Dec 1, 2022
After my comments about Thailand being the “Land of a million scooters”, and my quips about the traffic in Bangkok, our friend Graeme from Australia said “You haven’t been to Vietnam yet, much less India”.
And he was right.
A short flight from Chiang Mai took us to Hanoi, where we checked into a hotel in the Old Quarter. We walked several blocks to dinner at a restaurant overlooking a large, busy intersection. The restaurant was on the other side of the intersection from us, and there are no traffic controls: no stop lights, crosswalks, or other aids to help a pedestrian cross. We stood and watched for a few minutes as a torrent of scooters, cyclos (three wheeled bicycle taxis), cars, and mini-buses approached from five different directions, converged on the intersection simultaneously, and all emerged unscathed on the other side. It reminded me a bit of watching the Texas A&M marching band, 350 strong, perform a similar maneuver mid-field with great precision. This wasn’t nearly as precise, but it was successful. I still can’t fully understand how so many vehicles and pedestrians can occupy a space that size at speed and nobody collides.
We watched several pedestrians enter the swarm. They almost never turned their heads; they simply stepped off the curb, looked straight ahead, and walked with deliberate movements. The vehicles managed to adjust without hesitation to keep the flow. It was frightening yet amazing to watch.
We finally decided that if we couldn’t get across the street, we couldn’t eat dinner. So we found the narrowest neck of the intersection and planned our crossing there. Compared to the seasoned locals, I looked like a chicken crossing the road, starting and stopping, my head flinging wildly right and left checking to see if I needed to jump or dive to avoid getting hit. Diana held onto my shirt tail. I’m pretty sure her eyes were closed. It wasn’t pretty but we made it across and up to the third floor balcony where we found a table to watch the craziness from above. I felt like a spectator at a NASCAR race: rooting for everyone but secretly watching for the carnage to happen. Keep in mind that nearly EVERY intersection in Vietnam looks like this; we just happened upon this viewpoint as an example.
After dinner, with much more “expertise” gained from watching, we made it back across the intersection and back to the hotel. I wasn’t ready to admit to Diana that I had doubts about riding the bike through Hanoi traffic (this from a guy who spent two decades splitting lanes on L.A. freeways every day). I figured I’d just tuck in and draft a scooter or two. Besides, we had a couple of days yet before I had to make that leap.
Here’s another video of a smaller side street in Hanoi, outside our hotel. Similar to the above video, you may have to watch it a couple of times to catch everything that’s happening. In the first half, watch the guy on the parked scooter on the far right that is loading his family. Typical of families here, they don’t own cars; the scooter is the family car. If you look closely when they ride away, their five year old (or so) is standing on the floorboard in front of Dad. If he were younger than three years old, he would have been squeezed between Mom and Dad on the seat. In the second half of the video, you can see another typical uncontrolled intersection in play.
The next morning a van picked us up at the hotel and took us to Ha Long Bay, a mystical place, where we boarded a tender that took us to our small, 14-cabin cruise “ship” for a two day overnight cruise around Ha Long Bay.
Our Orchid cruise for the next 2 days.
It is a pretty spectacular place.
After lunch they took us to Cat Ba Island where we toured the Trung Trang Cave.
Back from our “cruise”, the time had come. We picked up our Honda CB500X from Tigit Motorbikes, packed up, and rolled into Hanoi traffic. Looking at Google Maps the night before, it looked like we only had to go about five miles on one road before we would cross the Red River and be out of the worst of it. Of course that’s not how it actually went. My gps app had a different idea, and instead of taking the shortest route out of Hanoi, it took us directly into the thick of things. I felt like the adrenaline rush/butterflies of the first lap of a race, before things get sorted and everything calms down a bit. Only I was the only one on the first lap. Everyone else had been in the race for years.
About 45 minutes later we finally approaced the bridge. It would be another hour or more before the traffic thinned enough for me to relax a bit, but I was happy to be out of the city and heading north.
My first day of riding in Vietnam makes Bangkok look like child’s play.
Graeme was right. But I’m still not ready for India.