February 22, 2009

One of the more entertain

ing activities one must partake in while staying in Hanoi is to get up at 6am and head on down for a walk around Hoan Kiem Lake. Take your camera. You will be rewarded. The Vietnamese, particularly the older ones, are great early morning exercisers and Hoan Kiem Lake is one of the myriad of locales around the city (or, for that matter, the country) in which they start their days. You will see runners, joggers, power walkers, casual walkers, people doing tai chi, sword dances, aerobics (in their hundreds), fan dances and more. One group of men even brings down their bar bells and weights and sets up an outdoor gym. The place is a grand sight. If you are feeling a little more adventurous (though not really that adventurous as it's not really that far from the centre of town) then Lenin Park will provide you with all the above activities plus ball room dancing – yes indeed, music blaring, and couples paired up doing a waltz!

One of the more curious forms of exercise I have encountered around the lake is performed by one gentleman whom I wave to as we pass each other on the occasional times that I get down there for a run myself. He runs backwards! Glancing over his shoulder, he eagerly beavers away around the lake. Go figure that out. I should not mock him too much – he may be the world's fastest backwards-walking athlete. And who am I compared to that.

The dress of choice of many folks walking around the lakes or partaking in the aerobics drills, particularly in the evenings, is their pyjamas Yes, their bed clothes. When I first encountered this sportswear I always thought that it looked like they were wearing PJ's, but not wanting to appear uncultured I allowed for the possibility that it was some special Vietnamese dress. But on asking around those more knowledgeable than I, it was in fact revealed that it IS their PJ's. So, the final hours of the evening seems to be - have dinner, get changed into your bed clothes, go for a walk around the lake, then pop into bed! On a similar note, I heard recently on the news that over the border, in China, the authorities are trying to encourage their citizens to discard their PJs before they leave the house for their exercise so as to leave a better impression for the foreign visitors – well, I am not sure the world is quite ready for elderly naked men and women walking around the parks in the mornings and evenings. Or perhaps the idea was to entice the young more nubile set to do so, and thus to attract visitors to the country. Or was it simply to replace their PJs with more becoming sportswear.

There are a number of sports that the Vietnamese are passionate about. Most obvious, as you walk the streets in the morning and the evenings, is badminton. In the early hours before work and in the hours after work, many of Hanoi's streets are taken over by badminton players. One of the things I have always admired about badminton is that it really is one of those games that can be enjoyed by people of all shapes and sizes, and well into your older years. And that is evident on the streets of Hanoi. It is quite a delight to watch a group of very elderly men and women enjoying themselves on the court.

As is the case with many countries in South East Asia, the Vietnamese men are crazy about football (or soccer as some of us call it). You will have no problems finding a noisy street side bia hoi, cafe, or bar that is showing the English Premier League matches live in this country. And of course there is a fierce following of the local and national competitions as well. As an example, one of my first memories of Hanoi is the massive cavalcade of motorcycles that would cruise the city after Vietnam had beaten some visiting team in the national stadium. It would be a regular quiet (well, 'quiet' in the Hanoi sense of the word) evening when suddenly the roar of motor cycles would be heard coming down Hai Ba Trung street, accompanied by the spectacular view of thousands of motorcycles whizzing by at crazy speeds. Alas, in line with some with the introduction of a raft of new road safety laws, this was outlawed just over a year ago – not a bad thing given that these events did result in fatal accidents with some regularity – so new visitors will not experience this anymore.

The only time I have ever attended a football match in my whole life has in fact been here in Hanoi. For some reason, New Zealand had flown over a youth development team to take on the Vietnamese national team, and out of some feeling of duty I headed over to support my team. We lost that match, and I was kind of glad that we did – I think I was perhaps one of 10 kiwis inside a stadium of around 10,000 wildly enthusiastic Vietnamese fans and I got the feeling that I would be safer surrounded by 10,000 happy Vietnamese as opposed to 10,000 angry Vietnamese!

If your sport of choice requires you to run or cycle for long periods of time, then, ah, I hope you like treadmills. The traffic and pavement quality around the city are not fantastically conducive to running here in Hanoi. Personally, I hate treadmills. If I had the will power of me lady who can run 10km on a treadmill, then I would be a fitter man here. Alas, I can barely survive 10 minutes on a treadmill. Horridly boring things. So I need had to go out and seek cardio exercise on the pavements of Hanoi. Naturally, this comes with it problems. One of which is, to avoid the pollution and traffic, you've got to get on the road by 6am. Many runners head to Hoan Kiem Lake and run around that a million times (it is a mere 1.7km loop), but you risk running into the walkers, tai chi proponents with swords or fans (not quite sure which of those would be more lethal), ball room dancers, and the people running backwards that I mentioned earlier. It is a little like running down Orchard Road in terms of the way you have to weave yourself through people. Only recently did I discover a route that, for the large part, has no one else sharing a very wide pavement with me. It even provides me with a 7km loop, which is quite respectable. Still, one has to be out there by 6am to enjoy it in such a state. The reward is great – a loss of a mere few hours sleep for a rare period of solitude on the streets of Hanoi.

There are a few groups of runners who do leave the security of the city and venture out to the countryside for runs. If one does enjoy running off road then a good bunch of folks to link up with are the Hanoi Hash House Harriers. With the catch phrase that I have always loved, that is 'drinkers with a running problem', one has to be prepared for the reality that their runs are not all about running. But, even if one does not drink, they are a fun bunch and do head out to some very interesting locales and do cover some serious distances at times. For the more serious runners, then the Red River Runners are the folks to link up with – they even organise horrid things like half-marathon's.

