Streets of Hanoi
By Nicolai Brix
16 March 2008
I have Been working on a project for over 2 month. I was working for my company 2 times a month in Hanoi, Vietnam. Hanoi is one of the most charming, lively and noisy Cities I have ever spend time in. I enjoyed the atmosphere, easy way people is living and the very hectic streetlife. Basicly I fell in love with the city.
I was working there and got to know a lot of people, I also learned a lot about vietnam and the culture. One thing I learned was that Vietnam is one of the countries in the world with the highst rates of growth. Every year the country develope around 8-9%. When I country has such a high growth every year something has to been lost, one of the things are the traditional way of living. In the cities there has always been a lot of life in the streets, markets, restaurants and shops. All that is about to change, There has to be made room for new buildings, the trafic gets haevy and last, the government has made a law that declare that street vendors are not allowed to sell there food and goods in the streets near public buildings, near hotels and other areas where there are tourists. The official reason is because of food health, but the real reason is that the government want to get rit of them because they not give Vietnam a good reputation. The funny thing is that all tourists think that they are a part of the very interesting streetlife. The other problem is that a lot of the locals there live in the center of the city, have there food supply from them.... The last thing there is very sad is that the government has not taken any actions to help the street vendors there now don't have a way to earn any money, and they are often the most poor of the citizens.
So the streets will change... I have made a series of pictures documenting the hectic and traditional streetlife while it's still there.
