Mean streets
Saigon, Vietnam
I AM CAREENING through the streets of Saigon, or should I say Ho Chi Minh City? It’ll always be Saigon to me, a leftover moniker from the war I watched every evening on TV as a young girl. I am riding on the back of a small motorbike, my arms tightly clasped around the waist of my guide Tranh, my head buried in his back. I can’t look.
The traffic is insane. There are hundreds of small motorbikes everywhere, driven by the old, the young, male and female. Families with several children ride on one motorbike, kids perched on the handlebars, sitting or standing on the seat, babies wrapped in a blanket held in their mother’s arms. People transport goods on these little bikes, big bundles of produce in a burlap sack precariously tied on the back. Stylishly dressed young girls weave in and out of traffic, high heeled shoes on their feet, designer backpacks slung over their shoulders.
Sometimes a motorist will drive his motor scooter on the sidewalk, skirting the hopeless clogged streets. I witness a fight break out between two guys who drive their bikes onto the sidewalk, jump off, lay their bikes down and start pummeling each other.
I ended up on the back of this motorbike because I had booked a tour through my hotel, “Vietnam Street Food by Night”. I assumed it was a group tour but when Tranh shows up, he says this evening, it’s only me. He wants to get a taxi, asks the hotel to call one, but no taxi ever shows up. We stand on the curb, trying to flag one down, but it’s rush hour in a city impossibly clogged with people going everywhere and nowhere. We have no luck, standing 30 minutes on the curb, waving our arms at every passing cab.
I finally ask Tranh how he himself got to my hotel. On his motorbike, he says, so I suggest we use his bike for the tour. He looks a little flustered at my suggestion but agrees, giving me his helmet. I climb on the back and we’re off. The first stop is a friend’s store, to borrow a second helmet. There is obviously a helmet law in this city, and it is enforced.
Tranh takes me all over on my tour. We stop at all sorts of little restaurants, pull up to sidewalk pushcarts. I taste pho, eat banh mi, sample rice and noodles, spring rolls and egg rolls, pancakes and buns. One pizza-like dish is served with a pair of scissors so I can cut it into manageable pieces.
I drink sugar cane juice, the woody stalks freshly squeezed on an antiquated machine. Sitting on a little plastic stool on the sidewalk, traffic rushing by me, I watch how the locals eat their soup, hunched over their bowls, slurping loudly. I imitate them though I’m not nearly as graceful. I take lots
of photos.
When I get home, I show the pictures to the Vietnamese women who work in my favorite nail salon. They ooh and ahh at my photos of food, of the Russian market, of the 150-year-old French colonial post office, of the lush countryside with bougainvillea blooming everywhere. They laugh uproariously at my wild ride on the back of Tranh’s motor scooter.
These are reminders of a turbulent life they once lived, and escaped.