Eye On Hanoi
Reflections on Life in Hanoi
piaggio
December 11, 2006
We have a bike!
Wheels! ...
… And so does everyone else in this town!!!
Yes, wisely or not, we are shooting around Hanoi on an eight year old Piaggio Typhoon.
You know, I’ve never really been a biker fan. In fact, I’ve always been terrified of the beasts! I have never been on the back of a bike and got off thinking “man, I want to get back on!” I’ve always been very happy to get off them. My dear BMW biker friend in Singapore and Ducati biker friend in Hong Kong will castigate me for my fears, but alas, they scare the shit out of me!
Having said that, I am glad that I am writing this now and not 10 weeks ago when we first brought the bike. If I had written this then, it would have been a blog of fear. Now, though, having some riding hours under my belt, my whole attitude has turned around. I am loving it! Riding motorbikes rocks!
Ok, some would argue that what we have is not really a motorbike but a scooter. Come on folks, it’s got two wheels and a motor – making it a ‘motor’ ‘bicycle’!!! Enough pedantics.
There is something quite cool about being able to jump on a bike and cruise the streets. It is a feeling you do not get driving a car – except for maybe a convertible. It is a feeling you do not even get riding a normal bicycle. There is an exhilaration, a romance, a freedom to it all. Words I have often heard motorcyclists express.
The exhilaration is the shear excitement of moving with the road and weaving in amongst the rest of the chaotic traffic (to which I alluded in a previous entry). What once looked like an impossibility and craziness w
hen viewed as a pedestrian, is replaced with a sense of oneness. When you are amongst the traffic, moving with it, the relativity of it all becomes apparent. It reminds one of those physics text books introducing the basic concepts of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Everything is about perspective. Now you are in the traffic, suddenly the weaving amongst other bikes does make sense. Your concern is no longer the other bikes because they are moving with you. Your concern is the stationary objects … and the pedestrians. Though of course, one should keep an eye out for bikes, cars, and buses heading toward you on the wrong side of the road.
The romance of it is exuded partly I guess from the romance of Hanoi itself. A certain lethargy of the place. A quiet friendliness. Riding around a city of trees, lakes and ponds. I speak not of the lovers’ romance, though I guess the feelings are somewhat similar, but the kind of romance one feels wandering alone in a strange town, free of any care in the world. When you hit the road, especially when it is just you on the bike, it’s you alone … and the rest of the world is gliding by.
The romance is also the fellow riders sharing your traffic stream. There is something extremely eye-catching about a woman riding a bike, and especially the many Vespa’s (old and new) that one sees in this town. The Vietnamese women certainly look very elegant on these machines….sitting erect, long straight hair flowing, sunglasses …. Ah, sublime. Of course, very few wear helmets here so, in a potentially tragic way, that adds a certain laiser-faire elegance to it all again. Like most foreigners here, me lady does wear a helmet. Which places her in to the elite category of women that dismounts the bike, takes her helmet off, and shakes her hair out (akin to a shampoo add). ‘Tis enough to make any man stop and turn his head.
Us guys on the other hand do not look quite so cool on these smaller bikes and scooters, dare I say. We need to be riding bigger machines before we start turning heads, and there are not too many big bikes around Hanoi – and those that there are look somewhat out of place amongst the scooters and Honda Waves.
The freedom of riding is the ability to just jump on it and go. To stop and start and go wherever and whenever you wish. Of course, one could take a taxi or a xe-om (a local motor-bike taxi), but it’s not you in control. Taxi’s are about destinations. Your own bike is about a journey. One of the favourite activities of me lady and I is to simply buzz off into town with no particular plan. To explore new alleys that the cars cannot go up. Or do U-Turn after U-Turn. To just drive around and stop whenever we want at one of the many groovy cafes. It is most cool just to pull up to café, jump off, click the stand down, and stroll into the café for a cappuccino, helmet in hand.
Without wanting to put a damper on my spirits, I would like to raise one issue that must not be overlooked. Vietnam has a shocking road death toll! The numbers, I do not know. But they are shocking. The first dead body that I have ever seen in life was a road accident victim on the highway from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay. So when one does jump on a bike here, supreme respect for what you are embarking should be followed. The cities themselves are relatively safe. The speeds around town are slow. There are still only a few cars (though this is rising fast). And there is one very useful road rule in the favour of bikes – that the car is always in the wrong (if they hit a bike, that is). So the cars are quite cautious.
Of course, the fact that very few people wear helmets here is a very large contributing factor to the death toll I suspect. While a helmet might not do you much good at high speed, it does not take much of a knock to the head even at slow speed to do some serious damage. In fact, I recall hearing years ago that the number of head injuries incurred from people simply dismounting bicycles was excuse enough to be wearing helmets. Alas, I guess wearing helmets it just not cool enough here. Though the ones we use are rather groovy, so maybe we can start a trend.
There are other things to watch out for on the roads. Boys after school. Riders talking on the phone. Riders messaging (texting for NZers, SMS for SE Asians) – even more dangerous than talking on the phone. Two bikes riding side-by-side talking to each other (though it does look kinda fun). People simple ignoring their red light – very very common for, especially young, riders to just head straight on through a red light and weave amongst the traffic that is on the green. The list goes on. So while riding around the city is pretty safe, you can reduce a lot a stress by following the simple adage from the NZ Defensive Driving Course – “treat everyone else on the road as a bloody idiot, and expect the unexpected”.
Most people living here in Hanoi have seen an accident of some form or other happen. The tragedy I referred to above does not count since it happen before we drove past. I have only witnessed one in front of my own innocent eyes, and this came with it’s own sense of humour. A young lady was crossing the road and a bike hit her and knocked her down. My heart jumped as I witnessed it from the opposite side of the road. Much to my amusement though, she immediately got back up and started yelling at the young male rider, waving her finger, telling him off. “Good on’ya” I thought to myself!!!! ‘Let him have it’.
There is much more to write about life on the road here. What bikes the cool people ride; how people on USD200 monthly salaries can buy USD7,000 Piaggio Vespas; the chaotic unwritten rules of the road and how even within the chaos there are no rules; the various articles of clothing people wear on the road and so forth. But I suspect that my readers have a limited attention span, so I shall keep these entries as tight as possible ;) (I jest). And we still have a few more years here to provide us with plenty of time to elaborate on these untouched topics.
My only closing point might be this. When riding pillion on a bike, one can either hug the rider or hang onto the rear. To be honest, I find holding onto the rear an awkward feeling but it does avoid that more awkward ‘how well do I know this person, and can I really hug them’ issue. Me lady, who, surprisingly, is quite close to me, naturally assumes the ‘hug the rider’ approach and never fails to remind me that my gut is getting larger and larger! A sign perhaps that maybe we should be getting off the scooter and onto the pushbikes eh!
Chao Cac Anh Chi.
