for me.