My experience with Independence Day started on rocky footing and never really recovered. It all started on the Saturday before the holiday (which was on a Wednesday). I had had a long day; I started teaching at 8:15 (up by 5:30 to get into the office by 7), I'd taught a morning full of 3-year-olds and an afternoon of kids, then spent hours planning for another long weekend day the following day. It was raining, I was tired and hungry, all I wanted was to pick up some dinner, collapse into bed and watch stupid corgi videos on youtube until I fell asleep. Instead, I spent the entire night out, in the rain, riding around, forced to watch a parade I was not interested in.
You see, the city of Hanoi decided with very little warning (even to Hanoians, even less for foreigners who got the information second-hand) to close down about 40 major streets so that they could run a full dress rehearsal of Wednesday's Independence Day parade. So it was that late Saturday afternoon the TA's mentioned to us teachers, casually, that almost every street surrounding my house would be closed off. I live around the corner from Ho Chi Minh mausoleum and Ba Đình square, which is where the parade originated. What choice did I have? I work in the French quarter, closer to the Red River, so I made my way west as far across the city as I could until I started hitting barriers. I argued my way through a few until finally I could not get any closer to my house. So I sat bitterly, as the skies opened and an actual monsoon happened to all of us out on the streets, and derived as much satisfaction as I could from the fact that all of the police who would not let me return home were also sitting outside in the same rain. About two-ish hours later I noticed the crowds thinning and tried another route, heading back east then up north and down another street towards my house and thankfully found it open to the public. All shops and restaurants basically closed, I left my bike at the house and flat-out ran to my local tap hoa only to find them juuuust turning the lights off. I begged my way in and purchased the best dinner I could out of whatever junk food I could find in the shop.
So, already did not have warm and fuzzy feelings about the Independence Day proceedings. The parade on Wednesday was not more enjoyable; I stayed over Lenna's house (she lives in the French quarter) and on the morning of we made our way up to one of the major streets on Hoan Kiem Lake to once again watch the mostly-military display. It was crowded and the pushing was unparalleled and after waiting for the damn thing to start for about an hour in the heat we lasted about 25 minutes or so before we decided we'd seen enough and headed away from the parade to find some coffee.
News program, I think. This woman was so, so thin and looked very stressed but she was beautiful in her áo dài.
Goose-steppers (pretty impressive) and women's military (very impressive). I wanted to catch the sections of the parade I'd seen on Saturday with the students carrying Ho Chi Minh posters and the women wearing traditional áo dài. However, in the end it was not worth standing around in the early September heat. Trust me when I say it was interesting to watch.
I headed home soon afterwards to nap and laze for a bit before heading back to Hoan Kiem with Dan in the evening to try and catch the fireworks. It was, predictably, packed. After riding around for a while to find a place to park his bike we started walking but realized we had quite a bit of time to kill before the fireworks began and although there were some lights strung up and plenty of people braving the perpetual drizzle to see and be seen, there was not much else to do.
So we landed in an overpriced coffeeshop nearby, which despite so-so service was of course packed to the rafters with families also ordering small things to kill time before the fireworks began.
Finally we made our way back to the lake but not knowing what directions the fireworks would be in, actually set up in the wrong direction and had to run to the other side once they began!
Dan, mistrustful as always.
First fireworks viewing location.
After climbing a couple walls and throwing out some elbows, I managed to get a good enough view of them. They looked like... fireworks. It was still drizzling (you can see the people covering their heads in my photos) and the sky got very smoky very quickly, which definitely dampened the impressive nature of the display.
Afterwards we decided not to fight the crowds and ducked into Hanoi's Best Cheap and Cheerful Restaurant (real name) for a beer and randomly, for Dan to get some spaghetti. It looked like Chef Boyardee's but Dan is British so he ate it anyway.
Not a very discerning palate with this one.
The madness we decided not to engage in, the fireworks' mass exodus.
Later as we walked back to Dan's bike I took this shot because the stark difference between the chaos pre-fireworks and the subdued, quiet atmosphere afterwards was interesting. Old Quarter is always at least a little bit hopping (well, until the police shut them down or try to) but it was noticeably calm in the aftermath of the big Independence Day festivities.
Snake wine! I did not buy it here because my best guess is that it's overpriced in the Old Quarter, but I will eventually be gathering up some bottles due to requests for the stuff from friends and family back home.
So that was Independence Day. It was as chaotic and kind of boring as it often is at home. Initially, not really knowing the history, I had thought that the holiday celebrated freedom from French Colonists but it turns out the holiday is really much more about liberation from Japanese forces after WWII. If I were the city of Hanoi and I was going to block of all those VERY necessary major streets, I would do two things differently: give people way more than a couple day's warning, and throw some barbecue block parties on those streets so at least being stranded about 5 blocks away from your house but unable to return home didn't feel so much like getting kicked in the face. Oh well.
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