Rain, rain, go away...

Last week there was a heavy rain at the end of the school day, and when we experience this type of weather things get a little chaotic around school.  Hallways flood.  Water comes in through the roof in parts of the hallway.  The stairs get super slippery.  Kids go crazy!  After dealing with the chaos at school, a group of us hopped in a cab to go back to our apartment complex.  The cab ended up at a standstill at the major intersection nearby the apartment.  The traffic lights must have gone out, but by the time they were working again, the intersection was one big mess of motorbikes, bicycles, cars, taxis, buses, and huge trucks.  Since people in Vietnam don't follow normal traffic rules (i.e. staying in lanes, driving the correct way up one way streets, following traffic signals), there was no simple solution.  Every driver seemed to just want to go whichever way they wanted to, without thinking about the fact that they were clogging the intersection and that NO ONE could move.

We all ended up getting out of the cab and walking the rest of the 10 minutes home.  I'm curious how long it took for all those drivers to figure out a civilized way to clear the intersection.  We could have been sitting there for hours!

When we finally reached the street near the apartment complex entrance, we found out it was flooded (not surprisingly).  Motorbikes were riding through and it actually looked like they were jetskis since we couldn't see their wheels due to the flooded road!  Water was then washing up onto the sidewalks.  We had to walk down a bunch of sidestreets to get home.  Crazy times!!