Top Reason You Shouldn't Cycle in Saigon

When I first moved to Vietnam I kept up with a habit I had begun in America of traveling by bicycle. It was certainly easy in Long Xuyên: ample flat roads, easily maneuverable traffic and nowhere I had to go that was more than 1km away. Me and my bike, Willard Scott, had a good run until I sent him to the great "gửi xe" in the sky and got my motorbike.

I've spent 5 years in Vietnam with the trusty steed here:

Philosophy of 2005 was Beard + Bike = Babe Magnet

However, I recently decided to go back to the old habit of cycling. There are plenty of reasons I took the plunge: a slower pace, a healthier lifestyle, savings in gas (though not to save the environment, don't you dare accuse me of that).

That said there are certain pitfalls I had forgotten about when it comes to the subtle art of cycling. There's of course the new position in the traffic food chain, barely scraping the bottom above cyclos, old women on chalys and people whose motorbikes have run out of gas (guess who wishes they had pedals now!)

 Fact: Chalys have technical equipment only old woman know how to operate.

There's also the "Michael Bluth" factor in which I arrive sweaty to work and drip all over the overhead transparencies.

But the absolute number 1, tip top, crème de la crème reason you shouldn't cycle in Saigon? You must communicate in traffic with this:

This was a GREAT IDEA...until the guy next door invented the horn

Let's say a guy just cuts you off, totally throws off your steady flow and sprays the nearest pothole's watery contents into your face. You want to let him know this aggression will not stand, you want to demonstrate that you too are on this road and don't have to put up with it! You reach for that essential communication tool (Previously on the motorbike this would have been a solid tenor, bzzzzzzzz, it's no foghorn warning but at least it's not an "awuuuuuugah!" or some other novelty horn). That would show him! That would get the message across! So I reach for the bell and....

"Bbbinngg bbbinng!"

And now I'm sure the guy is thinking "what was that? Did I just cut off a coven of pixies? Have I angered a Disney princess Tinkerbell collectible?"

Disney's definition of "princess" is a bit broad

All the while I curse my decision to even bother with the bell. I should have just shouted something obscene instead of unleashing what would be akin to me putting on a pink leotard and dancing around his motorbike sassily yelling "that's not fair! that's not fair!"

It's no better should I want to inform someone at an intersection that the light has turned green. The "Bbrirrring" that I wanted to say "Hey fella let's get a move on" instead screams "Heeeeey! Unicorn riding on a pink cloud coming through." At first the image doesn't sound so bad except imagine the unicorn not as this:

 Out of the way strumpet! I've got prancing to do, gnomes to see.

but more like this:

SPARKLE! (I really tried to remove the sparkle)

Nobody moves for that unicorn.

And situations like that guarantee that nobody is going to hear my bell ever again at least until I install this bad boy on it:

Thunder Horn!

So until then watch out for me on the streets of Saigon. Here's what to look for:

The hidden charm

Vietnam Record Shops

In 2006, Onra, a French-Vietnamese hip hop beatmaker came to Ho Chi Minh City, stumbled through some back alleys and shops and brought out 30 or so old Chinese and Vietnamese vinyl records. He took samples from these records and created an album called Chinoiseries which was widely acclaimed.

A sampling of Onra

While the album features Chinese ballads more than Vietnamese, it gave me hope that there was still lots of vinyl to be had in town; a personal collection hobby of mine.  In the States I can go to any Goodwill or Salvation Army thrift store and find an assortment of cast aside records. Vinyl has even had a bit of a comeback with plenty of folks in my generation enjoying becoming collectors again, even in the ever increasing digital age.

I had a modest collection before I came to Vietnam, which I passed on for safekeeping. Since then I've wanted to have a bit of a collection here. I have a small assortment of 33's and 45's now, mostly courtesy of my parents' collection and a few I picked up in the States.

My modest collection

I've always asked people if they knew where I could score some vinyl in town and didn't get many results until today when a guy told us about the de facto "old electronic" market in District 10.  After a jaunt there and asking around at various places we found at least 2 shops with records scattered among old radios, speakers, fans and assorted varieties of antique lover's dreams.

