Travel (Asia)
We have only been to a few places in Asia so far. There are lots of wonderful things to see in this part of the world, and much that is fascinating–so different from here in the United States.
One thing that struck us about both Vietnam and Thailand was how traffic works. To American eyes, it seems a chaotic swarm. But if you pay attention, you will notice that it actually works quite well. Everyone knows what to do and there are surprisingly few accidents given the intensity of the traffic.
The difference is how the people view the roads. In America, we view the roadway immediately around our car as ours. We get agitated if anyone encroaches on our space. In the parts of asia we have seen, people seem to view the roadway around them as a shared space. People smoothly make way for someone who needs to merge (or cut through) and no one throws tantrums about any of it. The roadway is packed, but it moves along at a nearly headlong pace. And in doing so, they seem to effortlessly handle an amount of traffic that would force American planners into massive, complex and expensive roadways with multiple levels. And those roadways would still have excruciating traffic jams to deal with.
By the time these countries go electric, I suspect their urban roadways will be cleaner and far mor effective than anything we have or could imagine. And all because of the way we Americans insist on thinking about the roadway immediately around us…