Honk If You Love Vietnam!

It’s there as you first start to wake, lurking somewhere on the edge of your consciousness.  It’s been infiltrating your dreams, yet as you stir and open one eye, it’s still present.  You pause for a moment to get your bearings and only then does it occur to you.  It’s honking. A lot of it.

Still, the morning is yours, and you take your time sipping a cup of tea in your hotel room before starting your day.  It’s when you step outside and are enveloped by the sweltering heat (or freezing rain if it’s March in Hanoi…?) and have to immediately step aside to avoid a speeding motorbike, and then avert your gaze so as to not show interest to the three motorbike drivers calling after you.  It’s then that it finally hits you.  You are in Vietnam.

This isn’t to say that all there is to Vietnam is motorbikes; there’s so much more, like rice.  Nevertheless, Vietnam and motorbikes are inextricably connected.  The place is full of them, and they’re either honking or being honked at.  Take Saigon for example.  (No one calls it Ho Chi Minh City except bureaucrats, bankers and foreigners.)  The city has between 8 and 10 million inhabitants and almost that many motorbikes.  On the average workday, many outsiders (Vietnamese word for people from the outer ‘burbs) come into the city on motorbike, so the number of motorbikes actually exceeds the city’s population by a fair amount.  That’s a lot of motorbikes

The rest of the country follows suit.  From other large cities like Hanoi, to the remotest village in the mountainous north, motorbikes are everywhere.  They are at the center of Vietnamese life, as probably the most identifiable status symbol.  Put simply, everyone must have a motorbike.  It is considered plebeian to walk anywhere, even just a block down the street, so the Vietnamese ride their motorbikes everywhere

Entire families will ride on a single motorbike, with mom and dad up front, two kids on the back and baby riding the handlebars.  Students socialize by riding around on their motorbikes.  When they decide to stop, they all just hang out on their bikes before they start them up and move to another location to hang out on their bikes again.  I’ve seen everything imaginable being transported on motorbikes, including a full sized couch, large live animals and full grown trees; in rush hour traffic no less.  I’ve even had to dodge them in the heart of crowded markets where there didn’t appear to be room for a chicken, let alone a bike.

The abundance of motorbikes leads to some interesting traffic patterns, because even though they dominate the road, they aren’t the only thing on the road.  Whether in a city or rural setting, motorbikes have to share the road with trucks, cars, cyclos (bicycles with seats over the front road driven by unscrupulous crooks – a story for another day), bicycles, livestock and, lowest on the totem pole, us pedestrians. 

At first glance it would appear that there are no driving rules in Vietnam.  Traffic comes across as complete chaos, with traffic lights and road signs being ignored in favour of incessant honking.  Take a closer look, though, and there are certain patterns that suggest a kind of underground set of rules.  I’ll do my best to explain them as I understand them.

The first rule seems to be that in Vietnam size really does matter.  The bigger the vehicle the more damage it could inflict on anything else in its path, so it has the right of way.  This results in things like large trucks pulling out into a busy road regardless of red lights, stop signs or children playing.

The second rule is to continually honk if you see another vehicle of any type ahead of you.  This rule causes a lot of noise in urban areas, because there are vehicles everywhere.  However, it is necessary because it results from a debilitating condition inherent in almost all Vietnamese people, that being the inability to turn their heads.  This is true.  I swear. 

Since they can’t turn their heads, they can’t look to see if someone is coming when they want to pull out into the street, or do a shoulder check when changing lanes.  (Who am I trying to kid, there are no lanes in Vietnam.  Let’s say they can’t do a shoulder check when they decide to inadvertently swerve back and forth, or decide to exit to the right at the last second when they are way over on the left.)  The worst culprits by far are the motorbike drivers, which is surprising because they stand to lose the most if they get hit by a large truck.  Despite this, motorbikes are constantly pulling out onto main roads without even a glance to see if anything is coming, and cutting in front of whomever they please.

So the honking rule often trumps rule number one.  For example, truck drivers may be aggressive, but they don’t really want to kill anyone.  So, even though they are bigger, their only recourse when a backfiring motorbike cuts them off is to lay on the horn.  They could run over the imbecile, but the paperwork would be endless.  So they send out a warning honk and the motorbike usually clears off to the side.  However, once warned the motorbike had indeed better get the hell out of the way because now the truck driver has followed rule number two and can at this stage run the motorbike over without guilt if its honks are ignored.  That’s rule number three: if rule number two is ignored, go back to rule number one.

And that’s pretty well it, unless, of course, you’re unfortunate enough to be a pedestrian.  Pedestrians are the lowest of the low.  If you’re on foot, you’re on your own.  Just stay out of the way and hope for the best.  This goes for streets, sidewalks and anywhere else a motorized vehicle could be.  They’ll warn you with a blaring of the horn, but you had better be prepared to duck into a doorway or dive into a rice paddy because they are not slowing down.

Despite all of this, there seems to be very few accidents in Vietnam.  The best I can tell it's the result of all the honking and nothing else.  The motorbike drivers may be maniacs that never look anywhere other than forward, and no one seems all that interested in traffic signs, but none of that matters.  If someone’s in your way – honk.  If you hear honking - get out of the way.  It’s as simple as that.