Hanoi Part II

Mark and I ventured out into the Old Quarter of Hanoi yesterday morning to get lost and see what we could find along the way. We left the guidebook behind and walked with cameras at the ready for any interesting thing we might encounter.

The Old Quarter of Hanoi is a maze of streets arranged in no clear pattern what-so-ever. Most of them are so narrow that you would be hard pressed to get two cars to pass on them. Because of this, and for what I am sure are many other reasons, everyone here owns a moped. There are MILLIONS of them on the streets here. Traffic laws, if there are any, seem to be very lax to say the least. The driving mentality in Asia is very different from the western world. In the west we worry about where we are going and what all of the other cars on the road are doing. Here the only thing that concerns each driver is getting ones self from A to B. Each driver worries about themself and does not care what any other vehicle on the road is doing. This stands in stark contrast and at first thought seems to be totally insane. But, for some reason it works, and there are surprisingly few accidents. I am sure that if I got on a moped I would cause a ton of trouble because I would drive like a westerner and worry too much about everything else around me.


So, with all of that being said I am sure that you are curious as to how you manage to cross the road when there are no traffic lights, mush less walk don't walk signals. You simply step out into the traffic, stand up tall, and walk with a deliberate steady pace and the mopeds miss you. Not by much most of the time, but they do miss you. It really takes some faith to step off the curb, but I promise it works. At least it has so far anyway.

I also took my first ride on one today. You pay about 50 cents and they take you anywhere in the Old Quarter. It is a rush to say the least. I was supernervous at first, but how I am super chill with it and even made a video with my camera while I was on the bike. I do not know how to post video, so a regular picture is going to have to suffice for now.

The streets are full of shops that specialize in one type of item. There is a toy street, a woodworking street, a flower street, multiple vegetable streets, a funeral banner street, etc... On the narrower streets yu are often forced to walk down the edge of the street because the sidewalks are totally taken up by parked mopeds. This results in getting honked at a lot by moped drivers.




All over the city there are also tiny plastic tables (sized for kindergardeners) and chairs that match. Behind one of the tables is a woman who squats and will surve you a cold soup lunch with vegetables, grilled meat, and rice noodles for what equals out to about 50 cents. Between a $6 hotel room, you can now see how little it costs once you get here.

I am off to Sapa tonight. It is a hill town in the NW of Vietnam. The Hmong people live in the surrounding areas and we are going to get t do a home stay with them while we are there! Mark and I are taking the night train to kill both the accomadation and travel birds with one stone. I will be sure to put up a long post in a couple of days about it.