Chaotic mess

Outsiders coming to a large Asian city for the first time often see it as a chaotic mess. This city, in the second of my worlds, is no exception. You could easily get motion sick just by standing still and watching things whiz by! But if you look carefully you will begin to see the layers of organization that really do exist.
Traffic looks chaotic, and sometimes gets into horrendous snarls. Yet, most people do manage to get where they need to go by the approximate time that they need to be there – most of the the time. The chaos somehow works. Just around the corner from where I am staying is a narrow lane that manages to carry busy two-way traffic. Somehow pedestrians, bicyclists, push carts, motorcycles, passenger vehicles made from motorcyles, vans, cars and small trucks all mange to make progress down this lane even in the dark. I am sure that accidents do happen but considering that this little scene is repeated street after street all across this metropolis every day all the time, there are relatively few accidents. For those of us who come from smaller, slower places, it is truly miraculous the way this vast interweaving of people and vehicles moves along all day and all night, day after day, week after week, and year after year.
There are worlds with in worlds. Yesterday I went to a nearby mall complex, I think it is the tallest mall in the city having 7 or 8 floors. I was able to do all my errands there, such as get cash from an ATM, buy medicine, get a phone card for my cell phone, and buy some groceries, and that was all on the same floor! But tonight when I walked down the busy little lane around the corner I found that I can also get cell phone refills and some medicines, right there. (If it were daylight I could probably see further down the road and might find more…)