Saigon Essentials: The Motorbike

In Saigon, the motorbike is king. Some estimates put the number of motorbikes in this city at close to 3.6 million; that's almost one motorbike for every second person. The two-wheeler is the primary mode of transport for most Vietnamese, and if you discount the inhalation of diesel fumes, risk of injuries, and the 30 deaths on the roads per day in Vietnam, the motorbike is definitely the best way to get around Saigon. Sure you could walk, cycle, take a taxi, take a xe-om, catch the bus…but all the aforesaid modes of transport are either too expensive, too slow, or too sweaty. And ultimately, they are also not nearly as fun as getting around on a motorbike.

Meet my trusty steed, Yellow Peril.

 

I admit, she is a hideous colour and has zero street-cred, but she’s a hardy little thing. Since acquisition, I’ve dropped her twice and rode her through flood waters countless times. She was also once thrown against a tree (she is incredibly light for a motorscooter). Despite the mistreatment heaped upon her, she has to this day remained as reliable and as zippy as ever. 

Being able the get around this city on a motorbike completely colours your experience of living in Saigon. As petrified as I was during my first weeks riding in Saigon traffic, it took only a short while before I became a complete convert and now I can’t imagine living here without one. 

There are drawbacks to the motorbike, of course. Yes, Saigon peak-hour is an ugly, nasty, horrible bitch. Yes, riding during a monsoonal downpour under a sodden poncho while copping mountainous sprays of black water from passing trucks and buses does not compare to the comfort of being chauffeured in a dry, air-conditioned taxi. Yes, my lungs are gradually being poisoned by carbon-monoxide and other delightful toxins as I wait at the traffic lights behind thirty-odd belching exhaust pipes. And, yes, the risk of having manslaughter charges laid against me in a foreign (communist) country is always lurking in the back of my mind. 

But a motorbike just makes life so much easier. 

With a motorbike, you quickly decipher the labyrinth of one-way Saigon streets, and learn where everything is in relation to everything else. You can get home late at night without resorting to the services of xe-om who may or may not rob/rape/kidnap/murder you. You get to wear a carbon–filter mask during your daily commute to work, which aside from slowing the disintegration of your lungs has the added benefit of making you feel like a ninja. 

And, when you aren’t thinking about carbon-monoxide as you sit trapped in peak-hour traffic, there is something - akin to a sense of camaraderie, perhaps - about glancing over to the fifty or so other motorcyclists next to you. They are so close. Less than an arms length away. So close you could ask for directions or pull faces at their toddler (who is more often than not perched precariously on a highchair wedged between the handle bars and seat of the motorcycle, with a mosquito net draped over their head). So close, you can nod hello and check out the content of their shopping basket. Without a windscreen and the metal carriage of an automobile, the boredom and anonymity of a traffic-jam (the kind of traffic-jam we are used to in a developed country) is taken away. There is a vague sense of solidarity, which makes you feel (just a tiny bit) like you're apart of this city. 

Or, to put it in much simpler terms, it makes you feel like you are part of a million-strong bad-ass bikie gang.

My bikie gang. No one can stop us.

To round off this post and drive home the point about how fun (and integral) motorbikes are in Vietnam, here is an excellent collection of photographs by Dutch photographer Hans Kemp. My favourite is the hula-hoop one, closely followed by the motorbike carrying five fully-grown people. 

Sino-Vietnamese Relations

This is a well-practiced drill that I relive on a daily basis:

1. A local speaks to me in Vietnamese.  
2. My woefully limited Vietnamese vocabulary and my powers of deduction tell me that they are not asking me how my day is, inquiring about my age/martial status or declaring the chicken phở delicious.
3. I shrug my shoulders helplessly and give them my best “I don’t know what you’re on about, but let’s remain cordial, shall we?” smile.
4. If they persist in Vietnamese (95% of the time), I'm left with no option but to pull out the big guns: “Xin lỗi, tôi không nói được tiếng việt.” Translation: "Sorry, I don’t speak Vietnamese,” which I memorized by heart before arriving in this country.
5. Local giggles and invariably responds with “Blah blah blah tiếng việt blah blah blah.” Approximate translation: “But you just spoke Vietnamese!! How funny am I!?” If their friends are around, they will also join in to laugh at me and the fact that I’m linguistically challenged. They chortle in a nice way, though. Sometimes I even join in and laugh along with them.
6. Once they have exhausted themselves with laughter, they will ask in English: “Where you from?"
7. Me: “Australia.”
8. Local: “Malaysia?” 
9. Me: “No, Australia. Tôi là người Úc.”
10. Local: *with some suspicion* “No. But your looking Asian. *with added emphasis in case I'm not only linguistically but mentally challenged as well* "Where. You’re. From?”
11. Me: *with resignation* “My family is from Hong Kong.”
12. Local: “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Hom Kom! You are Chinese.” It’s as if all the pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place, and all is well with the universe.

Given the regularity with which this occurs, the aforementioned dance is one that I’m gradually growing tired of. And, incidentally, it's not just the locals who mistake me for Vietnamese. The other day, a well-meaning tây (westerner) asked me where I learnt to speak such fluent English. 

It all feels just a tiny bit unfair. My white friends don’t have to put up with daily interrogations. But I'll also acknowledge that I have no one else to blame but my supposedly Vietnamese-looking self and my slow retention of the Vietnamese language. [Some locals have even asked me to explain to them why I look "so Vietnamese". Explain my Viet-face? Really?! How the frick am I supposed to know?!?!]

Before arriving in Vietnam, I heard from various sources that Sino-Vietnamese relations oscillate between 'icy' and 'verging on hostile'. I've also been warned that there are some ill feelings toward ethnic Chinese, particularly those from Mainland China.

