A bit of catching up to do on the photograph of the week - the last being posted on April 14th.

How to pick a photo to epitomise Hanoi? My most abiding memory is of the constant traffic but it's very difficult to capture that in a photo. So I've chosen the complete opposite. We came across this man mid-morning, asleep in his hammock, escaping from the din around him. It was only after I'd taken it that I noticed his walking stick. Here is an old man clearly exhausted by the struggle just to make a living. This is the flip-side of economic progress, the people who get left behind. In the past in a country such as Vietnam they would have been looked after by the state but not anymore. Now, in the brave new world of what is, to all intents and purposes, a capitalist country they have to fend for themselves. This man may well be old enough to have fought in the war. Is this his just reward?