Traffic-rific!!

Hanoi is a wild city. It feels like it’s on the edge of modernization. It’s almost like they’ve been given all the things to be a modern city but they haven’t quite figured out how to use them yet. Because of this I feel like this is a very exciting place to be right now. There’s a great need for good graphic design yet not very many people know how to use the proper computer programs. And the traffic situation is unbelievable.

I’ve recently learned that Hanoi is a city known for its Moped traffic. I don’t remember reading this in any of the guidebooks but it’s obviously true. Someone told me that there’s an excess of 3000 new cars registered every month here yet the system hasn’t been fine-tuned enough to accommodate them all. It’s not at all what I was expecting to find here. I was thinking that Hanoi was going to be a quiet and quaint little city with an occasional surge of bicycle traffic that would be endearing and look old-worldly, but instead what I started to witness was a constant onslaught of rushing two-way traffic full of cars, mopeds, bicycles, and people, all ignoring each other’s right-of-way, totally disregarding the vulnerability of their fellow commuters, and not even the slightest hint of yielding to pedestrians. Is this what communism is about? Where’s the authority? Where are the traffic lights?

The best way to describe the street traffic here is to give you a mental image of New York City’s China Town at rush hour on a Saturday, but without any order. Imagine there are no traffic lights and no one giving a shit about anyone else. Imagine that you might be able to find relief on the sidewalks if they weren’t so jam-packed with parked mopeds and people sitting around blocking any hopeful passage through. Imagine trying to cross this mess of rushing traffic like Frogger but with only one life, jolting forward, stepping back, your adrenalin rushing as your eyes dart around for oncoming collisions. And imagine that this is what EVERY intersection is like! It’s an artform that these people have been honing from the beginning but unfortunately I think it’s getting worse. Even for them. I see accidents all the time. There’s a constant montage of horn-honking and motor revving, but no yelling and no real obvious display of aggravation. This is what’s so amazing about the whole thing; they totally accept that this is how it is and they don’t complain. Everyone looks so nonplused about the chaos and even docile when they’re sideswiped right off their bikes. Not even their expressions reveal the kind of frustration that would surely drive any westerner into an uncontrollable rage. Its rather Zen if you think about it. Like a great big living organism of trust. But maybe that’s being too overly optimistic. The streets here are scary, period.

Hell, screw the mental image, here’s a video:
TRAFFIC


I’m getting better at crossing the street every day. At this point I just start walking out into the oncoming traffic. I’ve learned that instead of looking at the flow of vehicles as one big obstacle, you have to look at each motorist individually, and cross their paths one at a time. With this approach you end up in the middle of it all using slower more deliberate movements rather than quick, bold, panicking gestures. Kind of like a dance. Not a very graceful dance, but a dance nonetheless.