Craziness in the streets

It isn't just that there is a lot of traffic, there are no traffic rules and thus everyone just does whatever they want, rules be damned!  No one drives on the right or left, they drive on both and in the middle!  Scooters going both directions, cars in the middle, or two sort of lanes of cars going in both directions and scooters in the middle and on the edges, going in opposite directions!  It makes crossing the streets much more dangerous than in London, for example, where you just have to worry about getting hit if you don't look both ways.  Here, both ways don't cut it.  You need to have 380 degree vision and not care about your life! 

But I did it, I crossed many streets today.  It gets a lot worse at night because many of the scooters don't have head lights, so you never see them.  Those are the ones usually being driven by old gramma ladies, in their 80's, a snarl on their lips, an "out of my way, bitch" gleam in their eyes.  Then they go back to making goo-goo noises at their grandkids, I'm sure.  And you can't really walk on the sidewalks because they are crammed with parked scooters so you have to walk in the streets, which puts you even more at risk.  At least you are not alone. I often just follow some young guys as they cross the streets because no one is going to hit three people at a time.  Of course, that makes me have absolutely no idea where I am after about 20 minutes, but it's all an adventure anyway.  So far I have managed to find my way back to the hotel.  No thanks to the map, which looks like someone tossed small bits of toothpicks onto a sheet of paper and called it good.  Nothing is perpendicular or straight.  It makes the streets in Rome look positively linear and organized.

I also had a bowl of pho, which I ate with my lame-ass chopstick technique (but everyone uses chopsticks and a wide spoon, so I was saved) and at first I thought "holy crap, 40,000  dong for a bowl of soup?  But I couldn't finish it, the bowl was huge and wait!  It cost less than $2.00 US dollars!  What?   I went out tonight to wander and risk my life and went into a funky upstairs cafe to have a beer in the open bar overlooking the street (hours of free entertainment) and thought the same thing, 30,000 dong for a beer, but that's less than a buck fifty for a really good Saigon beer. 

So, I can cross off crossing the streets, eating pho, getting lost and then found, and listening to hits from the 1960's while drinking said beer......  so far, this Vietnam thing ain't so bad.