Although in its title this may sound a bit of a strange entry but believe
\nme journeys by road here are enough to fill an entire library. The roads
\nare absolutely crazy. Katie Mehlua got it wrong when she sang about
\nbicycles in Berlin, I might write to her and suggest she pen, “mad
\nmotorbikes and psychotic scooters in Saigon”. Honestly until you witness
\nit for yourself it is hard to describe. Firstly the sheer volume of
\ntraffic is unbelievable. On one of my tours the guide said that,”It’s
\nalways rush hour in Saigon” and he was not joking.\u00a0 He also told us another story which happened when one of the buses he was in hit a bike.\u00a0 The Police pulled the bus over and the Policeman asked the driver two questions.\u00a0 The first was, “Did you see the red light?”, to which the driver answered, “Yes.”.\u00a0 The second was, “Why didn’t you stop” to which the driver answered, “because I didn’t see you”.\u00a0 Both of these anecdotal tales seem to sum up the road situation rahter well!<\/p>\n
\u00a0They (allegedly) drive
\non the right here, but don’t by any means think that that means they all
\ndo. The one rule seems to be that you sound your horn almost
\ncontinuously. It doesn’t seem to be used in an aggressive way, more in a,
\n“I’m a vehicle on the road and I have a horn” way. Okay, that wasn’t
\nmeant to sound quite as ominous as it did. Despite the, what seems like
\nmayhem, I haven’t actually seen any accidents yet which, believe me, is
\nsomewhat of a shock. Actually I did see a bike run someone’s foot over
\nbut that hardly classifies as a major road traffic incident!<\/p>\n
The other slightly odd thing here which I have never seen before is countdowns on the traffic lights.\u00a0 Above the red light there is a digital display (well LEDs) which countdown the number of seconds before the lights either change to green or red.\u00a0 I would have thought that this in itself was asking for trouble but someone obviously thought it a good idea in their wisdom!<\/p>\n
When I got into the taxi at the airport I had to make a decision. I am
\nnormally a rubbish passenger as my family, and possibly a few other people
\nwho have ever had the misfortune of driving me anywhere, will testify. So
\nI had to decide whether I was going to get insanely nervous or just
\nconcede that the roads were like this here, I may die, I may not, but it
\nmay aswell be from an accident rather than a heart attack! I chose the
\nlatter and since this point have been surprisingly relaxed about the whole
\nroads situation. That said I have forgotten on occasion. Like when we
\ngot back into the tour bus once and I thought, “Oh My GOD, what’s
\nhappened, why is everyone beeping like mad”, then, within an instant,
\nremembered that this was normal and that, in fact, I should be far more
\ndisturbed if people weren’t beeping.<\/p>\n
In terms of crossing the road you just have to be assertive and go. I
\nmade the mistake of waiting for a space for a short while. This resorted
\nin me either standing on the roadside for a VERY long time or friendly
\nlocals worrying that I might sink into the melting tarmac and assisting me
\nacross the road. It still amazes me slightly that you can cross the road
\npretty much when you like and that everything avoids you. I think that
\none of the reasons for this, and the fact that there are not more
\naccidents, is the fact that no-one really drives that fast. This appears
\nto be more down to the vehicular limitations than the want of the driver.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most eventful event on the road thus far was a blow out in our
\ncoach on the way back from the tour to the Mekong Delta. I was listening
\nto my Ipod at the time and thought that it had gone wrong! There wasn’t
\nany swerving or anything just a loud noise. Apparently there was a
\nproblem with the spare (i.e. they didn’t have one!) so they took the tyre
\nto get it fixed. Miraculously, given the shredded state of the said tyre,
\nit came back looking roadworthy and got us all the way back to Saigon.<\/p>\n
On the same journey I reset my Ipod as it wasn’t doing what I wanted it
\nto. In hindsight I wasn’t asking it properly but at the time I thought it
\nwas being petulant! Anyway, when I reset it it reverted to Chinese! If
\nany of you have ever had to try and decipher a menu in another language
\n(particularly one without the same character set as your own) you will
\nunderstand the frustration and timeliness of sorting it out. I got there
\nin the end though and it proved a welcome distraction from blown out
\ntyres!<\/p>\n
Finally, and after that slight ramble, I arrived at my hotel and checked in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Although in its title this may sound a bit of a strange entry but believe me journeys by road here are enough to fill an entire library. The roads are absolutely crazy. Katie Mehlua got it wrong when she sang about bicycles in Berlin, I might write to her and suggest she pen, “mad motorbikes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zelmastrip.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}