KVT on a bicycle

Free Bicycle Parking at 5 Hang Be

Tran Cong Dung is perhaps the last artist to represent the disappearing, traditional Xe Dap or bicycle. 

Not so long ago the sit up straight bike with its wire front basket was an ubiquitous sight outside schools, universities, public offices. Parking spaces now full of motor bikes were crammed with them. Now you have to go to a school in a country town to get the same sense of Xe Dap intensity. There too the modern styles are usurping the bikes we associate with ram rod back, white ao dai clad school girls from central and southern provinces. If you haven’t seen Dung’s really excellent wood cut prints of bike parking lots, large, small and individual, and you missed them at Maison des Arts in 2008, then now’s your chance. They are on the walls at the trendy Cafe 5 at 5 Hang Be St in the old quarter.

Don’t miss the couple of lacquers on the same theme and when you climb the stairs look out for the small grey canvases with slivers of red cloth painted on them. Really good.

Best of all Dung has some small, take home, inexpensive prints spread on a table. They’d look great framed in blonde wood and make arty souvenirs of your stay in a Hanoi that is on the last cusp of  Xe Dap disappearance.

Enjoy Dung’s Touchpoint exhibition with a coffee and one of 5’s cakes. I did and can recommend the lammingtons.