Hanoi Day 1

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Hanoi day 1.



In the Cathay Pacific lounge, waiting for the Dragon Air flight to Hanoi, I round a corner and run into Michael and Joni Marek, good friends friends from Hollywood.They are on their way to Saigon. Pretty good small world story. Who wudda thought?



Lots of travel stuff, none of it unexpected and while memorable to us, probably not very interesting to others, but I’ll quickly summarize; brand new airport, lots of men and women in Vietnamese military garb (green uniforms with hats with the red stripe), but not carrying guns, evidence that this is a poor country as we rode from the airport to the hotel, and extraordinarily interesting traffic and driving customs. Our tour isn’t starting until today so we had the afternoon at leisure.



After lunch by the pool at our beautiful old and very famous hotel, The Metropole, we decided explore a little bit on our own. Let me go back to the traffic thing. We’ve never experienced anything like it. I’ll try to explain but the best way to understand it is to go on to You Tube and look for videos of Vietnamese traffic. It’s like a single organism and that’s not a misspelling. Traffic moves slowly and fluidly like a school of fish. Some go straight, some make left turns, some merge and some cross, but the school does not stop. The speed modifies and directions change slightly but it keeps moving, albeit at a moderate speed. And pedestrians become part of this organism, crossing streets while traffic continues to weave and bend around them. The rules for pedestrians are simple. Do not run, but do not stop. Move through the crossing sea of motorcycles and cars at a consistent speed. Now that sounds beautiful doesn’t it? It’s terrifying actually, at least at first. And for Fran, it was to say the least, challenging. Our first challenge of the trip was getting Fran to cross six lanes of traffic moving 20 mph. She never held my hand so tightly, as if I was going to keep her from being run down. Gary and Judi were full partners in this experience. But she was a good sport and aside from my bleeding hand from her short nails, we were successful. So we walked, crossed streets, went through a shopping district, which was interesting in it’s own way, all without incident. I’m not doing this justice. Do check You Tube and watch cars, motorcycles an trucks all moving through intersections with no traffic control; left turns right through oncoming traffic, pedestrians and people pulling or pushing carts just going and nobody getting run over. NO JINX PLEASE. I don’t want to leave you with the idea that my impression of Hanoi is all about the traffic and crossing streets, but as for our first 4 hours here, that’s what I found most fascinating. As many of you know, I’m sort of a shallow guy.



Pictures from Fran later. Tour this morning

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Comments

[Daniel Lewis]

Hanoi traffic
...pedestrians crossing the street would be texting or e-mailing on their phone, almost oblivious the moving traffic that surrounded them.. The traffic was THE outstanding Hanoi highlight for me.