Probably no place in the world has so much life sprouting from its streets than Hanoi. Thousands of street sellers everywhere, the crazy but always moving traffic, the smells of fresh food on every corner and sounds of beer-fueled laughs in each sidewalk, the heat and the humidity, noise and chaos, a paradise to the senses. Walking around is almost a matter of meditation, both for managing one’s peace of mind in this fast pace of city life, as well to allow ourselves to drink from it all, forgetting thoughts and noticing all sensations, feeling everything, giving ourselves in. Like Baudelaire said, “One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters. (…) But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.” And there’s so much juice in these streets… Drinking it is, in a way, just a matter of awareness, of being able to tune our mind into the present moment and its intrinsic ephemerality and beauty. It’s all about observation, observation, observation.

“Strange as it may seem today to say, the aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem. No why or wherefore, no direction, no goal, no striving, no evolving.” (Henry Miller)

One just have to walk and allow Hanoi to get us drunk.