I'm still amazed by the traffic here. Never seen anything like that before. As we were heading to the office 30 minutes earlier than usually, we were in the real rush hour of HCMC.
The big roads have normally 3 lanes. The left and middle lane for the cars and the right lane for the scooters. Interesting concept as you have to make your way through the scooter flow, when you want to turn right. When the traffic gets too much, people do not obey any rules here anymore. The scooters are than basically everywhere. Even on the different side of the road. Haven't seen any accidents yet. Of course the cars have many dents and scratches, but it seems to be a miracle that there isn't an accident every 100 meters. Nevertheless Vietnam has the highest death rate in traffic accidents throughout the world!
There is one possibility to get through this traffic without being blocked:
Be an official with a police escort. Then police motorbikes push all cars and scooters aside to make space for the limos of either diplomats or vietnamese officials. Looks quite funny. We saw one escort today on the way to the airport.
One thing is very challenging at the beginning! Try to cross a street! There is always traffic on the roads. So either you wait until you dare to cross the street (which might take hours) or just step on the street, make a very mean face towards the scooters and cars and make your way through the maze of moving vehicles. My first attempt the other day was really scary, and it took me several minutes to take a step onto the road. Now I've done that several times and I'm getting more and more safe doing it. But you'll never be comfortable crossing the streets. And there are very few pedestrian crossings or traffic lights for pedestrians, and if there are any, it's still questionable, that vehicles are stopping at the red light...
Still, this is part of the city, and it's a really living city. Looking forward to explore it more and more.
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