Moto Mania

It seems that there is only one job suitable for a Vietnamise man, driving. Most of them drive motorbikes and wait on every street corner offering you a lift around town. Crossing a Vietnam road is not an easy task with all these motorbikes flying down. First of all there is no such thing as traffic lights so at crossroads you have to look four ways, secondly the idea of waiting for a "gap" in traffic is a myth, there will never be a gap. That picture to the right isn't rush hour or a particulary busy street, that's how the whole bloody country is! Therefore the only way to do it is to treat it as a lifesize game of Frogger, take one step at a time and make no sudden movements. As long as you shuffle along slowly enough, with no sudden movements, the bikes wil swerve either side of you!

Women on the other hand have two jobs open for them. Work in shops or work the streets. They seem to prefer the former, but probably only because that shop customers don't complain if they sleep on the job, and believe me they do a LOT of sleeping. The Vietnamise can sleep anywahere, anytime. Their philosophy is simple, if they fell tired then they'll sleep. They sleep on street corners, they sleep on top of the products they're selling, they sleep hanging off bannisters! On the bus down last night the locals managed to curl into some kind of foetal position and just sleep, I was pretty jelous!

The bus drive down last night was yet another experience. In Wales we drive on the left, in France they drive on the right, in Australia they drive on the left and in Vietnam they drive on whichever side they feel like. Technicaly I think they're supposed to drive on the right, but why bother with mere technicalities!

The minibus to Halong Bay was bad enough, we spent about two thirds of the time on the left side. To be fair to him the driver did take some precautions, when rounding blind corners on the wrong side of the road he sometimes bothered to sound his horn. The ride down to Hoi An was ten times worse though, mostly because we were in a proper 50 seater bus which took up two thirds of the road even when on the right side (which wasn't very often). If any car happened to come towards us while our bus had strayed onto their side the bus driver just honcked his horn at them! And this went on for the 20 straight hours we were on that bus! What's more my record of still not meeting any Amerians collapsed with three of them sitting between Carwyn and me on the first leg of the ride. Fair play to them though, they were'nt the sterotypical Yanks, not one of them tried to kill any of the Vietnamise communist scum on the bus!

I'm now in Hoi An, the shopping capital of Vietnam. Every street is filled with clothes shop with women begging you to come in and buy a suit. One of the many Aussies on our boat trip had recommended a hotel to me, and bloody hell is it good! Clean room, double bed for me and a small one for Carwyn (I won with paper, scissors, stone - always go for paper!), buffet breakfast, laundry and a swiming pool - three pound fifty each! And what's more there's a toilet roll and no jet wash in sight! I wish we could stay here and re-energise for a bit but we're running out of Vietnam time so we've got to rush on to the next stop tomorrow. Don't ask where that is, we don't actually know, all I do know is that another night on a bus is a guarantee!