What the Guidebooks Miss - "What's Arriving in Hanoi Like?"

Erik and I are very much agreed that our Lonely  Planet and Fodors guidebooks do a really poor job of setting expectations for each of these new places we've experienced relative to size, scope, activity level and "feel" of any given place. 

So here's my attempt at remedying this for anyone experiencing "first time" arrival in Hanoi on a busy, highly social Sunday evening in the middle of Vietnam's dry (but hot and humid season). 

The metaphor I'd choose to represent our experience and first impressions of Hanoi would be the human circulatory system.  

Being "discharged" from the airport at Hanoi was the equivalent of a freshly oxygenated red cell being thrust from the heart and finding itself on a straight and narrow artery path at a relatively high velocity for a relatively long period of time.  

Passers by and those you're passing are occasionally noted, but you're traveling much too quickly to take in details.  

After twenty minutes or so, the journey starts to take a dramatic turn and the overall dimensions (6m people dwell here!) and scope of your final destination become more apparent.  

Aged, multistory buildings appear on both sides of the artery which occasionally and randomly presents images of modern high rises and billboards repeatedly advertising Japanese entities like Canon and Samsung

The artery' s now increasingly choked with "other" recognizable entities.  As you're forced to slow down, the dimensions of your arteries are quickly shrinking...

Trucks, cars and truly innumerable motorcycles are now obvious co-travelers, choking off the artery you've traveled as you now enter a series of veins; the inner city.  

There are no rules.  There are no stops.  There are simply diverse "entities" with their individual itineraries to be fulfilled...  

We are but one of millions of such entities in this now highly congested circulatory system.  

Bridges, ramps and increasingly smaller and smaller "veins" now literally seem to be sucking us to our final destination.  

Around us, the street scape is alive!

Groups of people are exercising, dining in open air restaurants, cafes and sidewalks - often while seated on the ground or in highly random clusters of chairs - as we somehow miraculously push and squeeze by them without collision. 

But our energy is clearly now fading as we enter a maze of "Latin Quarter-like" narrow lanes that barely accommodate the swarming hordes of motorcycles and people in every imaginable social situation (and then some...)

Welcome to Hanoi's Old City!

As we squeeze our way down one final, small vein, it becomes clear we can simply go no further.  

We're discharged from our transport vehicle and are individually guided to our final destination.  

Our final destination  now apparent, we diligently squeeze ourselves up the narrow staircase that is this amazing city's infinite series of capillaries and imbed our now  oxygen-depleted and exhausted selves into our room.