Street crossing in Hanoi-don't step back

The first thing a tourist might notice when setting the first steps in the city of Hanoi must be the traffic. Yes, it’s not a new topic but an open answer for foreigners visiting this little beautiful but crazy city.

Every year, there’re tons of visitors coming to Hanoi to admire its pretty landscapes, explore its culture values and taste its food, so obviously traffic is totally not a reason for their visit. But somehow, traffic, as a part of daily life, makes itself a little highlight in the overall picture of Hanoi either in possitive or negative way.

Hanoi-a crowded city

For years, there’ve been so many visitors on their way to explore the city of Hanoi, suddenly stop by the entrance of a drink bar or restaurant for a short rest order a seat having the view towards the street for nothing but observing how the local drive. It’s a quite funny fact that the traffic in Vietnam in general and in Hanoi in particular could impress the guests from far away. But, if you, as a stranger in this amazing country, try looking at the ways local people control their vehicles on a street, you might feel the same way.

Traffic at the old quarter

Negatively, the traffic in Hanoi is a really chaos, vehicles run all the ways on the street and look as if they were running irregularly, some time didn’t care about signals from traffic lights and might crash into each other any time, but they doesn’t in fact. The crazy machines on streets somehow manage to be right on their track without causing any accident. However, just observing the traffic is still a pleasant experience, but as a tourist, you obviously must on the move to every corner of Hanoi to explore it and this is a very interesting part.

Crazy traffic at a cross-road

There’re some foreign visitors had to utter that they were just too scared of crossing a street as they always felt as if the vehicles were about to crash into them. However, sooner or later, visitors have to get used to with the ways things operates. And, eventually there’s now a common known by expats in Vietnam for street crossing, which says “Don’t look back or step back, keep moving forward and vehicles will find a way to avoid you themselves”. This sounds silly but it is in fact so true, people on vehicles doesn’t look caring about what is going on the street but they do and they know very well how to avoid obstacles so once you get off the street, keep walking ahead and nothing bad happens as once you step back, people usually lose track of your moving orbit and might not have enough time to respond to the change.