I rode a motorbike and survived

Chaos. That's the only way to describe the roads in Vietnam. There are no rules, practically no stoplights and absolutely no respect for staying on the correct side of the road. It's incredibly overwhelming for all us foreigners but the locals aren't fazed at all.

in the Old Quarter, happy to be out of the ridiculous traffic...

                                                  
Until today I had only ridden in buses and cars and that was scary enough. But this morning when I walked into work, Luan (one of the coordinators at E&C Center) told me I would go with her to the Korean Embassy in the afternoon. For some reason I totally assumed that we'd take the bus. It wasn't until we were about to leave and she handed me a helmet that I realized I was going on the motorbike with her.  I totally freaked out (internally), but kept my cool on the outside.  We hopped on the bike and got going, and it wasn't as bad as I had feared. There were only a few times I thought we might hit someone/get hit by someone else. The worst part was when we hit big bumps I thought I was going to fly off the back of the motorbike.
But we got to the Korean Embassy and back to the office just fine. I'm not exactly excited for my next motorbike adventure, but at least now I know what to expect and I know it's something I'll (probably) survive.

My attempts to capture the crazy traffic. It's kind of hard to tell, but just imagine that none of those motorbikes are slowing down at all...they just all honk and swerve around each other.They also swerve around the ladies selling goods on bikes, like the one in the second picture. I'll take a video at some point...