The stereotypical post

The first thing anyone notices when they first arrive is the traffic, it's only after living here a year that I noticed that there are in fact many trees in town, whereas for the past twelve months I've been so focused on not being killed either by a speeding vehicle or by falling deep into a manhole carefully disguised by a pile of rubbish that I never had the opportunity to look around me.

If your new to Hanoi crossing the road without clutching someone else's hand and closing your eyes can be a little hard, especially if you're used to a country where people don't drive on the pavement so here's a video created by some teenagers for you to watch all about crossing the road…

(How)

Now that you've laughed a little, take a look at these pictures I snapped on a recent walk (albeit and extremely long one) into the town center. It's really hard to capture the speed and the noise of the horns in these pictures however hopefully I'll look at these in ten years’ time when people drive in one direction only and wonder whether it was ever really like how it is today.

 (taken by me)

This was taken with a film grain setting. I especially love the contrast between the patterns on the mosaic wall against the plain bus, as well as all the rough marks on the road.

(taken by me)

Here you can see the trees and lanterns as well as the fact that there is absolutely no space to walk on the pavements.

(taken by me)

I love the way the windmills are moving faster than the motorbikes in this photo as nothing else usually does.
I took this one with the movement setting on my camera.

(taken by me)

I really want one of these scooters!

I hope you liked these artistic shots of traffic, it's changing all the time so you'll probably see many more of my pictures in future!