Our First Cyclo Ride

After checking back into the same hotel we stayed in our first night in Hanoi (before spending the night on the boat on Ha Long Bay), the group did a cyclo tour.  

It’s a cross between the old rickshaws (no longer done), and an easy bike ride.  Well, we don’t pedal the bikes, our cyclo-man did that for us (every cyclo “driver” I saw in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Phnom Penh are men, so don’t bristle at me).  Besides, what woman would want to have to pedal little ol’ overweight me around a city?

As the rider, I sat in basket bench seat attached firmly on the front of the bike.  And, all cyclo are one rider/one pedaler per modified bike.

Never having done a cyclo tour, I was a bit nervous that it would be on the boring side of life.  Instead it was good fun, especially given what a pell-mell place Hanoi is.  There is even less organization to traffic in Vietnam cities than in Thailand or Laos cities.  But the upside to Vietnam is that there are a lot more people, so the fact that we did not witness a single fender bender in any of the cities we went to is a testament to three things:

1. The Vietnamese can handle the stress of driving right next to motorcycles, scooters, cars, trucks and busses all squeezed into five wide on a two lane road.

    2. The traffic laws aren’t laws, but suggestions, or ideas, or goals.  Well, no, they         can’t be goals, as none of the drivers aspire to that goal.

    3.  The number of near-collisions you will be in is infinite!  The number of actual             collisions will be one or fewer.

I’ll write more about the crazy that is Southeast Asia Driving and the Art of Crossing Streets, but I’ll focus more on the cyclo tour.

We did about an hour ride around the streets near our hotel.  And let me tell you, it’s a scene.  Hanoi captivated me more than any other city we went to, because it strikes me as more old school Asian.  The place is grittier than Saigon, you can restaurant or bar hop with ease, and every street we were on was crowded.  

We saw a lot of cool street scenes, interesting people doing interesting things, people at work on their crafts, micro-restaurants, and more.  

I really enjoyed the cycle tour more than I expected, and my fellow travelers also buzzed about it afterwards.