In Vietnam

This is my second day in Vietnam. After passing out like it’s my last chance to sleep early last night, I was up at 5am this morning and decided to get up and take advantage of the amazing connectivity we have in our hotel.

Day 1 was a fun experience. Hanoi is a somewhat small, but crazy hectic city. I have enjoyed walking the streets quite a bit. Some times you can’t find a space to walk through because the bikes and the cars are parked all over the place.

People sit very low to the ground and street food is everywhere. Everyone sits on tiny plastic chairs and use tiny tables (you can probably find them at walmart in the kids section).  Street food is my favorite part of walking around and observing the city life. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of all the eating and cooking.

Traffic is absolutely insane and crossing the street is a near death experience every time. I can’t even imagine what it’s like in larger cities like Saigon.

When I was researching the trip, I came across this in-depth instruction on crossing the streets in Vietnam. It’s from Wikitravell.org. Read it over, it’s hilarious.

CROSSING THE STREET

The stakes are high: if you are to die in Vietnam, more than likely it will happen on the road — be it in a car or under one. Vietnamese cities are crowded, and the roads are absolutely packed. You will take your life into your own hands every time that you cross a busy street in any of Vietnam’s major cities.

Although some intersections in the main cities (Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City) have traffic lights and many are patrolled by a police officer, most lights are either non-functional or ignored, and you are more likely to see a traffic officer sitting in the shade than directing traffic. Also note that many intersections have no give way signs at all, and instead have 4 sets of traffic that all try to get through as they can.

In most of the Western world, the trick is to avoid the cars. That’s simply not possible in Vietnam, as there are far too many cars, trucks (lorries or utes), motorbikes, cyclos and bicycles in far too little space. No, the trick in Vietnam is to enable the vehicles to avoid you.

This is managed by first picking a reasonable gap in the traffic (probably a smaller gap than you’d choose when crossing in, say London or Manhattan or Sydney), then walking slowly and predictably across the street while looking directly at the on-coming cars, motorcycles, cyclos and bicycles.

The predictability of your pace and path is the critical factor between life and death. Do not change direction or speed.

If you stop, retreat or try to dodge the vehicles, you are risking injury, and your possible misfortune will merely annoy a lot of commuters by snarling traffic even further. But if you step confidently and carefully, the drivers will see and smoothly avoid you — often with grace and a casual aplomb that’s initially bewildering to many panic-stricken Westerners. But remember, they do this all the time, every day…or they wouldn’t be alive themselves.

The simplest way to cross a busy street is to find a local and walk close to him or her, mirroring their path and pace. They know what they’re doing! And once you get the hang of it, it’s actually great fun to find yourself walking unafraid through a deadly sea of swarming vehicles and people, suddenly feeling like part of the normal flow in this otherwise foreign land – many visitors find waiting at traffic lights quite boring upon return to their home countries.