Lost in Transportation

I felt like Dustin Hoffman in the movie Outbreak, which, in it’s own way, wasn’t completely wayward, because it was nice, for once, to shed that Raymond Babbitt persona that a foreign culture so often elicits. Like the immunity granted him by his airtight uniform, working to guard him from that vicious viral menace, I too, armed with two decades of sitting in the “shotgun” seat beside my mother, was spared from the biological turmoil raging around me.

I was at Sun Park, recently changed from the slightly less hip, in the celestial sense, Moon Park. It’s an amusement park, not a Korean friend, with rides that wouldn’t quite rival that of a Six Flags or King’s Island, but had more to offer than your average county carnival. And honestly, perhaps this former fact was for the best.

After every up and down or side to side series that each attraction awarded, it seemed that at least one student would rush from whatever brightly colored cage he or she was just freed from, find the nearest patch of patch of grass, and blotch the green with the brown of a newly liberated lunch. Even the seemingly mild back and forth movement of that classic ride, the pirate ship, wasn’t without a slew of vomiting victims. In fact, it became an enormous pendulum, signifying each new hour with the chiming of faintly heard heaves.

It seems that the average Vietnamese stomach has been almost exclusively conditioned to the specific motion of motorbikes. As such, any break from this motional standard is often met with clumps of unprocessed protest. Larger, unfamiliar deviations appear to produce the most avid internal angst, like those supplied by the novel, and often airborne, patterns of park pulleys and tracks. However, even a slightly extended excursion via car or bus can compromise the passenger’s nutritional packaging, resulting in yet another parcel marked “return to sender”.

This calibrator of undisturbed digestion, the motorbike, is, subsequently, responsible for the vast majority of motorized movement carried out in this country. I suppose there really isn’t any stateside equivalent to this vehicle, but it’s something in between your typical midlife crisis motorcycle and that barely post-pubescent hormonal transport, the Yamaha Razz. A wide variety of options peruse the city, with models like the sleek and stylish Vespa representing the flashier end of the spectrum and the sensibly modest Honda Dream rounding out the other. Personally though, I was just relieved to find that the latter wasn’t an occurrence of waking up damp with motor oil.

These two-wheelers are suited quite well for the city of Hanoi. The narrow roads, which must accommodate for the densely packed population, often resemble overworked arteries assailed by the steady diet of a chalupa enthusiast. The small stature of the motorbike allows for a certainly constricted, yet usually fluid movement, in such situations, as burdensome barriers like regimented traffic lanes can be eliminated. Any open space, no matter the size or respective locale, becomes a legitimate next step on the congested journey onward.

With this heavy concentration of flow, high velocities, as a whole, aren’t common commodities of the Hanoian motorist. On top of that, for safety purposes, the road regulations officially outlaw any speeds over 30 kilometers an hour. However, this restriction is followed with about the same zeal as your average American speed limit. At least that seems to be the case, because, to be honest, I really have no idea how fast that is. It’s likely some rate derived by a staggering quantity of cubits. I’ve resolved many times upon exact calculation, but the occasional discarded syringe has proved a powerful deterrent in any continuous progression of pavement to forearm contact. So, with a badge of scar tissue and some fellow foreigners in my bloodstream, I’ve resigned to simply go with this flow, without any thoughts of arguably outdated units, as I saddle the passenger’s portion of a friend's bike seat.

However, with a small, but daily growing presence, the car is throwing an ever-increasing amount of four wheeled, boxy wrenches into the cluttered cogs of this somehow successful traffic system.

Now, that’s not to speak of the public buses, which do, most of the time, function as space savers when you compare their rider to room ratio. In fact, at times, bus trips have left me green with envy over the arena rock audience. I mean, here we are, both listening to “Every Rose has its Thorn” over a scratchy loudspeaker, but all the while, they’re swimming in their ocean of comparatively empty space.

But, the car, on other hand, is a different story. Taking up the space of multiple motorbikes, yet often housing only one occupant, this vehicle presents unfavorable passenger to pavement proportions. It lacks the ability for the makeshift maneuvers that keep this citywide stampede in transit and clogs the pedestrian heavy sidewalks near it’s drivers desired destination, as parking lots are few and far between here.

Currently, these autos aren’t easy to come by. The import tax, which applies to each and every model purchased, is around 83%, nearly doubling the dongs dished out. As Vietnam becomes more involved in the WTO however, this figure is expected to undergo a significant drop, a change that will most certainly catalyze a larger number of able agents to look at life behind the retractable windows of a luxury sedan. In regards to the movement of the masses, this will likely cause some stalling.

As for me though, most my travels are taken atop my formerly 3-speed bicycle, which, in an act of sacrificial streamlining, has recently shed itself of those apparently excessive first two gears, graciously giving them back to the street they had so long navigated. It’s a machine of simple maintenance, which forfeits high priced fuel for the cheap, albeit often exhausting, power source of pedaling. So I am sincerely grateful that the makeup of Hanoi traffic renders this cycle perfectly capable of carrying me anywhere I wish in the city

In turn, as the petrol propelled players, hurriedly acting out this surprisingly well received, but not quite smooth performance, change over the coming years, I’d like to think that the bicycle will remain a castable extra. In the very least though, despite the increased air pollution likely produced from this new roster, one will undoubtedly be able to take comfort in the abdominal acclimation that is sure to follow, a phenomenon that will be quite effective in keeping some local parks much cleaner.