February 2017

Vietnam was nothing that I expected it to be. I expected quiet roads, rural villages, scenes of oxen ploughing fields and friendly locals.

Admittedly we road the A1 for most of the way down the coast, and the few times we could get off the Highway there were rural scenes. However, I do not believe that there are any “quiet” roads in Vietnam. Everyone who is riding a bicycle, motor scooter, motor bike, car, truck or bus has one hand on the horn at all times. The noise in Vietnam is overwhelming.

Vietnam was definitely a culture shock. There are approximately 90 million people on a narrow stretch of land that encompasses 128,455 square kilometres (the U.K. has 243,610 sq kilometres).

The City of Hanoi – is a cacophony of sound all the time. Even at 4:00 in the morning I heard horns tooting. The sound emanates from every street vendor, every vehicle and the numerous people and tourists shouting to be heard over the noise.

As you crossed a street in Hanoi or anywhere in Vietnam, you had to keep walking. Once you had made that decision to step into the street, you better keep moving because if you hesitated you could be hit. The vehicles anticipated you moving forward and avoided you.

Our route took us along the coast of Vietnam from Hanoi to Vung Tau and then by ferry into Ho Chi Minh City.

The A1 was a wide two lane highway often with a centre median. The traffic was loud and lots of it (more in the north, less in the south), however, for the most part I didn’t feel threatened by the craziness of the drivers.

I will try and explain what happens on an average day on the A1. You head out of your hotel or guesthouse and onto a wide well-paved shoulder of the A1, almost immediately a motor-scooter/motor bike will enter the highway from a side street without looking left at all. You, as the vehicle on the highway, have to anticipate that any vehicle on an adjoining street will enter the main stream of traffic without stopping. Beside you will be two or three scooters, they all move to the left as you move over to allow the entering vehicle the room. Sometimes the scooters to the left do not move over and I honk my horn or scream like a banshee at the person on the scooter who has not even glanced to the left because you now have to brake to let them in. Shortly after there will be another scooter driving straight at you on the wrong side of the road. Again, you have to move over into the flow of traffic to allow him/her to continue on his journey on the wrong side of the road. They do this because the centre median is blocking their entrance to the opposite side of the road and it is easier for them to make a left turn and head the wrong way down the highway for a kilometer, than to make a right turn find their closest place where they can make a U-turn and head back down the highway to make a another u-turn and come back up the highway to the house or business they need to go to. Makes perfect sense, right!!

Scooters drive in the first lane of the highway and slower moving scooters that are often loaded down with anything that you can possibly think that you can put on a scooter including a double bed, headboard and mattresses, or half a dozen pigs in baskets drive straddling the shoulder and the first lane.

Buses, trucks and cars all drive in the outside lane, this is to avoid the mayhem that is the shoulder and first lane of the highway. Buses drive at the fastest speeds, if they see another bus in front of them, they will honk their horns, the bus in front does not move to the first lane, so the second bus will move into the first lane avoiding scooters and motorbike drivers. I think in the five weeks we were cycling along this stretch of highway we only saw one set of brake lights come on a bus!

Children/teenagers on bicycles use the highway to access their schools, they ride in pairs often with one of them on a scooter and the cyclists hanging onto the scooter. When it is lunch break or end of school day the highway becomes a mess of kids all shouting hello as you try and get past their slow moving single speed bikes. The school kids scooters are usually electric and we ride faster than them.

On the divided highway there are areas where you can make a u-turn or a left turn into a town or village. There are no turning lanes to allow you to make this turn safely. The centre-median wall is your only protection from a fast moving bus when attempting to make a left turn off the highway. Of course anyone wanting to enter the highway at these gaps are also in the same situation.

Occasionally, you will see a truck or bus making a u-turn or turn in these areas, buses keep coming with their horns at full blast, most other vehicles will slow down.

At any “intersection” it is “mandatory” for all vehicles to honk their horns and keep their hands on the horn until passing the intersection. This is to tell everyone within a kilometer radius of the highway that you are on the highway and entering an area where other vehicles might be making a turn.

Added to all this mayhem are families on scooters/motorbikes. The kids that can stand will be standing in front of the driver, the child that can sit will be seated behind the driver hanging onto his clothes. Sometimes the Mother will be holding on to a baby, she will also be behind the driver. We have seen five on a scooter/motorbike, the only one wearing a helmet is the driver! They occasionally will wear face masks but that is all the safety precautions taken to keep your child safe.

In Canada when parents have a second child, they buy a mini van. The kids are safely separated in their car seats, no poking of brother or sister and no arguments! Cram them all on the scooter, there is no room to poke your sister or brother you are squished between parents. Remember the days of lying in the back window of the station wagon well here kids are standing on scooters.

There are no traffic lights, yield signs or stop signs (we only saw one stop sign on the A1). Occasionally the A1 will outskirt a town when it rejoins the flow of traffic exiting the town there are no traffic lights to allow the merge to happen, there are no yield signs, you have no idea who has the right of way, there is no roundabout to merge and allow traffic flow, it is one big free-for all.

Throughout all this craziness we only saw one serious accident and one fender bender in a city.

Vietnam is dirty, there is litter everywhere and it became a very depressing sight day after day. In the cities there is some kind of garbage pick-up, it is sporadic and disorganized. In the countryside, it is just one big mess.

The food was good albeit a little bit monotous at times, eggs and bread for breakfast for us westerners or soup for the Vietnamese. Dog meat was available in the north (approximately 4 tonnes per week are sent from the south to the north) and lots of seafood and shellfish along the coast. Beer – lager style, not bad and cheap.

The economy is very strong in Vietnam. There is a huge divide between the rich and poor, although there is a growing middle class. The north appears to have more factories and new infrastructure.

We found the northerners very friendly. Everywhere we went children and adults alike would be shouting greetings and waving. We were able to get off the highway more as we went further south, and less people shouted greetings to us.

The south depended a lot more on tourism and were building big resorts along the coast from DaNang and points south. There were a few major industries in the south mainly supported by the Chinese, coal plants and electricity generation.

The guest houses/hotels varied from four star hotels with all the amenities to a basic room with cold water and a squat toilet. The prices were good the four star hotel we stayed at cost $54 Cdn, the cheapest guest house with cold water and a flushing toilet and AC was $7.00 Cdn. However, the mattresses in Vietnam are rock hard, they are solid.

We didn’t go to Sapa, which has some beautiful scenery with hills and rice paddies on steps. We did go to Halong Bay which was the highlight of the trip.

Although Halong Bay is very commercial with over 500 cruise ships plying the waters around the Karst Mountain scenery every day in the high season, the area was absolutely stunning.

The Dalat region is supposed to be very beautiful. We didn’t head into the mountains at all, the weather was against us heading into the more rural areas where the roads are more rough paved roads or dirt roads.

The children have to go to school from age 6 to age 14, there were always lots of kids wanting to race Ralf on his bike. They all giggled when we responded to their hellos. Occasionally you would get a child who would try to speak English “How are you?”, if you responded “good, thank –you” and asked them they would say “I am fine thank-you”. The parents would often ask their children to translate for us, sometimes it worked, others not so much.

There is no public health system and a lot of the people rely on Asian medicines. We were told that there are no pensions for the elderly, only if they lost children in the war do they get a pension, or if they work for the government. Families are expected to look after older family members.

Vietnam really was a culture shock for us, we were expecting a poor country but found a country that is growing and has a strong work ethic.