Day 202 – Back to Hanoi (by Brendan)

August 27th, 2019

Today we packed our bag, put on some sun screen and started our journey back to Hanoi.  Our scooter ride is the reason I am actually writing my first blog post.  By now we’ve been to many countries with crazy drivers and we’ve also been to many countries with no apparent road laws, but Vietnam…is on a whole new level.  Apparently owning a car in Vietnam is extremely expensive due to taxes, so the only affordable option for most locals as far as transportation goes is the motorbike or what we would consider a scooter.  After spending some time in two of Vietnam’s largest cities (Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh), I’ve arrived at the conclusion that people here must come out of the womb on a motorcycle.  These people are naturals for sure!  The Vietnamese all have cat-like reflexes when they ride, and the most intense situations don’t seem to faze them.  I say this because the chaotic Evil Knievel-like stunt session that they call a “normal commute” would bring most Westerners to tears!  And they can do it while hauling two full-sized pigs (dead), a passenger on the back, enjoying an iced coffee and talking on a cell phone.  You may think this is an exaggeration, but it is not!  What these people can do on a motorcycle is astounding. 

I’ll try my best to describe our ride back to the city and hopefully I’ll paint an accurate picture.  We started out on a dirt road that’s only about 10” wide.  That’s not so bad, until you add in the fact that there are 8” deep pot holes everywhere.  Oh, and if you swerve too far to miss the potholes you’ll slide down an 8-foot embankment into rice fields that are under four feet of water.  This all seems simple enough, just go slow right??  Wrong, if you go slow, you will be overtaken and can almost guarantee you’ll end up helping the local rice farmers.  Luckily this narrow trail didn’t last too long until we got to city streets.  Once we got to the city streets it was a whole new challenge.  Now you’re dodging cats, dogs, rats the size of cats and dogs, small children and locals who are working.  You’re naturally on high alert because of how many things are moving around you.  It gets better though… it wasn’t until I blew through the first intersection that I realized none of the streets have stop signs or stop lights in any direction (later I realized that this fact doesn’t really matter anyway). 

The next intersection I slowed down a bit to look for traffic and as soon as I tapped the brakes I heard about five different horns go off.  This made me jump a bit because I thought something bad happened.  I turn to look and tap handle bars with a rider on my left that causes me to veer a little to the right into another scooter, and bumped into a basket full of live chickens (yup, scooters haul most of the livestock here too).  Where did these guys even come from?  I guess I was trying to dodge everything in front of me and not spending enough time checking my mirrors. 

We continued on and made it from the city streets onto the highway.  I thought okay, this should be good… no more tiny trails or cramped streets.  The highway should have plenty of room and I’m comfortable going as fast as any other scooter so there shouldn’t be much of a problem.  Wrong again!  Once we started on the highway we quickly realized that cars and trucks take priority over motorbikes.  They basically drive as though the motorbike isn’t even there.  I learned this first hand and witnessed it with several other drivers.  It’s not to say that a scooter can’t pass a car or truck, it just means that a car/truck will not move an inch for a bike; if a car or truck passes a bike, the bike better get skinny really quick!  So now I realize you need to be on high alert for pot holes, kids playing, people working, animals, sneaky bikes that seem to come from nowhere and share your lane, cars that pretend you’re not there AND A DUMP TRUCK THAT JUST DUMPED A LOAD OF SAND RIGHT IN THE HIGHWAY!  Construction seems to be going on everywhere in Vietnam and they don’t utilize flaggers, cones or anything of the sort to warn drivers that their lane will soon turn into a sand dune, gravel pit or huge pile of bricks.  Also, everyone rides so close to each other here there’s no such thing as looking ahead.  After a while I kind of learned not to really focus on anything, just scan constantly and try to only pay attention to objects that are moving in your direction at a rapid pace.  This brings me to my next encounter. 

Apparently at times it can be too difficult to cross the highway so you can drive on the correct side of the road, so locals find it acceptable to drive ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE HIGHWAY.  And I don’t mean one or two a day doing this, I think about one out of every twenty vehicles is driving in the wrong direction.   I do have to say though that they are very good about warning you with their horn as if to say, “Honk Honk, you should probably get out of my way, can’t you see I’ve clearly lost my mind!?”

This brings me to my last Vietnamese driving observation.  The honking.  As we all know, at home a honk is generally used out of anger.  Occasionally it’s to say hi, to let someone know the light turned green or as some kind of warning.  Either way, hearing a horn honk where I grew up was a pretty rare occasion.  Here the horn is used in a completely different way.  In Vietnam people use the horn out of anger, to say hi to a friend or family member, to let someone know that they are close to you, that they are planning on passing you, that you are clear to pass them, that you are in their lane, that they are in your lane, that you’re going too slow, that you’re speeding, that they would like to run this red light and you are in their way, etc.  The horns are constant, and they come from every direction.  I don’t know if anybody actually knows when they’re being honked at. 

As crazy as it all was, I feel like by the end of our three-hour commute back to Hanoi, I had a pretty good grasp on how to ride here and fit in with the locals.  At first it was easy to get angry with the way people drive.  After I “returned the favor” a couple of times though, I realized that nobody here gets angry if you cut them off or try to run them off the road.  Everyone expects it.  It may sound crazy, but I actually think it may be safer to drive that way here. 

In closing, I don’t think that Vietnamese people drive as crazy as I first thought. I think that there are many unwritten rules of the road here that the locals understand and it seems to work for them pretty well. However, on the other hand, we’ve seen many westerners walking around bandaged and bleeding. I think that we don’t mesh well with their driving style and I’m sure it would be the same if these people visited and drove in America. Although the structure I’m accustomed to makes more sense to me, I don’t think either driving style is necessarily right or wrong. They’re both just very different. In the end we made it back unscathed and we can chalk this up as 1 of many cultural differences that we’ve experienced along the way.

Brendan

I’ll just add to Brendan’s very accurate account of what it is like being on a motorbike here.  During all of this, we also got caught in a monsoon rainstorm for about 40 minutes of our ride.  I am so thankful it passed fairly quick as it was pretty miserable and made visibility a nightmare.  When we got back to Hanoi and turned in the scooter the guy at the desk asked where we went for 3 days. Brendan said “Ninh Binh” and the guy was like ” you drove to Ninh Binh!?!” He was clearly in disbelief that a Western white boy could hang with the local Vietnamese drivers. He then said “WOW, you must be a really good motorcycle driver!”. Brendan’s driving skills come in handy off the track too!

We also stopped at SE Asia’s largest pagoda (Bai Dinh) on our way back to Hanoi.  The whole area was very pretty and had beautiful views.  It was about three miles of walking to go to all the temples on the grounds of Bai Dinh.  We didn’t get to all of them but ended up doing a lot of walking and climbing stairs in the heat.

Once we got back to Hanoi we checked into the really cool hostel we stayed at the first time here called Babylon Gardens.  We then went out on foot to explore and find some food.  Walking on foot is almost just as stressful as riding in the city and my nerves were completely raw after the three-hour motorbike ride.  I was so hungry as it was dinner time and we had not eaten since breakfast.  There are always interesting things to see in the city, but I was over the constant honking of horns, the heat, and mad chaos in the streets.  We ended up just going back to the hostel and eating at the rooftop restaurant there which was much more peaceful.

Shanti