Vietnam: A Retrospective

To see how much Vietnam has changed over the last 10 years is hard to grasp. I was first there in 1995, just have the political normalization between the US and Vietnam. From what I remember and the pictures taken, Hanoi was a dimly lit city with another unbelievable amount of bikes. The amount of bikes haven't changed, but the city is no longer dimly lit. It's a growing "metropolitan" city; condensed, bustling, fragrant and its own way, beautiful. Hoan Kiem Lake, close to where we stayed, was directly in the middle of the city; it was surrounded by multicolored lights, speeding motor bikes and cars, and people just take it all in. I can't even remember how many times we walked around the lake.
Nothing can prepare you for the "traffic" in Hanoi. Road lights hardly mean anything, they might as well be decoration for the street. Thousands of people on bikes zooming up and down streets, hardly paying any attention to the pedestrians; sometimes the sidewalks even turned in to roads. It took me about a 3 days to get used to how to maneuver around the stampede of bikes. We joked that when they did stop for traffic lights, it almost felt like the running of the bulls in Pamplona, seeing them headlights staring right at you as your crossed the street, right before they charged. To say traffic in Hanoi was interesting would have been an understatement in the least.
You could see that Vietnam was seeing the signs of becoming a middle-income country; one of the most shocking things, were the cars on the street (this added even more chaos in terms of traffic). You would see honda's, mitsubishi's and a ford here and there, but all of a sudden you would see a Porsche, a Bentley or a Rolls Royce rolling on down the street. To say there is an wealth-income inequality seemed to be an understatement. The contrast between these cars and the thousands of bikes that moved around them almost seemed surreal.
One could see that Vietnam was becoming economically developing, but from my perspective had a far way to go. Infrastructure was still lacking and in some cases in its infant stages. Even where in some instances where there were new roads, some of them were build haphazardly. I thought it was the suspension in our car that made us bounce around as we traveled, but it was the roads.
Hanoi was a great little city and I really enjoyed it. Ho Chi Minh City, the financial hub of Vietnam, was a bustling metropolitan city, but have the warm feeling that I got from Hanoi. HCMC had all the hotels from around the world, but felt much "colder" then Hanoi. What I did find fascinating was the historically significance of HCMC. Going to the War Museum, which I would recommend for anyone in the city, and going to the US consulate; you are able to "picture" what it was like 40 years ago. You can go to museums and see the pictures any where in the world, but to walk out into the place where it all happens, puts it all in context and perspective.
Overall, I would say the trip was extremely intense, but I got a great deal out of it, more than I would have expected prior to arriving. My knowledge of political economy and of Vietnam expanded 100x just in 3 weeks. On a side note, GET COFFEE. Vietnamese coffee is awesome.