Asian Kiss Part 2

I don’t usually follow one post with another one so quickly but it seems necessary in this case since I lumped two countries together in a way that just needs some correction. As some of you have pointed out, my last post was titled Asia but was really about Seoul, Korea and very little about Hanoi, Vietnam.

So since I was apparently too easy on my friends from Vietnam, let me try to playfully misrepresent their country and irritate them too.

While I did get an all-expenses-paid visit to Vietnam in 1972, I was asked to stay in the south. But most of my recent reflections stem from several visits to the north – Hanoi in particular.

I think I made the point that Koreans eat a lot of kimchi. The closest counterpart I can come up with for Vietnam is pho. Pho does not rhyme with Mo – it more rhymes with Duh. If you know the Vietnamese alphabet you know this because of the little thingy they put over the o in pho. Anyway, Vietnamese people eat pho at any and all meals. It seems to be a favorite for breakfast which is not easy for a westerner to take since we do not usually eat hot soup for breakfast. Pho is basically a broth that comes with noodles and you can add stuff to it. Most popular additions include basil, mint leaves, lime, bean sprouts, and hot peppers. Pho can also come with beef, chicken, meat balls, and various seafood.

A big difference between Korea and Vietnam is the stage of development or the average income level. These measured differentials seem misleading to me but Koreans earn about 10 times what Vietnamese earn.  Vietnam is a poor country with a single communist party. Korea is a high income capitalist nation. Vietnam’s long and skinny country has a population of more than 90 million. South Korea is a rocky and mountainous home to a little less than 50 million. So these are two very different countries!

I mentioned in my previous post that sidewalks can be dangerous places. This is true in both countries but there are major differences. In Seoul, you have to watch out for the motor scooters. In places in Vietnam you not only have to watch for motor bikes but there is the errant water buffalo, chicken, or draping power lines.

That brings me to driving. Traffic is very tricky in Seoul. In Seoul the problem is mostly the density of cars. Lots of cars. Modern cars. There are just too many cars in the streets. The second issue in Seoul is “fender-first”. While we Americans defer to a car ahead of us, most of the time we do not constantly compete for the front row position with the rest of the cars. In Seoul, two cars will do anything to get their fender one centimeter ahead of the other guy. Once that centimeter is establish, he/she has the right of way and will move his car, bus, 16-wheeler in the lane the other guy is occupying. The other guy will have to pull back and yield. This basically means that in Seoul any time you drive you feel like you are in the annual Indy 500 race.  

Fender first applies in Vietnam too but cars are not the main issue in Vietnam.  There the issue is motorbikes. Motorbikes are as thick as professors at a poetry reading. Seriously you have never seen so many motorbikes in your life. For many people the motorbike is like a family sedan. It is not uncommon to see the whole family on one motorbike and I don’t mean just the immediate family. Of course motorbikes also function as trucks. You have not seen anything until you have seen a Vietnamese motorbike loaded with 16 live pigs – or 16 tons of steel.  Barnum and Bailey have little to compete with Vietnamese motorbikes.

The second critical aspect of Vietnamese driving is the rules and/or following the rules. In Seoul taxi drivers and other people in a hurry will sometimes run red lights or pass in the oncoming lane. It is done more than here in Bloomington. So there is some lack of obedience to the rules in Korea. Often this behavior seems rational. For example sitting at a traffic light that is three light years away from anything in the middle of the desert seems crazy. But we Americans and Swiss follow rules. Koreans are a little more flexible. Well, if Koreans are flexible we might say that the Vietnamese are double-jointed.

Here’s the thing that gets you driving in Vietnam…cars coming out of a side street never stop – they don’t even brake. I am not sure if they have the legal right of way but it seems that way. Imagine you are tooling down some major road in the US and some yahoo comes out of a side street in front of you. What would you do?  If your seat belt was on and your insurance was paid up you would probably quit texting and slam right into him to show him how stupid he is. At the least you would tailgate him for 700 miles and then shoot him the finger when you finally passed him. That never happens in Hanoi. People are ALWAYS turning in front of you. And when I say people I mean cars, motorbikes, water buffalo, etc.  And you are always letting them do it. It is you who has the full field of view and it is you who is expected to cheerfully swerve, jam on the breaks or do whatever is necessary to let him/her into your lane.

The other cool thing about Hanoi is walking across the street. You might think that because the drivers have a red light and because the pedestrian signal gives you the green that you would be safe to walk with your ipod glaring in your bad ear as you day dream about your latest professional conquest. No No No. Just because you seem to have the right of way it does not mean that anyone is going to stop. Motor bikes and cars view the traffic signals as guidelines and not as pronouncements of the Supreme Court. But it is very safe to walk across even the busiest of streets in Hanoi if you know how to do it. Just like the cars coming out of side streets, you the pedestrian do not stop. If you want to get to the other side of the street, take a big breathe and start walking. The vehicles will not hit you. They will come close to you but they will swerve and miss you. The first few times it feels a little like walking the plank in accountant-infested waters. But I swear on John Maynard Keynes that so long as you walk at a measured pace and so long as you give the eye to oncoming traffic you will make it to the other side of the street without harm.

One final thing about driving is the honking in Vietnam. In the US honking is the equivalent of a four-letter word from one car to another. We honk to tell another driver he is a very bad person. We often honk out of frustration. In Vietnam the honking never stops. Honking is a warning system. Perhaps they honk so much because drivers do not use their rear-view mirrors enough? Perhaps they honk because they might be passing in the oncoming lane. I don’t know the origin but I do know that Vietnamese drivers are continuously telling the other drivers where they are and that they are in the process of passing you. It seems like a reasonable system especially if you can turn off your hearing aid. After a while you either get used to it or it drives you crazy.

Okay, now that I have written a little more about Vietnam I am expecting even more hate mail. J

As I said in the past post, I feel lucky to have met so many kind and generous people in Seoul and Hanoi. I look forward to seeing them again!