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Ho Chi Minh Travel / Vietnam Travel / Traffic / Scootering / Videos / Travel Videos / Road Trips / → All Tags

Holiday in Ho Chi Minh City: Braving the Hectic Traffic

Driving in a foreign country takes guts and few cities illustrate this need as well as Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City. The metropolis is dominated by scooters and road rules are merely a suggestion of how locals get on with their daily duties.

It's not uncommon to witness scooters with three or even four people along for the ride, plus children standing on the seat. We even spied the Vietnamese equivalent to delivery trucks—mopeds piled high with boxes of goods and even a handful of giant rolls of foam. It seems unsafe and pretty crazy, but we never felt our well-being in danger once. All in all, it's reminiscent of the movements of bees in a hive; it just works.

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Animals / Traffic / Highways / → All Tags

Hungarian Highway Surprise

An update on travel conditions in Europe: Hungary's got a hundred extra bunnies running around, if you're interested. That's because commuters and travelers got stuck in a six-hour traffic jam on the M1 between Budapest and Vienna yesterday after a truck carrying rabbits to the slaughterhouse was involved in a crash.

In scenes more reminiscent of animated movies like The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, 5000 bunnies came tumbling out across the highway and held up traffic while they lay in the sun and relaxed. By the end of the day, the statistics were not really favoring the rabbits: 400 died in the crash, 4400 got collected up again, and just 100 made the dash for freedom. Perhaps they'd heard that Bruno the Bear's brothers are on the loose in Austria and they love snacking on rabbits. Whatever the case, next time you're stuck in a European highway traffic jam, spare a thought for the bunnies who won't be ending up on dinner tables after all.

[Photo: rossjl]

Related Stories:
· 5000 Rabbits Block Traffic in Hungary [CBS]
· Beware of Bruno's Brothers [Jaunted]

Google Maps / Traffic / Tourist Driving / → All Tags

Google Traffic Maps Now Live In 30 US Cities

Google just added snappy little live traffic conditions to their dominant mapping site:

For more than 30 major U.S. cities, you can now see up-to-date traffic conditions to help you plan your schedule and route. If you're in San Francisco, New York , Chicago, Dallas, or any of the other cities we now include, just click on the traffic button to show current traffic speeds directly on the map. If your route shows red, you're looking at a stop-and-go commute; yellow, you could be a little late for dinner; green, you've got smooth sailing.

We took a glance at Boston and Los Angeles and sure enough the red outweighed the green. However, "you could be a little late for dinner"? C'mon Google, more like--"you could end up camping in your car on the 405" or "you could end up never getting to the 'if you live here, you'd be home by now' sign on Storrow Drive".

Something for visitors to glance at before they go off to a new city though, and get an idea of traffic patterns and alternate routes.

Related Stories:
·   Stuck in traffic? [Google Blog]
·   Google Maps [Jaunted]