![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Hanoi: Moped City
Oct. 15th, 2008 05:46 pmI am back on two wheels again: today's steed was a blue single-speed, reasonable in all ways other than that the saddle wouldn't stay quite where I wanted it. Ah well.
Hanoi traffic isn't *quite* as insane as it at first appears, although this afternoon's rush hour ride was - invigorating. I even saw a couple of people signalling! Traffic where I've been (up to about 3 miles out of the city centre) seems to be 75-90% moped, with the balance made up about equally of cars (primarily taxis) and bikes. Cyclists tend to be one of: poor, a street vendor (often pushing bike, heavily laden with goods, rather than riding it), a schoolkid, or me - I assume mopeds are cheap to own & run. Anyway, the fact that most of the traffic is two-wheelers is helpful (they're more maneuverable than cars & more likely to notice cyclists), but the absence of normal road rules is less so.
Thus, in case you too find yourself in my position, I present the guide to traffic in Hanoi:
* Turning right on a red light is OK (this may in fact even be legal).
* Do not bother to look over your shoulder, except possibly when pulling away from the kerb. Signalling should be considered as an optional extra.
* Do not give way, ever. Just keep going and assume everyone else will steer around you.
* Steer around other people doing this.
* Sometimes, like when you particularly want to, it is OK to ride the wrong way down one-way streets, on the wrong side of the road, straight through red lights, and so forth.
* At really, really busy crossroads, you may wish to observe the provided traffic-lights. However, since the lights also include a handy countdown display showing the seconds till they change, you probably want to set off at about t minus a second or so.
* Beep your horn every few seconds, just in case there's someone in front of you who hasn't already heard it.
Amazingly, this all seems to work perfectly well. It is actually enormous fun - all about paying attention and anticipating what other people are going to do with very little real evidence to go on. I had a splendid time, but suspect that anyone who doesn't enjoy traffic-jamming in London would probably flee to the kerb in panic within seconds of setting off.
All of this excitement was in aid of a visit to Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, which was very fine. They have a selection of examples of traditional houses outside (there's a map here - the house marked Nha Rong Ba Na was particularly awesome, having a roof some 20 metres high), and standard tribal-life-information exhibits inside. But they were all v well presented, and all the captions were in Vietnamese, French, and English, which meant I actually got to read about things rather than just looking at them.
They also had a water-puppet show on, which was handy as I had vaguely been thinking of going to one of them anyway. This is a traditional Vietnamese art form which takes place on water. So the puppeteers hide in a little house, up to their waists in water, and the puppets do their thing on top of the water (and make use of it, e.g. in scenes showing traditional farming, with water buffalo and rice that grows out of the water when the stage produces "rain" - unnecessary in this instance as the weather was providing already - and a fishing scene). It was in Vietnamese, but nevertheless entertaining. Especially the bits where they had water dragons charging about the place, and firecrackers coming out of their mouths! There was in theory a little English explanation before each scene, but I couldn't make out very many of the words, so continued in blissful ignorance.
Hanoi, like Beijing and Xi'an, seems to have life very much being lived on the street. There's loads of tiny pavement cafes: just someone with a kettle, or a portable stove, or a box of bottled drinks, and a couple of plastic stools for customers. I'm tempted to try one of the ones that does pho (soup), but despite the fact that Vietnam does have a vegetarian-aware culture (due to Buddhist influence), I suspect that these places aren't. There are however plenty of slightly more upmarket (i.e. in actual rooms) restaurants that *do* do veggie Vietnamese food, though, so I'm off to one of those tonight.
Hanoi traffic isn't *quite* as insane as it at first appears, although this afternoon's rush hour ride was - invigorating. I even saw a couple of people signalling! Traffic where I've been (up to about 3 miles out of the city centre) seems to be 75-90% moped, with the balance made up about equally of cars (primarily taxis) and bikes. Cyclists tend to be one of: poor, a street vendor (often pushing bike, heavily laden with goods, rather than riding it), a schoolkid, or me - I assume mopeds are cheap to own & run. Anyway, the fact that most of the traffic is two-wheelers is helpful (they're more maneuverable than cars & more likely to notice cyclists), but the absence of normal road rules is less so.
Thus, in case you too find yourself in my position, I present the guide to traffic in Hanoi:
* Turning right on a red light is OK (this may in fact even be legal).
* Do not bother to look over your shoulder, except possibly when pulling away from the kerb. Signalling should be considered as an optional extra.
* Do not give way, ever. Just keep going and assume everyone else will steer around you.
* Steer around other people doing this.
* Sometimes, like when you particularly want to, it is OK to ride the wrong way down one-way streets, on the wrong side of the road, straight through red lights, and so forth.
* At really, really busy crossroads, you may wish to observe the provided traffic-lights. However, since the lights also include a handy countdown display showing the seconds till they change, you probably want to set off at about t minus a second or so.
* Beep your horn every few seconds, just in case there's someone in front of you who hasn't already heard it.
Amazingly, this all seems to work perfectly well. It is actually enormous fun - all about paying attention and anticipating what other people are going to do with very little real evidence to go on. I had a splendid time, but suspect that anyone who doesn't enjoy traffic-jamming in London would probably flee to the kerb in panic within seconds of setting off.
All of this excitement was in aid of a visit to Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, which was very fine. They have a selection of examples of traditional houses outside (there's a map here - the house marked Nha Rong Ba Na was particularly awesome, having a roof some 20 metres high), and standard tribal-life-information exhibits inside. But they were all v well presented, and all the captions were in Vietnamese, French, and English, which meant I actually got to read about things rather than just looking at them.
They also had a water-puppet show on, which was handy as I had vaguely been thinking of going to one of them anyway. This is a traditional Vietnamese art form which takes place on water. So the puppeteers hide in a little house, up to their waists in water, and the puppets do their thing on top of the water (and make use of it, e.g. in scenes showing traditional farming, with water buffalo and rice that grows out of the water when the stage produces "rain" - unnecessary in this instance as the weather was providing already - and a fishing scene). It was in Vietnamese, but nevertheless entertaining. Especially the bits where they had water dragons charging about the place, and firecrackers coming out of their mouths! There was in theory a little English explanation before each scene, but I couldn't make out very many of the words, so continued in blissful ignorance.
Hanoi, like Beijing and Xi'an, seems to have life very much being lived on the street. There's loads of tiny pavement cafes: just someone with a kettle, or a portable stove, or a box of bottled drinks, and a couple of plastic stools for customers. I'm tempted to try one of the ones that does pho (soup), but despite the fact that Vietnam does have a vegetarian-aware culture (due to Buddhist influence), I suspect that these places aren't. There are however plenty of slightly more upmarket (i.e. in actual rooms) restaurants that *do* do veggie Vietnamese food, though, so I'm off to one of those tonight.
