Hanoi, 4-6 Apr 2006

Non-stop stream of motorbikes coming from all directions (none of the motorist wear helmet, NONE, let me reiterate). A bulb lighted up in our heads, and suddenly discovered a good business opportunity! We can sure make a lot of money if we can convince the government to impose the law to make wearing helmet compulsory. To our surprise, our local contact told us, government had in fact imposed the law twice in the past, but failed. If you were to catch the law breaker, then, everyone on the road was to be caught, the problem was just too big that nothing much could be done. We were not convinced by this statement, as no one wanted to pay summons…. He then added that, whenever a police booth was set up to catch the motorist without helmet, you could find another booth set up a few hundred meters before the police booth, renting the helmet to the motorist, and the helmet was to returned at the booth a few hundred meters away from the police booth…don’t you think Vietnamese are so brilliant, thinking of this business model?

Confusing traffic lights and directions (you wonder anyone ever notice the existence of the traffic light, as it is being ignored and not followed)
Never-ending tooting of horn (as someone says, the motorist/ driver just honk at anything that move, I wonder why they honk, as no one basically cares)


Tips for crossing the road – just assume you are blind, cross the road without fear, let the motorist avoid you, else you will hv to wait till the cow come home before you can cross a narrow street

Dusty, narrow, disorderly roads with digging and patching every where, not sure if it is called road upgrading works?

No many high-rise buildings at sight.


There are many lakes (small and big) in Hanoi city. The most well known one is at the heart of the city, called The Sword Lake (Hoan Kien). Many locals jog & walk along the lake side in the evening. But, again, you wonder how can they breath/ do exercise there as the air quality is so poor. However, there are some good restaurants (for the tourist) along the lake side, it is quite a nice place for tourist to have a meal/ drink there, overlooking the a small pagoda in the middle of the lake, with cool breeze blowing to your face. We had one of our dinner there, entertained by the 'traditional' live band.


Food – would be very exciting if you are adventurous enough to try all sorts of meat, including veal, snake, frog…..and man’s best friend, the dog. But, we never go to that extend, the new thing that we had tried in Hanoi were rabbit meat and goat’s brisket.

Weather - windy, cooling, especially at night, about 25 deg C, with breeze, you will feel very comfortable.

People - don't expect them to know English, but, to me, most Asians are warm and nice, I don't feel threaten at all walking alone on the street.

Back to the business (afterall, this is supposed to be a business trip)- well, I was quite shocked by some of the business set-up in Hanoi, the location of the office is in the middle of nowhere, dusty, no air condition, even some of the engineers/ business owners do not speak good English. Some of the products & the applications that they are developing are so niche (primitive too...wondering why they still need to develop such product) that we hv never encountered before outside Vietnam. Indeed, this trip is an eye-opening for me.