Traffic in Ho Chi Minh
Absolute chaos... or, more precisely, chaotic, with all the sometime subtle
difference that distinguishes on from the other. A proud princess in a
beautiful cheong-sam, riding side-saddle on the back of a Honda, an island
of serenity as the torrent of cars and motorbikes breaks all around, like a
flower in the rapids. Opposing streams of traffic, lacking a defined
centerline, somehow slide past each other, a boundary of laminar flow between
two immiscable fluids. Individual bikes cruising slowly into a gap in the
opposing traffic, the oncoming cascade somehow gracefully parting, to
swallow the miscreant whole. Cars keep towards the centre, even making right
turns in front of the pressure from the incessant motorcycles in the right
lane, somehow, again, the flow accommodates the intrusion with nary a protest
beyond the normal background of soft beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beeping. The
very right hand lane is reserved for those adventurous soles who, bored with
the bustle of their own side of the road, have made the decision to buck the
flow and go against the flow. Again, the main flow... flows around them.
The occasional pedestrian, impervious to the traffic, walking calmly
across the flow. Jesus walking on water would seem no more of a miracle.
Constant beep-beeps as drivers inform each other of their presence. The
constant murmur of two-stroke engines. Crazy contraptions carrying all
manner of goods, 3 meter steel rods balancing on a shoulder, 4 meter
galvinated drainage pipes pointing forward and back. Families on a single
scooter. The concept of a scooter as a cargo delivery vehicle. Princesses
with gaily coloured scarves as face masks. Modern style queens with long legs
in patterned prints sailing along with the flow, beautiful dark hair
streaming behind. A young child's eyes peering out over the handlebars
through his father's arms. Babies held in suckling position on the back of a
scooter. Wild, large, incomprehensible objects being carried nonchalantly
along. Casually smoking a cigarette with one hand, the other hand
controlling both throttle and brake through the turmoil. The rules are
different - decide what you're going to do, then slowly do it, regardless
of the pressure from the surrounding and oncoming traffic. Traffic operating
more on the principal of a larva lamp than rules of the road. Warm, moist
heat. Open-front shops crowding the street, with sometimes mysterious
wares spilling towards the road. Vehicles nudging each other aside, not with
material contact but the imminence of material contact. Flocking or
swarming behaviour, but much less defined.
Chris Dunlop, Ho Chi Minh City, 15/09/2003