Crossing the Street in Saigon

It can be tricky.

The sheer number of motorbikes on the streets at any one time is staggering. They fill warehouses and crowd the sidewalks, and pour down the streets in rivers. Traffic lights are few and traffic regulations almost non-existent. Add to this normal cars, buses, bicycles, and cyclos (bicycle rickshaws) and the very idea of even setting foot on the pavement seems impossible. There are, however, certain secrets to pick up.

The first is Communism. In most societies it is incumbent upon you, the individual, to avoid getting run over. In Vietnam it is the Traffic, as a single mass, who are responsible for not killing you.

The second is that, as impossible as it seems, every one of those drivers is paying close attention to where they're going. So, if you walk at a steady pace across the street, the drivers will be able to estimate where they have to go to avoid you. If you run, stop, or made any sudden movements they'll get confused and tragedy may ensue.

When all else fails, some Vietnamese person - usually a smirking teenager or five-year-old girl, to make the experience as humbling as possible - will take pity on the poor stupid Westerner and lead you across. As soon as his foot hits the pavement the traffic will instantly - magically - flow around you, leaving a wide clear path for you to make you egress.

This isn't to say that you don't have to be reasonable. The Vietnamese are only human, and just because accidents are far less common than you would think doesn't mean they never happen. Still, if you can work up the nerves, it makes every crosswalk an adventure.

Pho Shizzle

Vietnam's preffered breakfast is not a warm baguette. It is pho, a beef noodle soup served with cilantro, lime, bean sprouts and fish sauce.

Why on earth should that be? it's not as if the stuff is easy to make; it requires about twenty ingredients and takes hours to prepare. It can't be eaten on the run. The thing was only invented about a hundred years ago anyway.

The answer, as I've discovered, probably has to do with balance. It's true that pho is a filling, cheap, nutritious meal, but more important than that is the heat. Vietnam is a tropical country, and more than once I've found my wiping the sweat off my brow after five minutes outside. Eating a bowl of hot soup, however, seems to take the edge off. As the temperature inside rises to meet the temperature outside. you begin to feel yourself again, and you may even have the courage to cross the street.

Taken for a Ride

Goddamn xe om drivers with their goddamn motorbikes.

This morning I headed over to a shopping complex (improbably called Saigon Tax). Finding the famous Saigon traffic just as bad as people always said, I caved in after the twentieth motorbike driver offered me his services. When I asked him to take me to the department store, he told me it wasn't open yet (actually this was true). Suddenly faced with an hour to kill, I asked him to take me to the War Remnants Museum.

It was certainly gruesome. Pictures of dead Vietnamese. Deformed fetuses in jars. But also a room of children's drawings encouraging reconciliation and a lot of captured American military hardware.

When I got out of the musuem, he was waiting for me. Then, instead of heading back to Nguyen Hue street like I asked he decided to take a detour to the Saigon River and smoke a bit. The final cost wouldn't have been out of place in Manhattan. Shit. And it was only ten in the morning.

Well, at least I learned my lesson quickly.

Viet Kong

Since this political blog has been moribund for a while, I've decided to revive it with a somewhat different purpose: tracking my new life as a would-be English teacher in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). I've only just arrived, so there's not much I can tell you.

- It's really hot and muggy, though that was expected. I was awoken by possibly the loudest rain I have ever heard in my whole life. I need to buy a dozen umbrellas pronto.

- On my way in from the airport I passed a number of parks, what appeared to be a mosque, endless shops, a KFC, and more motorbikes than there are in the whole universe.

- There are no traffic lights, no traffic signs, no traffic laws so far as I can tell. I take that back; the law is "If you can fit a vehicle into a space, you have the right of way".

- my guest house is basic but clean, which I guess is the important thing.

Half-Baked Alaska

Last Sunday former Alaska senator and Libertarian presidential candidate Mike Gravel stopped by. He talked about that weird ad of him tossing a rock into a pond and got into a heat argument with a local liberal, calling the Democrats 'pussies' and declaring that he had lost faith in representative government.

His basic idea was a 'National Initiative for Democracy' which would make allow the citizens of each state to make laws by ballot proposition. I asked him how, under such a system, one could prevent tyranny of the majority. Unfortunately, he never really answered my question. His only response was 'You have to trust the people'. I do, but not entirely - that's why we have constitutional protections against such things. I have a sneaking suspicion that if we did allow citizens to make all the laws the first three laws passed would make it illegal to be gay, Muslim, or black.

But hey, at least Gravel has no inhibitions: