It's a 5 o'clock World!

"Up every mornin just to keep a job

I gotta fight my way through the hustling mob

Sounds of the city poundin in my brain

While another day goes down the drain"

Not classic poetry, just a popular song by the Vogues in the 60s.  Occasionally I'd hear this on the Oldies station in Detroit as I made the commute home on I-75 from my job in the Motor City.  How I hated the "rush hour" (a contradiction in terms if ever there was one!)  But after Hanoi, I don't think I'll ever be able to complain about traffic at home again.

This was the scene below our 3rd floor window, overlooking Chua Lang Street, on the evening of the mid-autumn moon festival, a big tradition in Vietnam.

Apparently everyone left work and school at the same time. They converged in front of our building at 5:30 pm.  It took two hours for this mayhem to clear, the biggest, longest lasting traffic jam we've seen in our neighborhhod.

Buses normally blow through this intersection in front of our school, honking like angry geese at the cars and motorbikes. This night, it took one bus 15 minutes to go 30 feet! You can see that there are no lanes on Hanoi streets. If there is an opening in the mass of humanity, you  just shoot through it.

No room on the street?  No sweat, just ride your motorbike on the sidewalk. From the 3rd floor, the motorbikes take on the appearance of migrating ant colonies, flowing around obstacles in a determined effort to keep moving forward.

It was not a good night to be a pedestrian! And I wonder what the driver of that small cab was saying to the guy in the SUV who was squeezing by?