Driving

Driving in Hanoi is interesting. You never know what you are going to see. An amazing feat of hundreds of pounds of supplies on the back of a 100cc motorcycle, 3 near misses of an accident right in front of you or delegations with motorcycles (white Gold wings at that) escorts from other countries. This week, on one trip across town I needed to pull over for 4 delegations from Spain, Ireland, Indonesia, and Sweden who are here for a conference.

In Hanoi there is no such thing as illegal lane changes. There are lanes, kind of (motorcycles hardly ever pay attention to lanes). With more cars we see what used to be 3-lane roads turn into 5-lane roads (but still the same space and only lines for 3 lanes). Since the traffic moves at all types of speeds, from about 3 miles per hour to 45 miles per hour on the same roads with the congestion of an ant hill at times, there is a lot of weaving in and out of traffic. Even buses and cars, whose drivers forget they are not on motorcycles, weave. Yes, kind of scary at times. We try to avoid being near the buses-they have a tendency to blow their horns and plow through even red lights...just because they don't want to stop.

In our new place we have to be on the highway more often, which is good and bad. The good is, I can get to places faster. The bad, sometimes I feel I am surrounded by behemoths on my little motorbike. One time in particular I was surrounded by buses trying to merge on my right and front, by trucks and buses on my left and behind. though I must admit, this was due in part to my effort to get around all this congestion. A situation I will try to avoid in the future.

Traffic at night, especially on certain roads, is busy with lots of motorcycles, especially younger people enjoying the night. The other night as we were coming home, I was riding Brittany and Ann was following on another motorbike. As we were driving, a motorcycle of two young men must have been swerving through traffic fast and when they went to pass me the front pet of their bike hit my foot. Needless to say that took me by surprise. Usually traffic is close at times (inches to spare) but we usually don't collide or hit each other at the foot level. Maybe mirrors on rare occasions. We were thankful we were not knocked over.

With all of that said, driving in Hanoi is enjoyable.