The Levee

As previously mentioned, Hanoi is built adjacent to the Red River (or Song Hong, lit. "Pink River"), which Jenny tells me was a recent New York Times crossword clue (Red River Town = Hanoi). Some time back, a levee was built to prevent flooding, and it's a prominent but fairly unattractive feature of the city today.


Many neighborhoods, including the one I'm staying in, have been built on the wrong side of the levee. There is a wall along the river side of the levee screening the neighborhoods, only broken by gates at crossroads, separating the riverside neighborhoods from the rest of the city. At the An Duong gate, there is a colorful mosaic on the wall, suggestive of early Vietnamese ceramic ship motifs (note the ship in yellow). At first I couldn't tell what it was supposed to represent, but then I saw the original ceramics at the National Fine Arts Museum - unfortunately, they wouldn't let me take a photo. The mosiac also provides an easy way to identify where to get off the bus.

The levee road passes from north to south along the west side of the city, changing names several times along the way: Au Co, Nghi Tam, Yen Phu, Tran Nhat Duat. It is a main entry into the city from the airport. Towards the north, it is a multi-lane highway, elevated above the surrounding structures on a grassy embankment. Frontage roads house shops and local traffic and there are frequent ramps up and down. Down where I live, the road is split by a huge median. Frequent roundabouts and crossings ensure that the street is as chaotic as any in the city.

The median serves as a bus yard for Hanoi's bus system, with buses parking in a long line and pulling in and out throughout the day. Further down, there is a wholesale market, though I haven't gotten there early enough to see the market in action. In the evenings, kids play in the bus turnaround in the median, and families picnic on the small grassy area adjacent to the northbound traffic - not my idea of a pleasant picnic in the park. It's easy to imagine the levee road as a great public space: a linear park, a streetcar line, a market. But even as it is today, the space gets used in a variety of ways.

Ironically, the levee road is one of the spots of localized flooding: