My commute – the crazy traffic Hanoi Vietnam

Today I’m in Hanoi. I’m in my very small apartment but it’s a short walk it’s about 15
minutes or so. I thought it’ll take you along the way with me so let’s go.

One of the first things that they warned me about was the traffic. My HR colleagues who introduced me to the process for the office said that basically it’s crazy !

So, yeah motorbikes on the pavement who think you’re just going to get out the
way it’s perfectly normal as we’ll see. So, short walk here we come. As you see you know the pavement, sidewalk, whatever you want to call it is fair game for motor vehicles and this is the one for this street, but as we all see going the opposite way on a one-way street is fairly normal here’s here’s one coming,

That’s fair game if there’s a bit of space just drive down it and the tooting of the horns I think that’s just to check that the horn is working because it’s constant.

It’s a short walk to the traffic lights where I have to cross what is a massive main junction. It’s
taken me a couple of weeks to kind of get the hang of it but you kind of have to squeeze through the gaps in the vehicles.

So today the traffic’s quite quiet rather simply speaking so I managed to get through there okay
but crossing the road in Hanoi is an adventure in itself.

so the next next chunks we have to get across is that one over there and I’ve I’ve kind of learned the tricks now

so I managed to do it mostly with that

incident and I say mostly because again

as we’ll see uh the Vietnamese they kind

of know how to drive

they just choose not to follow the rules

and so you took a mixed bag of traffic

coming into every single direction as

you cross

let’s see how we get on with this one

so the trick

is to watch the lights

and so if you can kind of Judge the

lights

uh you kind of got a reasonable chance

of knowing what’s happening but as we

can see from these guys opposite they

just ignore the lights

so traffic seems to have stopped

momentarily but just just look at this

it’s basically they come in any

direction

uh and this is this is kind of normal

oh

okay so here we go I think they can get

across so there’s two guys coming

straight towards me red light don’t

really give a

I’ve kind of managed that I can go

across diagonally

uh with the traffic that’s kind of

parallel to me but I can only get into

the central reservation here

yeah so it’s basically ignore the red

light if you choose to

that’s the bus basically buses win in

every situation

just missed the camera

okay I think it’s almost safe to get

across but let’s see

foreign

so as I said it’s a bit of an adventure

crossing the road but I’m safely across

and you kind of think oh well that’s the

end of it uh you know I’m now on the

sidewalk next to office block

so just as we come around this corner

here I discovered once that actually

that’s where the cars used to come I

almost got hit one morning

yeah like I said the placement sidewalk

is fair game for motorcycles too and

then we have to go across this little

Junction with cars again zebra Crossing

no one really stops

again kind of Just Do Your Own Thing

and now I’m in front of the big

department store

normally you can’t get through the

sidewalk here because there’s also

Japanese people living in this building

they’ve all got young kids and the

school bus stops outside

so tough to get past some days when

there’s like 30 small Japanese children

all trying to get in the school bus and

the sidewalk here is just too small for

in front of this building anyway but

there we go

and then the last bit

so the office that I’m currently working

in

uh

is is just here but I’ve got to get

across this first

so again basically

no one gives a just we all seem to

somehow make it through without uh

without incident okay so I’m

right next to the office now I can’t

show you inside for security reasons

so that’s the end of tha