Within the first few months that I spent in Vietnam, I had a couple gnarly accidents, the second of which landed me in the hospital. But before I got to the hospital—while I was I was lying in the street at the end of a long skid mark of blood and metal—it occurred to me that passing on the wisdom I had gained through learning to drive in Hanoi would be prudent. They say that the first 3 to 4 accidents are a rite of passage for driving in Southeast Asia, but that doesn't mean that you need to go into the experience blind. What follows are my 10 rules for staying safe on the road in Hanoi. But, before we get to any of that, I have a lil' treat for you.
That’s when it happened. I was broadsided by a taxi that took a sudden, unexpected turn. And I hit the pavement hard. You’d think that in an event like this there would some sort of adrenaline rush that would kick in and help with the pain, at least initially, but there was nothing. In the second or two between my impact with the taxi and my impact with the ground I think my emotions are best expressed this way: “Really? Again? REALLY?”
During rush hour I spend as much as an hour at a time weaving through the insane Vietnamese traffic, all the while breathing in exhaust and all sorts of nasty chemicals. It wasn’t long before my virgin immune system succumbed to the advances of all these noxious gases and I got sick.
What does it feel like to get sick from pollution?
After about a week and a half of making my way on foot I knew that I needed to get my ass on a motorbike, ASAP. That is the mode of transportation this city is made for. Getting chauffeured around town on the back of other people’s motorbikes was getting old and I was feeling like a big, white burden. And the Vietnamese bus system… no thank you. Not that the 3 hours per day that I had been spending on it feeling like Gandalf in a Hobbit hole weren’t fun… I’m just a free spirit and no cage (nor bus) can contain me.
This is a minor event I suppose… but it's Halloween and there is an interesting video to accompany this story so I felt that it merited its own post. One night I came home to find my two female housemates sitting in the kitchen together. I asked them what was going on and they told me that there was a cockroach and a giant spider in the bathroom. Their plan was to keep the door closed forever. To their credit, this was actually a feasible plan because our downstairs bathroom serves primarily as a storage room and to enclose the smell of our cat's liter box.
Within a few weeks of arriving in Vietnam I had the blessing of more than one day off work in a row. It would be the only time that this would happen naturally (that is, without twisting any arms) until February so I wanted to make the most of it. I asked everybody I knew (which at that point was not a lot of people) what their plans were for the Holiday but nobody’s off-time coincided with my own. It was two days before my holiday and I had become gloomily resigned to not doing anything. But then one of my roommates’ plans changed at the last minute.
I know that I said that my next post would be about my new motorbike… but something came up, so I thought we could take a little break from our scheduled programming for some live reporting. It was another Tuesday night in Hanoi. I was having drinks with a few friends at a nearby place that we like to go to. And that's when I saw the smoke...
First, I'm sure that you will be relieved to hear that my missing luggage was recovered about 24 hours later. It was actually delivered to the office of my employer (where I was living) by the airport staff, which is much nicer than anything I have experienced in the Western world. I wasn't living in that office for very much longer though. I found an apartment within 2 days of being in Vietnam through Facebook. Thank you social media. And guys, this place is amazing. It is coolest place I will probably ever live and it is only $210 per month. But rather than try to describe it I’ll just give you the tour...
Fast-forward to 30 minutes after my plane landed and I was the last remaining passenger watching an empty baggage claim carousel circulate. My bag (the one that we had paid so much money to get onto the flight to Chicago) never arrived in Vietnam. I spent the following 30 minutes trying to break down the language barrier that separated me from the poor souls working at the ‘lost baggage’ counter. It didn’t help things that I mysteriously had 2 baggage claim tickets for the same bag.
The city had an interesting dynamic. It was at least 1/3rd beautiful British people, presumably all working in the financial sector. Walking through the streets it felt like New York City crossed with the rainforest exhibit at the zoo. Also, the city is sort of at the bottom of a small mountain so everything is either up or down a steep hill. Trollies ran through some of the more flat streets like San Francisco. Interestingly, in many parts of the city there were two layers of sidewalks. The first layer was street level. It was hot, dirty and full of small Asian shops, markets and hair salons. The second level was elevated and climate controlled, unfolding like and everlasting shopping mall of jewelry stores and high-end fashion retailers. To facilitate crossing the street, these sidewalks included bridges that would arc over the busy city life immediately below. I did my best to stray from the ‘main’ roads and hiked up a series of steep winding streets with narrow sidewalks.