A bunch of us competed in the Vietnam Triathlon in August last year. Once again, the boredom of a cycling machine in the gym was enough to send us out to play cat and mouse with the Hanoi traffic. Each Saturday we would meet at 6am at the Long Bien Bridge for a ride that would take us across

the Red River on a 60km journey. About 15km of this trip was spent fighting traffic and praying we did not become statistics, but the rewards we got once off the main road were worth the effort. Hanoi is embraced by around 100km of dikes, keeping the waters of the Red River out of the city and it's suburbs. On the city side of the river, a major arterial road runs along the eastern and northern edges of the city itself on top of the river's right dike. On one side of this dike road is the city centre, and on the other is an unfortunate population who has to carry their bikes and furniture upstairs whenever the river floods. Known to many living in Hanoi as 'the dike road', it is busy, polluted, somewhat scary, and kind of ugly. Cross the river to a suburb of Gia Lam, turn left, bike for 5km, cross another bridge over the Song Duong river, turn left again, bike another 2 km, the turn left again (lost yet?), you reach a very different and pleasing scene – a section of the dike road on the left side of the river that is quiet and winds it's way through rice fields, farms and villages for 20 kilometers. So rural this section of road is, one of our cycling team went rolling down the grassy banks of the dike after avoiding a cow that suddenly appeared in the road in front of him – keep you heads up cyclists! For the cycling enthusiasts of Hanoi, this is probably the longest stretch of easily accessible safe and pleasant riding that Hanoi has to offer. I have some friends who brave the highways on their road bikes – alas, this is not for me.

Now here's a tricky one. Some like to rank chess as a sport. Along with darts, billiards (and golf to a degree) I struggle with this concept. Please tell me what athleticism is displayed in those sports? A couple of definitions of sport that I checked out on some web-based dictionaries implied that sport involves physical activity, which sounds a fair call to me. Only one that I read, on Wikipedia, suggested that chess and other board games, could be counted as sport – lefties! ;). Do not get me wrong, I have utter admiration for chess and do dabble in it myself from time to time – but I've never considered using it as a part of a training regime for running or triathlons. Anyway, I digress. Let us settle on the fact that chess is a game, so with some artistic license I can drag it into this discuss on exercise in Hanoi. With this in mind, chess also ranks as one of Vietnam's major games. Walk most streets of Hanoi and you'll find a group of men (generally it is the men only – well, from what I have seen) sitting on small stools with a cup of tea or beer, huddled around a chess or checkers board. What is perhaps more interesting about this pasttime is that they seem to play all day, which leads me to believe that it is the woman who keep the country going! I suspect that there is some truth in that, but that's a discussion for another day.

For myself, tennis is the sport for Hanoi. It requires no crossing of dangerous roads, twisting of ankles on potholed streets, or dodging of people walking backwards in their pyjamas. In my younger days I went through a long phase of despising the game, put off by the posh ty

pes who brought an arrogant attitude to it when I was growing up. But, with two courts outside the window of my apartment, it was too great a temptation to get back into it. And what a marvelous game it is, and I've come to love it again. And for not much more than one US dollar, one also has the luxury of a ball boy to retrieve those wild shots – one almost feels like a pro when one indicates to him that you'd like him to pass you a new ball. Nice :). Alas, in Vietnam, tennis is very much a rich persons game so not too many Vietnamese play it. As alluded to earlier, badminton is more the common man's court game here as it can be and is played on pavements for free (sidewalks) all over the country. Should you walk around Hanoi one day, you will find badminton courts painted all over town – in parks, on streets, in car parks, office building forecourts ... everywhere. And so many of them tucked in so tight with each other that one can only imagine the sight that would be created should a shuttle cock ever have the bounce of a tennis ball.

Like any country there are numerous other sports that one encounters here in Hanoi. Đá cầu (a hacky sack type game, played on a badminton court where teams kick the shuttlecock over the net, and known as chapteh in Singapore), yachting (though not very popular, I do have a mate who has taken a small catamaran out on Ho Tay – the largest lake in Hanoi), canoeing (of the 4 and 8 person variety), and golf. But it is to the expat community to which I believe the more obscure of sports are made available in Hanoi. The Aussies have an AFL club and the Irish have a Gaelic Football club – even in Wellington or Singapore I would have no idea where to go to find such clubs. Neither sports appear to have enough players to provide opposing teams every weekend and often join together to make up a full team with reserves for some of their regional expat competitions (I hazard a guess that the two sports are quite similar). But it's great to see them introducing a piece of their homes to a new land. Though I dou

bt any Vietnamese will be clamouring to join them anytime soon.

One of the men of the moment in Vietnam is Hoang Anh Tuan – a weight lifting gold medalist in the Beijing Olympics last year. Vietnam's only. Could it be that this young man started his days pushing iron alongside Hoan Kiem Lake, or some other similar location around Vietnam, with the folks who are there every morning at 6am? His medal was in the 56kg category, which to me seems tiny, but he clean and jerked a colossal 160kg. This morning I bench pressed 20kg!! He is about 70% of my weight, but can carry two of me – one on each end of his bar bell. It sounds like Asterix on the druid Getafix's magic potion.

And speaking of my weight. I very recently jumped on the scales myself and for the first time ever just tipped in at 80kg – needless to say, my new fitness regime is under way and I've been pounding the streets of Hanoi every day since that fateful weigh in. It's not the easiest of towns to exercise in, but at 80kg and a healthy double chin, I don't think I have much choice.

:)

Please send your comments and questions to: tom@eyeonhanoi.com