The Road To Hanoi

the Hanoi-ans were born to ride

Hanoi. What a crazy place! I love a little culture shock whenever I travel and Hanoi sure as heck didn't disappoint me.

In a taxi on the way from the airport, the culture shock hit us. The traffic was incredible - with hordes of motorcycles and bicycles whizzing past at breakneck speeds, a lot of them not even wearing any crash helmets. It was crazy! It seemed like all of Hanoi commuted on two wheels. The only times you can witness such a spectacle in Kuala Lumpur is on New Year's Eve and Merdeka Day. In fact if you want to imagine what it's like in the streets of Hanoi, just picture those crazy Mat Motor on Merdeka Day - everyday!

Another thing we noticed is that folks in Hanoi love their horns. In our 45-minute ride to the hotel, the taxi driver must have honked his horn over 100 times, I kid you not! In Hanoi they honk at everything. They honk when you're in the way, they honk when they wanna overtake, they honk to warn you that they're coming and they probably honk just to let you know they have a working horn on their vehicle. It gets annoying very quickly. If you ever let loose a Hanoi-an driver on our roads in Malaysia, the poor guy will be "fingered" off the road!

As you can imagine, crossing the roads in Hanoi can be hazardous to your life with all the cars and bikes there. There are no pedestrian bridges and the Zebra Crossings are largely for show. And yet for the locals, they just step out in faith and confidence, and their fellow Hanoi-ans will just gracefully weave around them. It took us awhile to get the hang of that.

Crazy as they may be, I have to admit that the folks in Hanoi are good drivers. Otherwise, I wouldn't have lived long enough to blog this. :)