Vietnamese Traffic Jams

Vietnamese traffic jams almost have to be witnessed to be believed and even then they are almost beyond comprehending. On most days in most intersections, the traffic in Vietnam flows rather smoothly. Eastbound traffic moving east, westbound traffic moving west, cars to the left, motorbikes and bicycles to the left, everyone weaving around the pedestrians, but on a few occasions, in a few intersections, the usual system breaks down. One such intersection happens to be on my way to work. And my way home.

This particular intersection is the formed by the meeting of two streets, one running diagonally across the other. The main road, running east-west, is now partially blocked by an enormous hole in the ground surrounded by a six foot high metal construction fence. When I arrive in the morning, the lane I am in is usually blocked by a line of city buses, forcing the motorcycle traffic, myself included, up and onto the sidewalk to continue to flow of traffic. Once off the sidewalk at the point where the roads meet, we are confronted by a mass of motorbikes turning left from the cross street onto our street. This mass rides up against a similarly sized mass of motorbikes coming the opposite way turning right. Somewhere in the middle, it seems, there is a always a car marooned in a sea of two-wheeled vehicles, further reducing the space through which we have to pass. Motorbike traffic often behaves like schools of fish, schools of individual fish flowing through schools of individual fish passing through the same space in opposite directions without one slowing the pace of the other, but when we’re all crammed so tightly, it is usually the brave, impatient soul who forces his or her way up on the side walk on the other side of the street and the following brave, impatient souls who follow bumper to bumper up and over the sidewalk, half walking, half riding, without breaking the chain to enable the greatest number of us to break through the crowd. While our daisy chain of persistent drivers moves through the crowd, the masses heading in the opposite direction, along with the driver of the marooned car, have no choice but to wait until we all pass, or someone, equally brave and impatient, breaks the chain and starts another chain in the other direction. In this way, we all move through, painfully slowly, but eventually, productively an about an inch every five seconds or so.