Take a deep breath and make no sudden moves when you cross the street in Hanoi. The Western model of traffic flow has no place here – this is not a city for the timid. You need 360 degree vision and an understanding that traffic lights, zebra crossings, one way streets and pedestrian only thoroughfares are part of a Highway Code that is barely a guide let alone a set of rules that are there for the safety of all road users.  One woman on seeing her way forward blocked, took a short cut the wrong way down a slip road onto a major highway. Oncoming traffic simply eased out of her way.

The city has a population of some 8 million and at the last estimate anything between 4 to 6 million scooters, mopeds and motorcycles. There are relatively few cars on the roads. Import duty approaching 100% makes them prohibitively expensive for the average citizen  and so the preserve of the wealthy and taxi companies.

The noise of two stroke petrol engines fills the air for over twenty hours a day and the rush hour stretches elastically to sprawl across the day.  As in the rest of Vietnam the moped is the  beast of burden of choice and if in the countryside they are used to carry pigs, rice and all manner of agricultural produce, in the city they serve a different master. We saw everything from 80 litres of paint to huge bags of cement and even a refrigerator perfectly balanced and speeding along at anything up to 40 kph. It is a system that acts almost organically with each part instinctively knowing how to react to almost any given situation. Accidents seem to be rare as long as everyone follows the ‘rules’ although a poorly secured sack of rice ‘did’ for a middle class women and her elderly mother. The perpetrator was more concerned for his bike.