And what did I find? The Byrds and Beegees among some French mixes and a surprising amount of Russian discs.  My guess is these all made it in to the black market during the time when records would still have been the main medium of music listening (which even in the 70's was being replaced by reel to reel tapes, a predecessor to cassettes). The best find? A 45 record of The Archies "Sugar Sugar" which was in a handwritten case that said "Sugar Sugar, tp. Ho Chi Minh 29/03/1976." I was tempted to buy it just for the historical insight.  Can you imagine a group of Saigonese listening to "Sugar Sugar" in secret during the height of the crackdown on illegal goods such as that one?

As for Vietnamese the only options were really cai luong operas, nothing really that exciting, but the owner has our name and number now and promised to call if something else should come in.

Vietnam Street Name Guide

My friend Minh recently asked on twitter whether there was a good guide to all the street names in Vietnam. A few chimed in with some pages, but most are a spattering of the major streets which most people know anyway.

I thought I'd make a solution to that and turned to Google maps for a little interactivity.

Below is a work that is definitely one in progress particularly as there are some "famous" Vietnamese for whom I can find no information about.  A little more digging will be necessary.  If you know the history behind some streets not covered yet feel free to chime in below!


View VN Street Name Guide in a larger map

Dante's Infernal Saigon Streets

Last night in my absentmindedness on the way to class I made a series of driving decisions that led me to believe that I had been transported into the work of Dante himself.

If one were to say that Ho Chi Minh City traffic were the Divine Comedy, that the Inferno was say, being on the corner of Nguyễn Huệ and Lê Lợi during the New Year flower festival and Paradiso was the new East-West highway running where Bến Chương Dương once stood, then District 3 is that purifying fire that is Purgatorio.

District 3 is probably my favorite district in town. It’s close enough to downtown to have a little gleam rubbed off on it but just far enough outside the rumble. The area is filled with classic villas and tree-lined streets.

So why the Purgatorio talk? District 3 is the prime example for urban planning attempts to control the traffic burdens of the city, translating to row after row of one-way streets. For the most part it works pretty well. Going from District 1 towards the airport you have alternative streets (Pasteur, Trương Định going out; Nam Kỳ Khởi Nghĩa, Trần Quốc Thảo, Bà Huyện Thanh Quan coming in). However last night I did an accidental mini-tour of the district after making two wrong turns and forgetting the limits of one street. Here is my journey into the District 3 limbo:

Here is a map of the journey. The blue arrows represent my route. The yellow arrows indicate whether a street is one-way or two-way.

1.) Driving down Điện Biên Phủ, my initial plan was the usual turn right on Trần Quốc Thảo, turn right again on Võ Văn Tần and arrive safely at Open University. However, in my non-mindful state I made a fatal flaw.
2.) Thinking I had arrived at Trần Quốc Thảo I turned onto Bà Huyện Thanh Quan (2 blocks too early).
3.) This was no problem, I knew I could take Ngô Thời Nhiệm and connect up with Trần Quốc Thảo again.
4.) I got back to Trần Quốc Thảo and was back on course.
5.) But my wandering mind would let my body betray me once more as I turned onto Nguyễn Đình Chiểu (thinking I had already arrived at Võ Văn Tần one block early).
6.) This meant I needed to continue to Bà Huyện Thanh Quan again. At this point I thought it probably best to just continue to Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai but I remembered Nguyễn Thị Diệu.
7.) What I didn’t remember about Nguyễn Thị Diệu is that it ends at Trương Định. Tempted as I was to take the sidewalk one more block to Võ Văn Tần , I played model citizen.
8.) Turning onto Trương Định (a street I had surprisedly not been on yet) I continued back to Ngô Thời Nhiệm.
9.) Here I repeated my initial journey down to Trần Quốc Thảo.
10.) From Trần Quốc Thảo I traveled down again and finally met up with Võ Văn Tần.
11.) The urban planners began to play harps and a glorious light shown from the streetlamps as coming to Võ Văn Tần from Trần Quốc Thảo you cannot go straight (the street ends) and you cannot go left (remember, one way). I could only go the way I had meant to go 10 minutes prior.

And thus my descent into the District 3 abyss was complete.