Playing chicken on the roads of Hanoi (and not on purpose).
Dung, our tour guide for the day, feels quite at home on the chaotic streets. In a word, Hanoi is chaotic. Every time Nick and I step out of our hotel room our senses are working on overtime. The footpath is cluttered with street vendors with their customers sprawled out on miniature plastic furniture. Surrounding them are masses of parked scooters forcing us out to brave the road as we navigate the city populated by 6 million. Scooters by far out number any other mode of transport but throw into the mix the taxis, buses, bicycles and every other vehicle imaginable and walking down the street becomes a high stress activity with the possibility of death never straying to far from mind. Road rules are more like guidelines here and it seems like there is no such thing as a red light or a one way street. At an intersection there are white stripes painted across the road. In New Zealand we would call this a zebra crossing - where vehicles stop while pedestrians walk safely across.