I knew the roads were dangerous. It was made embarrassingly obvious to me on my first day in Vietnam when my inability to safely cross a typically heaving road, left me with no choice but to use an elderly couple as human shields. But this was different. I was about to travel along one of Vietnam’s most notorious roads between Quang Ngai and Hoi An which is commonly termed among locals as "Death Highway". As luck would have it, I would be tackling this motoring nemesis in a mini-van that looked like it had been around since the Vietcong forces invaded Saigon.
I took my seat in the back of the van wedged between a jovial Vietnamese grandma who was clutching a bag of giant disc shaped crisp-breads and a young woman with a baby who was at that adorably deafening age.
The trip began pleasantly as we rolled through lush green villages where local woman arduously harvested the rice fields by hand; and around grand cliff-tops that silently supervised the tumultuous seas below them. It was when we stopped in a fishing village to pick up some extra passengers that the leisurely mood began to shift. Not only was the van not big enough to accommodate another cone hat, but our new arrivals brought with them a startling smell which seemed to be a fusion of fish carcass, booze and cigarettes- a group of drunken fisherman had joined our excessively cosy tin-can. With impeccable timing, it was at that moment that Mother Nature gave us a demonstration of her wrath and opened up the heavens to a tropical downpour.
The already unruly roads almost instantly turned into a deadly arena where it was every man, moped and mini-van for himself. Semi-trailers sped down the centre of the road ignorant to anything in their paths; motorbikes wobbled on the gravel determined to seize a piece of asphalt; and ambulances screeched past us attempting to weave a path through the erratic onslaught of traffic.The wipers screeching furiously across the windscreen, our driver swerved sharply left and right trying desperately to see the distorted road ahead through the water enveloped glass. A last minute swerve to avoid an oncoming bus left us skidding across the nature strip- sending me into a silent mantra of Hail Mary’s but which the inebriated fisherman merely used as a fine opportunity to relive their bladders. It was then I noticed that the locals on the bus seemed unperturbed by the surrounding chaos: Grandma munched away on her discs rubbing her belly and beckoning me to try one; baby slept quietly for the first time on the trip; and the fisherman laughed and joked all while filling the confined space with fumes from their tobacco.
I took a few deep breaths, a smile spreading across my face. For my fellow passengers this was just a typical day travelling down a Vietnamese highway but for me this was insanity. And was precisely what travelling is all about.
