Hanoi: 1000 Years

Probably the most interesting thing I did this week was go to the kick off celebration of Hanoi’s 1000 year anniversary. The event was put on by a large number of youth groups including many local youth unions. The tow themes appeared to be the environment and anything to do with the number 1000. I woke up at 6:15 in the morning and arrived at the festivities in time to see 1000 people perform a martial arts drill. I then met up with the group of volunteers to pick up trash and watched more of the festivities. My favorite were the inline skaters performing tricks (one of which was wearing a tee shirt with the American flag at the 100 year anniversary of Hanoi—go figure). While waiting the head of the youth union I was waiting with taught me a song about a crow.

            After nearly two hours of waiting we all donned gloves and trash bags and headed to the park to collect garbage. I was super excited because the entire time I’ve been in Hanoi I’ve wanted to pick up some of the numerous piles of trash that litter the streets. My excitement was added to by the Vietnamese girls asking me “do you ever do volunteer work in the states?” and telling me about some of the volunteer projects they do. Soon all 25 of us were happily picking up trash---for 15 minutes. I couldn’t believe it at first when they said we were done, but when people started asking me if I was tired from all our hard work it started to sink in that we really were done… so much for my dreams of cleaning up Hanoi. I went back to the larger festivities and looked around. All of the booths were run by students and most were selling things to fundraise, however it wasn’t clear what they were fundraising for. There were only one or two booths that actually had boards explaining what they did. There was also a big gigantic blood donation tent and dancing in the streets. However my favorite part was the 1000 pinwheels for the environment. They were attached to a big board by stickers… and everyone threw the sticker paper on the ground. Fun way to honor the environment. Overall it was a very interesting experience…