Vietnamese Roads

The first experience on a road in Vietnam is horrific. As an international visitor you are likely to be in a modern bus or car with a little grunt therefore most other vehicles travel more slowly than you.

There are all sorts of vehicles that share the roads, trucks and buses, scooters, push bikes and cyclos and a few private cars. Bike and scooters will stay on the kerbside lane, most of the time, even if they are travelling the opposite direction.

Cyclos may well be ladened up with furniture, goods for sale, a portable food stall or rubbish, so they take up more road room.

Roads are mostly two lanes and the road markings appear fair, broken lines, single lines and even double lines mark appropriate straight, curved and dangerous zones.

Funny thing is that the drivers appear to ignore these symbols of road etiquette and overtake whenever and wherever they wish.

Traffic lights present their own challenges. It is fair to say that most drivers stop, but if you are turning right or left or you can see a clear path through the crossing traffic, then hang the red light and keep going.

As a visitor, you get used to the weaving and ducking that goes on, jostling for a bit of road whether it be negotiating an intersection in the city or getting there quicker on the open road.

I will just have to remember road etiquette when I get back behind the wheel in Australia.

Meanwhile, for more of our Indochina adventures, click here.