Hanoi Traffic

Time for a new adventure. But first I need to introduce you to the dance of “Traffic Chaos”. I’m sure you have all seen pictures of main street Vietnam and all the traffic. This is a reality, on every street, every hour of every day, even at night. Watching the traffic move is like watching a National Geographic special on the movement of schools of fish. It is shocking there are no accidents.

We could not figure out why, but everyone must honk their horns. As you can hear in the video, horns are constantly honking. A motor bike would come up an empty street and honk it’s horn - for no apparent reason. We finally figured out why the buses honk - many of the motor bikes don’t have side mirrors, so the larger vehicles warn them, but the buses don’t slow down, the motorbike just gets out of the way.

We learned the rules for a pedestrian. Start walking, right into traffic, and don’t stop. If you stop, they will hit you - they expect you to keep going and they will go around. So tentatively, we tried it and we made it across. After a time or two, the fear subsided and now we walk right out into traffic without a thought. (This would give Keith a heart attack).

There are lines on the roads for traffic, but they mean absolutely nothing. On a small two lane road, three cars will squeeze in side by side, with an inch between mirrors, the motor scooters will go up either side and on the sidewalk, if there aren’t any cooking areas or sidewalk cafes in their way. The traffic circle in the video is just a small fraction of all the traffic. What you can’t see is part of a street is shut down as they took down a tree that was five stories high. No one cared and went right through the work zone.

We learned why there are so many scooters/motor bikes. To buy a car, the government charges 110% in taxes but there isn’t any tax for two wheel vehicles. For those fortunate to have a car, they rarely use them as it’s just easier to get around on a scooter. But on the freeways, out of town, there are more cars than scooters. And where would you park a car?

Welcome to Vietnam.