A mixed-bag reaction to last weekend's 1000yr birthday celebrations in Hanoi. After such an electric build-up, we were expecting sunday to be one long day of parties and Craziness. In true Hanoian style, it was not to be. As with many things here, the celebrations looked GREAT on paper; a colourful parade on Ba Dinh square in the morning and then a dramatic fireworks display at My Dinh stadium in the evening. The TV reports did look truly spectacular.
I got up early on sunday and tried to make my way to watch the parade, but found all the roads surrounding me were blocked off....I was essentially trapped until it was all over. Despite not seeing the parade, the chance to walk down the middle of a deserted road normally chockka with traffic was truly surreal and well-worth the early start.
Here's our own, quirky, take on the festival celebrations the evening before. The T-shirts were standard fare that night, and to-be-indulged-in.The other reason for the slightly toned-down nature of the celebrations was this (click here)
It's actually a little strange but I went to My Dinh stadium exactly a week to the day before this happened to have a peak at the rehearsals for the 10/10/10 performance. I even chatted to the group of German pyrotechnic experts flown in from Singapore to set up the fireworks display. I remember thinking how wonderful it was that these guys were doing what they loved AND traveling the world AND getting paid for it.Because they were later tragically caught up in the explosion, and because I want to carry through on my whole global-awareness-through-blogging thing, I thought it worthy of inclusion on this week's entry.
SarahHeadsEast xx
No comments:
Post a Comment