Dancing in scooterville
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2005How I love to dance. Disco & ballroom, line & square, Russian & polka. Granted, I’m crap at most of them, but the point is to have fun. Now I have found a new type of dance. It’s free, I can do it however much I want, and the chance of incurring a serious bodily injury is only about 12%, rising by 3 percentage points for every glass of beer I drink. I like to call it “The Scooter-dance!!”
Hanoi is chock-a-block with scooters, motorbikes, mopeds, moto’s, xe om’s & other veichles with similar functions, different names, two wheels and a well-used horn. If I had to speculate I’d say that scooters (let’s call all the fish “tuna” to keep things simple) outnumber cars here by a ratio of about 70 to 1. Moving produce between markets is done by scooter, taking a family of 5 to school is done by scooter, for all I know the president of Vietnam goes to work on a scooter.
When Vietnam beat Japan in a football match at the National stadium in Hanoi a few days ago, the scooters were out in force. Thousands of teenagers circled the central Hoan Kiem lake for hours, waving flags & honking triumphantly. And honking the horn is not reserved for sporting victories or the occasional irritable toot at a slow driver. It is a constant background noise. A neccesary noise in fact, since Hanoi does not appear to have any road rules. Nominally, people drive on the right, but if it appears quicker to drive on the left or, indeed, on the pavement then Hanoians certainly dont feel inhibited.
Which brings me back to my dance. Crossing a road in Hanoi is a question of timing, rhythm, dexterity & courage. Little green men are universally ignored, and a Zebra crossing would require nothing short of the great striped beast itself lolloping across the road before anyone would actually bother to stop. So you have to just bite the bullet & start walking. Some people swerve to avoid you, some dont (one dude actually kept going until my outstretched hand stopped him) but the key is to feel the force, and have no fear – basically just be Luke Skywalker…
My own intergalactic journey is now on hold for a while. I’ll be hanging out in Hanoi for the forseeable future. I have a job & a house & a packet of sausages. I have found an enchanted city – now it’s time to really start exploring..
The Dude