To be honest, all the Vietnamese people I’ve encountered here have been unfailingly affable, even after I’ve identified myself as a Chinese-Australian. I think the hostility is directed more at the Chinese government. There is, however, always the chance that some people may not be savvy enough to make the distinction between the actions of an authoritarian government and the people of a particular ethnic group. 

During my first week at work, my colleague instructed me to avoid the Chinese Embassy on Sunday mornings. In the past few months, demonstrators have held a series of anti-Chinese protests outside the Chinese embassies in Hanoi and HCMC to rally against what Vietnamese see as China's violations of their country's sovereignty in the South China Sea. To read between the lines of my colleague's warning, I should stay well away from the angry mobs least they sense my Chinese-ness and lynch me. 

Given I am apparently "Vietnamese-looking" to the extreme, I think I'll be pretty safe.

Anti-Chinese protests have remained largely peaceful.

The uneasy - some would say turbulent - relationship between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the People's Republic of China (PRC) has a history extending back 2200 years. Throughout the ages, Vietnam has been subjected to four periods of Chinese domination with Vietnamese forces maintaining their independence as a vassal state from time to time. 

Eminent Vietnamese historian, Dr. Huu Ngoc, who gave the Australian volunteers a 53 minute lecture on Vietnamese history as part of our in-country training, likened Sino-Vietnamese relations to the relationship between a man and a woman. Make of that what you will.

The territorial dispute between China and Vietnam revolves around the Paracel and Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Ownership of these islands have long been contested, but the dispute has escalated in recent decades following geological surveys which indicate that the islands and surrounding sea floor hold significant oil and mineral reserves (nevermind the fact that these purported reserves sit far beneath the oceanic crust in sedimentary beds, and nobody currently has the technology to extract anything.)

One of the Spratly Islands which is currently the subject of Sino-Vietnamese territorial dispute. Apparently, also rich in Unobtainium.

During my second week of work, my Vietnamese colleague informed me that “many Vietnamese people hate China” (his emphasis, not mine). I don’t even recall there being a segue to his comment. He obviously felt that this piece of information was important enough to bring up out of the blue. He proceeded to tell me that I should inform people specifically that I’m from Hong Kong and never say that I’m from mainland China, before rattling off a litany of PRC offenses. I nodded and murmured in agreement, not only because I could see he was getting quite upset about the actions of the Chinese government but also because I actually agree with him. 

"That is why, " he said, "it's probably better if don't tell people you are from China." 

“How do the Vietnamese feel about the ethnic Chinese in Vietnam, like the huge Chinese-Vietnamese community in Saigon? Ethnic Chinese who were born in Vietnam and whose parents and grandparents were also born here.” I asked. 

“That is true, there is a big Chinese-Vietnamese community in Saigon” he nodded thoughtfully before adding without any sense of irony, “for example, my grandparents are Chinese.”  

I smiled and kept my Chinese-Australian mouth shut.

Welcome to Saigon. Population: 7.2 million (now +1)

 

Three weeks ago, having completed 5 days of quasi-relevant in-country training in Hanoi, I bade farewell to my fellow Australian volunteers and boarded a Vietnam Airlines plane bound for Ho Chi Minh City. The sole volunteer from this program to be posted in HCMC this intake, the lonely flight to Ho Chi Minh City – where I will volunteer as a project officer at the International Organization for Migration the next 12 months – was oddly exhilarating and smelled vaguely of fish sauce. 

Ho Chi Minh City - or Saigon, as the locals like to call it - is approximately 6700km from the south-east coast of Australia (read: Home). And what a difference 6700km makes. Allow me to demonstrate ...

This was my street in Melbourne: 

Below is my street in Saigon, complete with yappy dogs, a confused cockerel which will crow at all hours of the day and night (I think it’s broken) and a lady across the street who belts out Vietnamese tunes into on her karaoke machine until the wee hours. 

A few nights ago, there was a funeral procession outside my house at 3 am. The cacophony of cymbals, wind instruments and general tooting only lasted 30 minutes, so it wasn’t too bad. 

I have yet to fully master the correct pronunciation of my street name, which poses a few problems, not least when you are trying to get the taxi-driver or xe-om (motorcycle taxi) to take you home. To the correct address. According to my housemates, the challenge is to repeat our street name no less than 10 times using varying intonations (butchering the Vietnamese language in the process) until the taxi-driver or xe-om understands you, or pretends to so you’ll shut up. Success rates are not high, so I prefer to have the address written down on a scrappy bit of paper which I just show the driver. Apparently, that’s cheating and not in the spirit of the game.

This was my local market in Melbourne:

 

Here is my local market in Saigon: 

Melbournians will note the absence of gelato, skinny soy lattes and annoying Melbourne hipsters.

A few minutes walk from my place in Melbourne would get you here:

Yarra River, Melbourne

Take a two minutes leisurely stroll from my home in Saigon, and you might find yourself here:

The local slums with its very own poo river.

Since you’ve seen the neighborhood, it would be incredibly rude of me not to show you my home as well:

Mi casa. It’s a four story, five-bedroom house with two roof top terraces. 

 

Resident turtle.

The living room that doubles as a motorbike show room.

My room:

My room comes with its very own library. Before you get excited, the library largely consists of books like this:

I got excited when I misread the title of the second book from the left. "Jesus Pictionary?!?!" 

No. It wasn’t.

And, lastly, probably the best feature of the house, the roof-top terrace:

We are thinking of investing in hammocks.

View from the second roof-top.

 

So that’s my new neighborhood. I’ll show you the rest of the city later. For now, I’ll just leave you with this youtube video clip of Saigon peak hour traffic: 

It’s the kind of crazy you could grow to love.