Hanoi Impressions -3 (In which another westerner is stunned by Hanoi traffic)

Hanoi Poem

Outside, car horns shout their concern.

I sleep

Inside, a mosquito whispers in my ear.

I awake

Probably the one aspect of Hanoi  most commented on by Western visitors is the general state of traffic anarchy.  It is almost cliché to bring it up, but it is the case that the traffic here is totally unlike anything I have ever observed. Sarah insists that someone who has not experienced it directly will not really comprehend it from my inadequate description (the analogy that comes to mind (mine, not hers) is giving birth – if you haven’t experienced it, you can’t understand it). Accepting that as probably true, let me attempt a description.

One’s first impression of the traffic here is actually auditory. There is the constant, unrelenting din of car and scooter horns. Here the horn is sounded to warn others not to get in the way, to alert others to one’s presence, to reflect one’s annoyance with other drivers and simply to register that one is still alive and a force to be reckoned with.  I suspect all drivers here are graduates of the Deathwish Driving School and Funeral Home, but that is supposition on my part.

The university is 6 Km (3.6 miles) from my hotel, but the path seems quite circuitous, with numerous turns, reversals of direction and vast uncontrolled intersections to cross.  I initially thought that as one got away from the center of the city and the Old Quarter, things might get a bit less hectic, but the opposite appears to be true.  Starting at around 4 PM it takes a full 50 – 60 minutes to travel the 3.6 miles. Imagine literally thousands and thousands of motor scooters, mixed with trucks, buses, cars (even SUVs) and bicyclists – everyone sounding their horn every moment and everyone trying to avoid stopping for anything. Scooters (even ones carrying small children behind the driver, sneak into the inches between moving cars and trucks.

There are many specific practices I might relate, but let me focus on just one to give you a sense of the place. This is the practice of commandeering the wrong side of the street whenever possible.  The center line of the road dividing the traffic into two opposite flow patterns that we take as nearly an absolute rule, is accepted here as a mild inconvenience. As my university driver approaches a red light he generally decides that if traffic is backed up on his side of the street, he would do best to pull over to the wrong side of the street since it is relatively (but not completely) empty of traffic. The idea is to get to the red light  as it changes so you can dash ahead of the line of cars waiting at the light. The strategy has several weaknesses. First there are cars and scooters turning right from the cross traffic whose way you are now blocking. Second, the cross traffic doesn’t necessarily stop when the light turns red for them  (some scooter drivers take the red traffic light as bad advice). Third, everyone tends to jump the red light and begin to go before it turns green. The result is that two flows of traffic going totally in opposite directions as well as continuing cross traffic meet in the intersection (I exaggerate not at all). Somehow the turmoil of cars, bicycles, scooters and pedestrians dodging one another on the same side of the road manages to resolve itself although precisely how this occurs I cannot tell you since by this point I generally have my eyes closed.

We leave Hanoi tomorrow so this will probably be my last blog entry from Viet Nam.  I may perhaps have some additional reflections to share as I continue to process this experience, but I hope that those of you who have read these rather long and discursive comments have enjoyed them. In the meantime xin chao.