Rain pounded Hanoi for four straight days and nights, burst the lakes, flooded the streets, drowned the rats.  Motorbikes choked water; body-length anoraks became national dress; people fished with nets on Nguyen Luong Bang.  City buses became non-floating ferries, soaking pedestrians with their wakes; white-water traversed intersections; flip-flops came free and flushed down gutters.  An evil stench arose from the waters.  Sewage swirled with petrol and rotting rubbish; leeches wriggled from drains; fish corpses washed up in shop doorways.  Language schools locked their doors.  When its language schools shut, you know Hanoi’s in trouble.  
    On the fifth day, the downpour ceased, but charcoal rainclouds ganged up over the city, threatening more water.  People waded the streets or kick-started their motorbikes with their heads ducked and voices hushed.  They looked like kids tiptoeing around after a parental rollicking.  Shutters rattled up hesitantly, restaurants switched on their lights, cafés put their table-and-chair sets on the pavements.  Everyone cast their eyes skywards.
    Time on our hands, we rode to the zoo near Kim Ma.  The animals looked less than bothered about the wet weather.  The leopard sprawled in her tiny enclosure, face to the wall, like a scorned femme fatale.  The two tigers taunted each other lazily, finally coming to blows.  The Asiatic elephants, manacled to one spot in a shed, swung their trunks in autistic circles.  The monkeys gazed mournfully out through their bars, occasionally summoning the energy for another listless swing around the cage.  The hippo chomped its way through a raw pumpkin.  The sheep and goats maundered around their grassy pen like airline passengers on a lay-over.  The zoo amusement park looked out of commission too; the dodgems parked, the carousels chained up, the rollercoaster silent.  The Little Mermaid garden looked wetter than ever.  
   Most of the action was happening at the roller-disco near the entrance: mullet-sporting teens in drainpipes threw shapes to the latest Vinapop, while the pre-teens held hands, buckling like gazelles on new legs.  Nearby, a dozen ostriches peered out of a cramped and locked hut, pecking at the windows in frustration.  Their feathers looked greasy, unkempt, like the clothes of Hackney bag ladies.  A few feet away, the Asiatic vultures – otherwise awesome birds, with fiery plumage and enormous wingspans – hobbled around on tumorous talons.  We passed more monkey cages, or rather cages containing dispirited monkeys.  Our closest relatives fingered the bars and stared at us in silence.  The prisons and padlocks, the pervasive sense of bored gloom, began to ruin my mood. 
    As we walked out of the zoo gates, I thought of Eliot: ‘Each in his prison, thinking of the key/Thinking of the key, each confirms his prison.’  The sky had darkened, but it was only evening approaching.  At least it couldn’t rain forever.