Friday, July 07, 2006
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 3-5 July 2006: King Of The Road
The Bike's Tale
 The ubiquitous motorbike is the main form of transportation for the Vietnamese. They rule the streets of Saigon, converging on and squeezing out the pedestrian from all directions. Traffic lights and road markings are mere suggestions, not regulations, to be circumvented and capriciously ignored for expedience. Yet somehow, the system works. For traffic is rarely dangerously fast, and tempers are hardly frazzled. Everyone resigns to the chaos, even revels in it. Drown in the organic mass, and move with the flow.  |
   Xe Om or motorbike taxi is a cheap way to get around HCMC. Each driver commandeers his turf by unwritten guild rules. The view from a Xe Om is daunting: inhale the exhaust of monster trucks that speed past within inches. Still, there are rewards. Nothing beats the invigorating rush of a Xe Om ride back to the suburbs on a cool breezy evening - I lodge in Phu My Hung, 8 km and 20 minutes southeast of Saigon. |
  Prepare to find anything and everything on a HCMC motobike: an entire family cramped into a heap, furniture, mattress, 8-foot long PVC tubes twisted in a taut bundle, ready to spring to erect life. Some are outright dangerous. No one in their right mind will carry this gas cylinder so precariously across town. Will they? The motorbike is a great social leveller. Young and old, male and female, rich and poor all ride it. Way to go, motorbike mama! |
  The motorbike is for its owner many things: pride, independence, freedom, a business, and yes ... a place to court and woo his mate. In densely-populated HCMC where home is often a small space shared by many, public display of affection, discrete or otherwise, between couples on motobikes parked by the roadside, is at once both touchingly tender and surprisingly well-accepted. For all these, the motorbike is scrupulously cared for. When not used, it retires in comfort in zealously guarded compounds, waiting faithfully for its owner. |
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These are the 30 countries that I have ever set foot on. Airport stopovers don't count!
