“It’s a game, Blithe”

It’s difficult trying to explain the ‘rules of the road’ here in Saigon. One thing that did stick was one friend’s suggestion early on to never stray too far from the “pack” of moto’s. Well, after another week or two riding around with that suggestion stuck in the back of my mind, and a few rush hour experiences, I had an epiphany-the perfect metaphor for Saigon traffic- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6M_XgiONoo  …Holding true to the deferential and obedient Asian stereotype, the ‘rules of the road’ maintain a strict hierarchy. For everybody’s convenience, and maximum efficiency, the hierarchy is strictly demarcated based upon horn size/volume.  Horns here are not used as a last resort-I’m about to hit you as they are in the US. Rather, the horn is used to prove existence, more as a “heads up, I’m coming relatively close to you, DON’T veer towards the sound of my horn, please move closer to the school of moto’s.”   First let me clear one thing up, the ‘rules of the road’ aren’t actually rules but more of a quasi-safety manual. While you can actually get pulled over for riding in the oncoming traffic lane, running red lights, presumably driving on the sidewalk (haven’t seen anyone get pulled over for that one) and weirdly enough not using your turn signal (not sure how that one got stuck in here) these “traffic stops” are really more like an infrequent but very expensive toll. The “tickets” are always negotiable and depending on your negotiating luck & skill can range from 5 dollars to 25 dollars. But back to my perfect metaphor. The plankton are the metaphorical pedestrians and bicyclists since they don’t even have horns. Riding on the sidewalk is really fun and a great way to get around intersections or up one way streets; however, it gets really annoying when you’re the pedestrian and you’re constantly getting beeped at by moto’s trying to get passed you… o well you win some and you lose some… Same goes for bicyclists. Biking is quite popular here and somehow they manage to cope just fine in the sea of motorized traffic. I think the only reason they stay is that they never stray more than two feet from their curb, sort of like an invisible bike lane. That being said, just last night I saw the most amazing act of neighborly good-will between a moto and a cyclist. Going up a hill, a moto moved up behind this bicycle and stuck his left leg on the back of the bike and proceeded to push this bicycle for something like a 1000 yards, it was amazing. At the risk of degrading my no longer perfect metaphor, I saw a quite unusual transport in the street-a wheel chair. Not sure what the wheel chair would translate to-maybe the protozoa or whatever the krill eat? Wheel-chairs in Vietnam have three-wheels and are shaped sort of like those seated bicycles with a hand push/lever to propel the object. Needless to say I was sort of shocked driving in rush hour traffic and finding a wheel-chair chugging along while simultaneously being engulfed by moto’s. I feel weird taking a picture of a crippled person but I’ll try and get one posted on the blog in a few days.  Next come the Juanito’s-the moto’s. Like the bait ball, the wall of moto’s somehow move seamlessly and in weird contortionist directions (backwards, forward, left, right and really anything in between). Sometimes they are tasked with maneuvers that require a school, such as going into the JUMBO-sized traffic circles or going through intersections that don’t really have traffic lights. The school mostly resides in the right lane or middle two lanes. The cars here are like the Jack’s. There is something like a 100 percent tax on all cars so they really aren’t very common by US standards. They really like to honk at the moto’s but I think it’s mostly as a way to vent their frustration in having brought a figurative sledgehammer to the game that required a screwdriver (that or they are the poor taxi drivers, not sure why they abandoned the tuk tuk).  A lot of the time you’ll just be stuck in a lane with a taxi behind you sitting and honking at you, at which point you’ll get over at your earliest possible convenience. The same cannot be said for the Bluefin tuna’s, which have a deafening horn and require immediate action. Most of the time the moto’s stay away from the left hand lane and the bus’s and dump trucks don’t stray from the lefthand lane, but if there was a real danger on the roads, the bus would definitely be it. It definitely makes you jump a little hearing the oversized airhorn compared to the beep-beep of a moto horn.  The fact of the matter is that safety on the roads in Saigon are mostly maintained through reasonable driving speeds. 90 percent of the time you’re not going over 30 km/hr which translates to 18 mph.

I’ve decided driving is more like a game than anything else here in Saigon. Never do you feel like you’re just driving like you would back in the States. It’s more like a rat race. There’s a residual of rush-hour traffic in everyone’s driving 24/7. Everyone loves to accelerate as fast as they can to about 30 km/hr and then stop 1 block ahead at the next red light. I think everyone really just tries to get their fastest ¼ km splits in hope that they can shave a couple minutes off of their 2 km trip. It’s really nice that shifting gears has become subconscious because driving a moto truly requires 100% attention on the road at all times. At the very beginning I would start snapping at Libby giving me directions after about 3 minutes of driving, it’s quite a relief being able to drive the moto without their being tangible discontent amongst us by the end of the ride and a very real necessity to go and drink a beer to calm down. Libby said she stopped getting light-headed from her presumable anxiety and nervousness from being the passenger after about a week. She still has to learn how to the drive the moto but given her propensity to drift off and enjoy the scenery you can sure as hell bet I’m never going to let her drive with me in the backseat ha!

We will add video footage soon!