Around The World In 80 Waves

After arriving in Hanoi last night I did go out and enjoy a few beers as well as a great conversation with Jeremy and Bridget, a couple who work in conservation work here in Vietnam. However I was done in after all the drama of the day so it wasn’t a huge night enabling me to get started quite quickly today.

After a delightfully painless, albeit lengthy upgrade to my computer to Windows 8.1 I can now start the Vietnamese leg of my adventures. Keen to turn the frowns of the last two days upside down I say Good Morning Vietnam and am keen to get out and in amongst it. The first thing I am surprised by is the lack of Huey helicopters flying through the air upon arrival here.

For anybody of my generation who grew up watching films like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Rambo, etc. you would be expecting a squadron of the attack helicopters overhead at any moment based on the one sided impression of the country that all portrayed.

However I should point out that my usual reconnaissance mission on foot to get the lay of the land around the old quarter of town where I am staying does actually leave me feeling like I have just been involved in urban combat.

All the pavements are taken by the mopeds which have been parked upon them leaving pedestrians to walk in the road. Anything you can imagine, and plenty of things you would have thought impossible for a moped to carry, will then whizz past your ears and legs leaving you anticipating a deadly collision from some unseen assailant at any time.

I took this picture trying to cross a road and whilst I wouldn’t condone larking about with photography in the middle of the road in front of oncoming traffic as a rule, I would say that taking the snap was only marginally more dangerous than just crossing the road itself. 

It is an experience I can best describe as stepping out into a mechanised swarm of moped bees all of which act independently and without any correlation to those around them.

Somehow it all works and I haven’t seen anything close to a collision, which is probably due to the sensibly slow speed with which everybody moves about. However the Green Cross Code Man would be having a fit. (As an aside on him, did you know that David Prowse who portrayed him also acted as the physical character of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. His voice was dubbed in later by James Earl Jones.)