Hanoi Sights

Slaughter and Side Arms

Yesterday when we exited our hotel there were a dozen people crowding the steps at the front of the restaurant next door. I didn't pay much attention until an anguished cry rose above the usual sounds of the street. A backward glance revealed that the circle of onlookers was watching a crouching man swabbing the throat of Pig, who was lying at his feet. Surely he's not going to...? Yes he is!

As we sat to breakfast across the road at the Champa, Pig's final squeal resounded down the canyon of the street. I watched as Pig's lifeblood cascaded down the glossy tiles of the steps. When Pig was still, he was moved to the cobbles of the street for depilation and butchery. It was a sensational start to a day with more in store.

It's not every day you have a gun drawn on you, but yesterday turned out to be one of 'em.

Later at Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum we were wandering around the vast public square out front, waiting for the lunch break to be over so we could visit. The mausoleum is an imposing and austere structure, the doors of which are guarded by a pair of white-uniformed men bearing rifles with bayonets attached. These guys were doing the motionless ceremonial sentry duty thing and naturally, I decided to make a few pictures.

Patrolling the visitor-free zone of the steps leading to the mausoleum's doors was a lone khaki-uniformed lad who looked about sixteen and had the posture and mien to match. The guys on the door are obviously forbidden to move a muscle no matter what, but must have some signal they give to the young bloke out the front because at one stage he suddenly about-faced and approached one of the frozen men in white. He carefully brushed an insect or itch from the sentry's face before returning to his ambling patrol of the steps.

I turned to make a comment to Amber, but she'd vanished. I get kinda oblivious to everything going on outside the frame when I'm looking through a viewfinder so it took me a minute to spot her sitting on the opposite side of the square. I negotiated a path through the scattered knots of predominantly local visitors posing for photos in front of the building. Here and there among the tourists walked a few guys (green uniforms this time) who obviously had the job of keeping an eye on everybody. Amber was looking a little pale when I sat beside her. "I'll never do that again!" she said.

It's been cold here in Hanoi but spring is coming and although the day was still overcast, the weather's been warming nicely. We'd both worn coats out of the hotel but found the going too warm for them long before we'd reached the mausoleum, so we were carrying them by the time we arrived there. Standing around's a different matter though, so when Amber got tired of waiting for me to finish with the camera she decided to slip her coat back on while walking for a seat on the edge of the square. Her coat is a nice long, thick woollen one in a deep, I guess you could say almost military, green. As she strode purposefully toward her destination she swung the coat off her arm, donned it and thrust her hands into the pockets. That was when she noticed that her purposeful stride was also taking her directly toward one of the guards patrolling the square. As he watched her approach he swapped the walkie-talkie from his right to his left hand, reached down, unbuttoned the holster on his hip and drew his side arm! He kept it pointing at the ground, but man - he was ready!

WTF? OK - Amber doesn't dress cute and flouncy like the local girls. We don't dress all businesslike or in expensive travel finery like many of the western tourists we see here either, but I certainly wouldn't have thought Amber gave the impression of being some kind of terrorist, counter-revolutionary or threatening psycho. Luckily, being the smart girl that she is and the guy in uniform being a true professional, nothing came of it. As soon as she realised she was considered a potential threat she altered her course slightly to go around the guy, fixed her eye on where she was headed and kept her hands in her pockets. He watched her pass, reholstered his weapon and turned to chide a local teenager who'd broken decorum by squatting on the flagstones of the square.

All in all, Amber reckoned the most shocking thing about it was that the guy actually considered her a possible threat. I couldn't help feeling we were lucky it didn't happen at a tube station in London...