Saigon Traffic, Jason Stratham, and Sim Cards

Everyone who's travelled around a lot of Vietnam describes Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City on the maps, though everyone who lives in the city or around it calls it Saigon) as "dull".

Maybe it's my first time in Vietnam (or Asia, for that matter), but my impression is anything but. Traffic is, as advertised, a psychotic morass of motorcycles. Most intersections are literal free for alls, an orchestra of motorcycles and cars and bicycles traveling in every single direction, to the left or the right of each other, sometimes (though rarely, and only in certain spots) cutting corners on sidewalks if necessary.

Crossing these streets requires a little bit of faith. You step into traffic and everything weaves around you. Just go slow and steady and let the traffic flow around you. If you freeze, you could get stuck there for awhile. Honking is a tool to inform moving obstructions on the road that you're behind them and they need to move out of the way, or a warning to let them know you're coming close and they better keep steady, so it's nearly constant.

Some intersections have lights. These lights, from what I've seen, are obeyed. The problem is that traffic doesn't yield, so pedestrians on the blessed side of the lights still have to take that leap of faith because some of the traffic with the green light is turning in your direction, and they're not stopping at all, and they're not changing course unless you're already in the way.

I think I got the hang of it pretty quickly. It might be that the trip to New York honed my skills, though really it's a different kind of game. New York drivers can stop on a dime. If the Vietnamese can, they sure don't. If I ever plan a heist, I want a driver from Vietnam. Cam said she prefers Jason Stratham, which I had to concede was probably a decent choice. But let's assume he's busy and outside of our price range: then we'd go Vietnamese.

The sea of motorcycles that never stop has one huge benefit: teleportation powers. You can find one anywhere. Anyone on a motorbike is happy to give you a ride. So for about a dollar you can cover huge distances in a vehicle that keeps moving irrespective of the traffic. The catch is you have to be willing to sit on the back of a motorbike, speeding along (they give you a helmet, update: Saigon always has helmets. Not the case in Hanoi, where nobody seems to wear helmets).

The locals multitask their butts off, the driver moving along while the person in the back is on their phone chatting, or hawking wares, or reading, or eating, or more often just sitting there, but not gripping the driver's shoulders with a death grip, for which I would have a reputation if there were any less than fifty trillion gazillion billion jillion of these bikes (called xe oms) around.

I also discovered that, again, as advertised, the prices you are quoted are exorbitantly high unless you demonstrate you know what the going rate is from day one. I'm not into the whole bargaining game, so usually if a price is unreasonable I just say no thank you and go somewhere else. The cyclo drivers here are the worst, in my experience. Or maybe they're just the best bargainers, I don't know. The xe oms were easier to work with, in my experience. The added benefit was the ability to get to places whose locations you were unaware of. I only had one driver who had to be shown my map for lack of knowledge of the city. It happened one other time, but only because my pronounciation of Vietnamese appears to border on the cryptographic. "Hong Hoah Hotel" comes out sounding, when they say it, "Hong hu-wa" or "Hong hwa". But when I try to say the same thing, I get blank stares. I suspect it's an inflection thing. Or my crap hearing.

Favourite Moments

After getting hosed by a Cyclo driver, I sat in the park facing the Cathedral and foolishly thought I could read my Vietnam guidebook in peace. 30 seconds later, a girl approached me and tried to sell me postcards, eventually I got her to go away. It's a bit early to be sending postcards, what with me still having frequent internet access. Then another fellow, Malaysian in origin, in turned out, came by and just chatted with me. He had a guide badge on his shirt so I expected a pitch, but we just had a pleasant conversation for awhile.. he came to Vietnam and met his wife while working here years ago, and he's been living in Vietnam for the last 35 years. He was shocked when I spoke good english, and was curious about the fact that I was asian and living in Canada. I suppose they do get a lot more asian tourists from Asia around here. In the end it turns out he thought I was Vietnamese in origin and was wondering why the hell I was reading a guide book. Unfortunately, our conversation was interrupted by a shoe shiner who rushed in and tried to pitch some cleaning and repairs for my shoes. I tried to explain to him that the shoes were dying, that we had to let them die, and that it would be cruel to do otherwise, and eventually he went on his way.

In the MobiFone (Vietnamese telecom company) office, I was treated like royalty by extremely helpful staff who made what was basically a completely byzantine pay-as-you-go sim card purchasing process involving 3 different people at different booths. The security guard, who looked like he was 14 (and, strangely enough, looked a lot like my cousin Laurent when he was younger) led me around from place to place, and though he spoke almost no english, was able to understand my concerns and went out of his way to act like the patron saint of customer assistance. The girl at the counter even kindly opined that she'd drive me to my next location, but she had to work.

After my xe om driver takes a phone call while driving (The verb "driving" doesn't quite do justice to how fast and furious we were moving. Let's just say it involved things like performing an insurance-voiding hairpin turn beside a bus, cutting across traffic without slowing down in the equivalent of what would be running a red light in Canada, but without the light.. basically recklessly not yielding), and I release 50% of my death grip on his shoulders just long enough to check that my helmet is in fact still properly attached to my head, he drops me off at my location then apologizes because, although he had promised me a ride back, he had to go get a beer with a friend. It wasn't any inconvenience to me, since xe oms are everywhere, and I have huge respect for anyone with their life priorities straight. :)

Things I learned:

1. Pho 24 is, as the guidebooks say, a Pho chain. It's not spectacular. It's not crappy. But it is, well, basically overpriced Pho in a probably more sanitary environment. You feel like you ate at a MacDonalds, but you got Pho, which I suppose is better, but I'm not sure why.

2. Shoe shining is the world's largest non-skill skill in a very warm, laid back tourist area. Nobody is wearing footwear that needs shining. Even if they did, they're tourists, and not at the Bellagio.


3. The French post office across the Cathedral is quite pretty, and the Vinaphone people will happily take your sim card back if you realize your phone is still locked because you're an idiot.