You tear at the brakes. The front wheel squeals and locks up. The back of the bike fishtails a little and your heart jumps into your mouth.
As you come to a barely controlled stop, the Honda Dream that is cutting diagonally across your lane in the wrong direction sails by, the driver oblivious to your adrenalin pumping near death experience. Instead his attention is drawn in the other direction. Something truly fascinating must be going on. The sun has turned green perhaps, or there’s a unicorn tap dancing on one of the billboards advertising skin whitening cream.
In any case, a moment later the driver is gone, blissfully immune to your glares and feelings of injustice. And now you are the problem. Behind you horns blow impatiently, demanding that you get moving. Clearly they haven’t noticed the tap dancing unicorn.
One of the first things foreigners notice when they come to Vietnam is the traffic. It’s difficult to cross the road, there are so many motorbikes, children don’t wear crash helmets, the list goes on. Newcomers seem to hold a belief that the Vietnamese have some sort of in built radar. That they can glide effortlessly through the swarms of bikes, like fish swimming in a school. A delicate ballet of skilled driving and split second timing. As foreigners, we assume there must be some order to the chaos. There must be something that we, as foreigners, don’t get.
This is of course complete nonsense. There is no order. There is only chaos. The Vietnamese driving experience is one of the most complete examples of selfishness I have come across. Some of the thought processes might include.....I’m not turning right at this junction, but I’ll stop right next to the curb so that anyone who wants to turn right can’t. I’m clearly not going to make it though this junction, but I’ll go as far as I can so that I block traffic going the other way. I don’t want to travel 50 metres away from my destination so I’ll drive the wrong way up the street. I want to talk to my friend so I’ll drive next to her at 5 miles a hour. People can go around me.
And the fact is that there are accidents. Many accidents. People die every day in Ho Chi Minh city on motorcycles. But is this because of bad driving? Of course not. It’s fate.
This is of course complete nonsense. There is no order. There is only chaos. The Vietnamese driving experience is one of the most complete examples of selfishness I have come across. Some of the thought processes might include.....I’m not turning right at this junction, but I’ll stop right next to the curb so that anyone who wants to turn right can’t. I’m clearly not going to make it though this junction, but I’ll go as far as I can so that I block traffic going the other way. I don’t want to travel 50 metres away from my destination so I’ll drive the wrong way up the street. I want to talk to my friend so I’ll drive next to her at 5 miles a hour. People can go around me.
And the fact is that there are accidents. Many accidents. People die every day in Ho Chi Minh city on motorcycles. But is this because of bad driving? Of course not. It’s fate.
Dominic Mahon (American, teacher)
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