"Nice bike for lady"

Driving my beautiful red motorbike through the streets and along the highways of Hanoi has quickly become my favourite thing about living and volunteering here. When I first arrived in the city, I found the traffic intimidating, confusing, frustrating, dangerous and infuriating. From an onlooker's perspective, it is hard to discern any rules, or understand even a basic system - but driving in Hanoi and becoming part of the chaos, makes a lot more sense of it all. I'm still not convinced of the 'system', but a lot of the time it does seem to work, and thus far, with only a handful of close calls!

Last weekend my wonderful driving-buddy, Cheryl, went home. More experienced than I, for the last two weeks she'd been driving to and from the Pagoda in the morning rush hour, while I took the bike out at lunchtimes along the quiet and idyllic streets around the Pagoda. On Wednesday I was ambling around the Old Quarter, decided it was time to bite the bullet and having never driven on the roads on my own before, hired a bike of my very own. Having been here a little while and having done this once before, I knew roughly what to expect. This experience did play to my advantage, as the bartering exchange was verbatim thus:

Motorbike Lady: Motorbike 5 US Dollar a day
Me: No. I give you 550,000 VND for two weeks
Motorbike Lady: Okay. You hire before?

Yes, Lady, I have hired before. To help you understand the extent to which she was trying to rip me off -
1 USD = 20,000 VND. 550,000 VND works out at just under 2 USD per day.
This is still pretty expensive, but I wanted an automatic, and the model she tempted me with was red and shiny. "Nice bike for lady" the mechanic chimed as he showed me how to operate my new beast, and indicated I should take her for a test drive up the ridiculously crowded street. "I'm scared", I said to the mechanic, who laughed at me and replied "it's easy".

My first experience driving on Hanoi roads was mainly exhilarating, if a little terrifying, and when I got onto the (relatively) empty highway on the way to my house, absolutely fantastic! Driving through traffic (80% of the time) requires careful, deliberate and to the correct degree, defensive driving - and a lesson quickly learned is that it is often safer, and expected for you to speed up and weave into an empty gap in the road ahead, than it is to be slow and in everyone's way. It can be pretty scary at times, and I much prefer to be doing 50 kmph (yes, yes, I do mean 35 kmph, Daddy, eh hem) on the emptyish freeway, than 5 kmph through fiercely congested and unpredictable traffic.

Traffic here tends to operate on a basis of weaving in and out of other drivers to find gaps in the road ahead. The two rules are that if someone beeps you, you move out of the way, and you must always watch what is happening in front of you; what is going on behind you is not your concern (because those who are behind you will be watching you). Basic premises established - here are a few of the 'idiosyncrasies' (if I'm in a good mood - something more profane if I'm not) of driving in Vietnam.

#1 It is not uncommon to find single motorbikes driving the wrong way up a one-way street, or in the wrong lane. They are surprisingly hard to spot until nearby, seeing how you're focusing on movements directly ahead of you.

#2 Motorists don't look, or signal, before pulling out, turning, or doing full 180 turns in the middle of the road.

#3 It is equally common to get stuck behind a slow, dirty, smelly bus, exhaling black smoke from it's exhaust pipe. Yucky.

#4 There are NO street signs ANYWHERE in Hanoi. And the Lonely Planet map is RUBBISH. I took my bike out on a trip to the history museum on Saturday, a drive that should have taken 40 minutes if I was driving reeeeeally slowly. I got severely lost and ended up driving around for well over 2 hours! I did give-up half-way through, and enjoyed a nice meandering drive through some district of Hanoi I've not been to before, couldn't get back to and still don't really know where it is. I caught a stroke of luck and spotted a bus headed to 'Long Bien' bus station, not exactly where I wanted to go, but somewhere I would at least recognise, and followed it (smog and all) back to the lake - hurrah! - parked up and walked 3 minutes to the museum. Learning, as I did, that I had not only passed the relevant junction at least 4 times in search of the road, but that also landmarks are only really useful as markers of the land then you understand the alphabet, and thus can translate at driving speed! I enjoyed my little adventure - although being lost in very busy bits of unknown Hanoi did lack humour occasionally.

I have since bought a proper map which I hope will be more helpful - although it doesn't really help with the road signs problem.


National Day, or so I'm told

Having recovered from troll-eyes, I enjoyed a full 2 days of health before I was struck down with a full fever, migraine and head cold. For almost 40 hours continuously, I slept in a hot, dark room, forcing the consumption of water and paracetamol at regular intervals and feeling extremely uncomfortable! 2nd September here is National Day, celebrated with magnificent military parades and firework displays. I did make an effort to attend the ceremony, but by 1130, realised that I needed to be horizontal and immediately. And so, thanks to my fever (which, incidentally, sucks when the average temperature is about 34 degrees) I slept through, what I am sure was, a very impressive National Day. Damn it.

I've alluded to the state of the STV house on a couple of occasions previously - but in essence, it is lovely, but dirty, very hot, smells of urine a lot of the time and occasionally is without water (permanently without hot water). For a month it has been home, and most of the time I have quite enjoyed living there. Having a fever continuously for 3 days and having to put up with the above, did however, change my mind. The tipping point came when 2 days into feeling like death, I dragged myself out of 'bed', and having been sweating and shivering for 2 days, went to the shower to freshen up. There was, of course, no water, hot or ice-cold.

For my last week in Hanoi I have checked into the Hanoi Hostel. For 5 USD a night I have a proper bed, clean room, running (hot) water and AC!!!! And breakfast, and internet and I'm in the Old Quarter which is where everyting happens. I'm also only 15 minutes from the Pagoda, and 5 minutes from the banana fritter place. Happy Tammie.


That Never-Ever-Ending Visa Saga

Yep. MORE trouble. I think I'm just going to wait and give you an overview of the charade that I've gone through trying to get a Vietnamese visa, rather than a blow-by-blow account. I'm currently "in communication" with a policeman at the immigration department - who, conveniently enough, would like me to marry his son. I'm hoping this won't affect his willingness to give me an exit visa and let me leave the country (I travel wearing a fake wedding band, for occasions such as these!)

Because the process is taking so long I've had to rethink the China part of the journey. The Chinese have another uncooperative embassy - and there's just no way I have time to apply for a Chinese visa before my flight to Beijing. I am therefore, flying straight to Hong Kong and traveling up through China, once I've obtained a visa, which is a great relief because the alternative plan was, well, stupid, now this one has worked out so nicely, Credit to Mum for that brainwave - otherwise I may just have found myself in Australia, or on a chartered flight being deported back to the UK, just a little ahead of schedule.