An hour in Tan Ap: fruit, flags and flowers

This must be the third or fourth occasion that I’ve had to kill time in Tan Ap.

Just around the corner is VIP Bikes and they had Miss Hoa in for a little light surgery again to cure her assorted rattles and splutters. On hearing it would take an hour I took myself off for a coffee.  For once in Hanoi, WIFI failed me, so I amused myself taking pics from the coffee shop.

There’s something very pretty about the neighbourhood.  Even where it’s old, rusty and crumbling it just seems like yet more layers of elegance and charisma. Hanoi’s magic at work.

In between, the colour is supplied by fruit, flags and flowers.

People talk a lot about how Hanoi is changing and yet here, just over the dike road from the town centre, is a community that simply couldn’t be anywhere else in the world.

My coffee was drunk half an hour before the bike was ready.  I started wandering at random down the many alleyways between the wider roads.  Beyond the occasional smile and half-hearted attempt to get me to take a motorbike taxi, no one seemed remotely bothered by me.

Places like these do my Vietnam-loving soul good.

I hope you like the pictures.  The full set is here.