Thrillseekers...thy Mecca is Hanoi

I was fully intending to write a blog entry about how Beijing should displace Queenstown, New Zealand as the capital for extreme sports seekers. Sure, the Kiwis invented bungee jumping and jet boating down there. But after riding a minivan through Beijing at rush hour, dodging cars, 18 wheelers, bikes, pedestrians, tractors, backhoes, squirrels on scooters and all other forms of mobile transportation I figured the bungee jumping or canyoning in NZ must be childs play. No, Beijing at rush hour is child's play and NZ is for wimps. Hanoi is the center of the universe for the most dangerous, extreme sport I've ever seen...motorbike dodging.

There are approximately 3.5 million inhabitants in Hanoi, and roughly 3 motorbikes per person. You honestly can't help but laugh when you first see it. For us, it was on a minibus from the airport at 9:00 PM. As we left the airport area and started to get closer to town we noticed helmetless crazies scooting in and out of the traffic with the cars and trucks. There was a fairly steady stream around us, but they only outnumbered the cars 10:1. Once you get into the city it bypasses comical and heads for surreal. I'm not exaggerating when I say that in the heart of town there are literally one to two hundred motorbikes for every car... at night. During the day the ratio soars as everyone, everywhere gets around on these little rattletraps. You have to just sit back and take it all in at first. The sight of hundreds upon hundreds of Vietnamese ranging in age from ten eight to eighty zipping down little two lane city streets on a Honda (if they're lucky) or cheaper Chinese or Vietnamese scooter in the span of seconds is just hysterical. And you think to yourself, surely a light is going to change somewhere down the road and the flow will stop. Uh-uh. No luck. Actually, I should be more specific. A light very well might have changed down the road but that doesn't have any effect on the flow of traffic. I'm sure most of you have heard the expression about some city that traffic signals there are merely a suggestion instead of a law. I can honestly say that description fits Hanoi perfectly.

Intersections are the best. As George Costanza once said about auto repair shops "It's lawless there...it's like Thunderdome!" If you hesitate you lose. No one stops when they come to an intersection. They just weave their way through traffic. This goes for cars and buses as well. I could plop down in a plastic chair with a cooler full of cold beer and have a grand old time just watching traffic in Hanoi. But you know it's always better to participate in something than just to watch it. So, do you think we rented a couple of hot rods and joined the crowd?? Okay, no. But we did haggle with a couple of guys to give us a xe om (motorbike taxi) ride from the Old Quarter to the Temple of Literature. Oh, it's exhilirating. It's actually not bad at all once you're on the bike and in the flow of things. Everything takes on a Matrix-like feel. You see all the traffic moving around you in slow motion. You anticipate what the traffic is going to be like as you prepare to fly through an intersection with hundreds of bikes headed in all directions. It's a religious experience. And not just because I could see Cece praying on the back of her bike.

I keep telling her we're going to have to rent our own motorbike one of these days. Maybe we'll start slow and hire a couple down in Hoi An to take a day trip up to the My Son temple ruins or out to China Beach. That should get us ready for the real adventure...Saigon. Supposedly there are even more motorbikes and even more insane traffic there compared to Hanoi. If so, I might have found a new home.