I Am Traffic

After a bath, change and with guidebook in hand I venture out onto Dong Hang – the main street from my hotel into the city area. I am immediately set upon by taxi, pedalo and moped drivers offering me a lift (taxi perhaps later; pedalo possibly; moped absolutely no way) but I want to walk and take in the city.

I go a few yards and this tiny Vietnamese woman dressed in what seems to be very inappropriately short dress and high heels for someone of about 60 grabs my arm and escorts me up the street for a bit, chatting away to me happily in Vietnamese. I have no idea what she is on about, so I nod and shake my head, smiling and frowning with her expressions and then she flings her arms around my neck and tries to pull me into a (her) bar for cocktails.

I decline as I wanted to make it at least 100 yards from the hotel before I had a drink and carry on passed ramshackle old buildings and new developments, through hoards of construction workers sitting on tiny red plastic chairs (the sort you’d find in infant schools in the UK) drinking tea and beer, navigating my way round women carrying kettles of boiling soup and noodles on yokes on their shoulders; all of them wanting me to say hello or to buy something from them. I loved it.

Then it came to the first road to get across – without traffic lights – so I just made like a local and stepped into the road to the sounds of mopeds and cars beeping as they made their way round me as I very slowly walked form one kerb to the other. I am traffic!

The fact that I am writing this means that I made it alive and was surprised actually how easy it all was and how it worked – I guess it was a bit of a reaction to making it across the other side alive for me to burst out laughing and I think some of the locals who were observing me got my sense of achievement and laughed too – before offering to sell me an all in one body raincoat or a ride to wherever I was going. It’s funny, wherever I was walking to was too far by the moped/taxi drivers: even though they had no idea where I was going, they would all say that it was too far to walk. I resisted the temptation to get on the back of one at this time, as I had not had nearly enough alcohol.