The Scots are a little restrained about public exercise. Set games starting at set times are the custom. A little running in parks or around suburban roads is fashionably acceptable. But other forms of activity are greeted with a certain derision, disdain or even outright prohibition as in: no golf practice, no ball games, no bicycles.

For some, morning exercise by Hoàn Kiếm Lake in Hà Nội, can take apparently uncomfortable forms

In Hà Nội the ethos is very different, or rather in Hà Nội there is no appreciable ethos at all, notwithstanding the fact that some of the exercise is flamboyant to an extent that would be exhibitionism here. Mostly, however, on the streets it is recognisable games that are seen. by far the commonest game in Hà Nội is Badminton. It is clearly Badminton as the weighted tufts of plastic, with occasional feathers, show it to be so, but the tufts mark the end of the similarity, and begin the range of options. In many places the pavements have the lines of courts so that citizens can commandeer these normally public cluttered areas at certain times of day; usually this time is on the way to or from work. So option one is to use, or not use, a painted area.

Badminton played with net and feet

The next option is about nets. Many courts are marked out in such a way that a string can be tied between two posts, trees or signs and from this a net can be hung. If there is no such convenient support then the game is played with virtual nets; plain in their position to all those who watch or participate, but lacking physical manifestation. And the next option is the number of players. Whereas in the UK we play in orderly sets of two or four, the Vietnamese cannot countenance the discomfort of leaving a friend out - even for a few minutes - as a result sides are often uneven and each side may have two, three or four people. Certainly the average Vietnamese is small of stature – but not that small and the result can be a game more reminiscent of an adult version of sardines than the expansive play to which we are used. Another option awaits: to use rackets or not. In Hà Nội rackets are for the old and handicapped. Active sports persons need no such effete aids.

Walking Home

Their game is played by kicking the shuttlecock, a kick preceded by jumping high in the air and intercepting the projectile to force it to delicately drop for the ensuing kick, a kick of considerable force and extreme accuracy.

While this energetic version is predominantly for men, mixed groups also bring delight to the eyes of male watchers as chests are thrust forward to catch the missile and legs are stretched energetically! But the elderly players also deserve attention, for there are those who appear to be in their 60s and 70s, but still manage this most vigorous sport: seemingly as able as the young chickens with whom they compete. Whatever the cause of the diversion of spectators’ attention, it is often embarrassing, for the strings used to keep the nets in place are carefully placed above Vietnamese head height, or, for us, exactly at neck level; garrotting becomes yet another hazard the inexperienced visitor encounters on the streets of Hà Nội. The strings for nets of Badminton are not the only apparatus brought onto the streets. Every morning at 6am on the West side of Hoàn Kiếm Lake exercise machines and weight lifting apparatus are man-handled over a high wall and set out along the roadside for the dedicated enthusiasts who spend the next hour going through the performances that we do more discretely inside our sports’ clubs.

Hanging around in central Ha Noi - this is just outside the national assembly by Hoan Kiem Lake

Benches are set up, coaches attend and the weights clatter as those with fine physiques strive to hone them further. At 7am the machinery is cleared away and by 7.30 the nets come down as the Lake police amble round using their loud hailers to note the time and the requirement that the pavements are handed back to the pedestrians (and the vendors, and the cars and the motorbikes…)

Groups of older women require less paraphernalia. Each day by the lake, and that includes days when the cold and wet drive away the young things, they engage in gentle synchronised callisthenics stretching and turning together in time to the distortions of a ghetto blaster playing ancient Vietnamese music intertwined with American country ballads. Sometimes they take up objects such as red fans and sway and turn in time, welcoming the rising sun. These exercises that involve stretching with careful and calculated movements are the most popular.

Callisthenic exercises with fans by Hoan Kiem Lake

There are also those in Buddha postures who start to roll their heads and stretch, and those stretching by the lakeside who start to contort their bodies into bizarre shapes and drape themselves like cloths over seats or lighting bollards, and then those who, having completed sufficient contortions, move off walking backwards around the Lake.

Running, the publicly acceptable face of exercise in the West, is the dominant activity of the few Westerners who mingle with the hundreds of Vietnamese. out and about in the cool of the early morning. The Vietnamese, of course, accomplish all their activity with neutral faces, in marked contrast to the concentration and internal conflicts writ large in the expressions of the foreigners, and which adds 20 years to their apparent age. While these expressive western faces may show something different about the inner lives of their owners, the outward movements of everyone - occidental and oriental alike to whom I have so far referred - are benign.

Morning exercises by Portobello Beach

But not everyone offers such a show of grace. There are some who are shockingly violent. Their violence, while sudden, is utterly controlled. Local authority metal is the target: metal in the shape of lamp posts, road signs, cabinets housing traffic control apparatus or supports for seats. The emission of sudden vocal metallic outbursts announce that an oriental martial art form is underway. For others the attacks are on empty air, but accompanying each stroke are blood curdling exclamations that would ensure arrest in most countries. As always not a head turns, nor eyelid flickers.
Cool rules here.
On Portobello Promenade in Edinburgh at 7am I watched one man stretching slowly to the rising Sunday light. At that hour in Hà Nội he would have been among hundreds doing likewise; and one wonders wistfully what a Scotland, where exercise on the street was normal, would seem like. How eccentric he looked. How exotic.

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