Hanoi in many respects is little different from any other large Asian city. A population of several million, countless markets, continuous roadside street food/small time vendors and roads seething with traffic. Some expat residents suggested to us that the roads were unusually dangerous, the worst in the world, with scores of deaths every day. Indeed this is almost true. Fatalities per year in 2004 were 8.3 persons per 10,000 registered vehicles, comparing unfavourably to the West (1-2 per 10,000) but rather well to China (25-30 per 10,000).
After a few xe om (motor bike taxis which translates as bike hug) you see why. The roads are busting with traffic (almost exclusively Honda scooters) moving at break neck speed. London cars chug along at 10mph if you’re lucky. But hop on a xe om (even in rush hour) in Hanoi and you break for your destination at 40+.
Sure, compared to India the roads are probably orderly (we'll see in September), but the odd scooter trying to beat the flow jumping through red lights and heading down the wrong side of the road towards a turning, with 200 others bearing down on them, is just the beginning of where the order breaks down. Cyclos (very slow 3 wheel passenger bikes) and the odd oversized 4WDs are like blood clots and with bikes\scooters as their only real transport option, people carry everything with them. A stack of dead dead pigs on the back or a 5 foot orange tree is not an uncommon site. The yellow Lambo (a real rarity) seen one night, also proved a potential lethal distraction to the young male taxi drivers circling lake Khiem.
Everyone it seems has a scooter with customised seat covering, and if you've a little extra money you have a restored Honda classic or Piaggio Vespa. Its therefore no surprise that the pedestrian is a secondary concern. The extent of this marginalisation is represented by the side walk being no more than a continuous bike parking lot (broken only by vendors and shop fronts) rendered them impassible and forcing everyone onto the afore mentioned urban highway, complete with speeding orange trees and bikes with more pork momentum than driver and machine.
So walking along some of the narrower streets can be incredibly challenging and for me was often complemented by a bump, push, shout and startled retreat. However, what truly surprised me was the almost triviality of actually crossing to the other side. There were plenty of city chickens in Hanoi, wandering around doing their thing, and I'm sure they crossed the road for whatever reason, but no road kill. Even Plus sized American tourists were observed to have made it to the other side in one (big) piece. The trick is to just look up at the oncoming onslaught and like stepping into the ocean complete with scuba gear, head in with determination, at a steady speed and glare at any one who doesn't immediately change course to pass around you.
To really prove to you that this works, Fayette and I saw a blind man cross straight through the middle of a 5 way junction (we were two floors up in a cafe a few hundred feet away and unable to help). He clearly had no idea where he was going, since he stopped two thirds of the way over and came back to where he started, but nevertheless during that time several hundred families on scooters, honking taxis, and a few thousand oranges flashed past him and his cane on all sides.
- Peter (Nha Trang, Vietnam - March 08)
