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Hanoi, Vietnam – Loud, Dangerous but FUN
We arrived to Hanoi early in the morning and were thankful that we pre-arranged a driver…but we were not prepared for the drive! I have traveled in what I thought were scary driving conditions before, but Hanoi has to be the craziest.
We were crossing a 4 lane bridge over a huge river when all of a sudden there were bridge-works (no signs) and so everyone had to merge into 2 lanes…but no…they just squeezed 3 rows of travel. Horns were honking. Car side mirrors were scraping. And I was grasping the door getting ready to jump if I needed to while I looked at the drop off the bridge into the river. At one point, a huge truck was powering towards us into the oncoming traffic, and everyone just had to get out of his way. Then we get into the city – even crazier. We are staying in the “Old Quarter” which is very narrow lanes with no traffic rules. Constant honking of horns while everyone pushed there way through on motorbikes, bicycles, taxis, and foot and not running over the people selling their goods that are set up on the road. An intersection is the best part. No lights. No rules. Just inch your way forward. You feel like the frog in that old video game where you are trying to cross the road without being run over by a car.
We spent the day walking and discovering. All the streets are open markets but it seems to be organized that one street will sell produce, the next street sells meat, the next street sells metal, etc… Of course the food streets were the most interesting as we tried to figure out what everything was. (check the photo of the skinned frog legs and the bag of live frogs next to the bucket.)
Funny story – while I was checking in to our flight, I was waiting on Elias because he was the subject of many photos. A group of Vietnamese were giggling away and having photos taken with him because of his height. He was very confused – I think it was more funny watching him than the whole photo thing.
…more photos on the Picassa Photo link at top