Once in Saigon, let someone else do the driving
It’s dirty. It’s stressful. It’s nail-biting frustrating. It’s an act of faith.
And that was two years ago, when I wrote “How to make a left turn in Saigon”. You think it was bad then. Try making a left turn in Saigon now, or a right turn. Heck, just try going straight in Saigon, now that the number of motorbikes have doubled and the numbers cars have trippled. The roads, on the other hand, keep getting smaller with more and more constructions that started some time in the Ly dynasty.
It gets so bad, sometimes, the taxi drivers don’t take me to certain places simply because “the traffic getting there is shit”.
Last night, I understood why money was no good to those drivers.
I took the car out for the first time since I didn’t want to bother the company driver with my non-work activities. With grave worries in his eyes (the same way my grandma looked at me when I attempted flying single-engine Cesna back in the late 90s), a. Duc handed me the key to the car…half-wanting to ask the stupid Viet Kieu who’s never driven on the streets of Saigon before to change his mind, or go write a will.
The car - a stick-shift Land Cruiser with close to 300HP power, the kind you see on TV going offroad in some mud-splattering adventures, or lined up in a black-tinted convoy for Afghan warlords. It was never meant for the urban jungles of Saigon, and definately no at 7 pm on a Friday night.
I put on some calming guitar music and pulled out to Hai Ba Trung, watching over the sea of helmets slowly flowing by the Park Hyatt…trying to avoid the image what they looks like banged up against the massive hull of the SUV. I honked once. No one noticed. No one budged or slowed down or sped up an inch.
5 minutes later.
I was on the 2nd song. It’s a Bob Marley – “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. The engine hummed gently under the hood. The first drops of rain appeared. I was still on the same spot, watching the traffic flow by like a river, not an inch to squeeze the 5-foot-wide bumper through. The security guards were watching me with increasing interest.
I let go off the clutch by the nanoinch, every single muscle in my left foot were called upon to restrain the heavy clutch from releasing. The monster moved, ever so slowly, closer to the stream of people. Again, no one seemed to care that they were inches away from a very bad night. I just went for it, let go of the clutch entirely and even stepped on the gas a bit. It was pure magic how I did not hit anyone. Like Moses of old, I prayed for the sea of people to move to the sides, and they did.
The rest of the night was comparable to that one time I took my ex-gf sailing, thinking it was the most romantic thing in the world. Instead, she suffered from seasickness and threw up continously, and held a knife to my throat and demand that I turned the boat around. Last night, it was me trying to survive, to not kill anyone, to not embarass myself by calling up a. Đức at 11 pm and say “can you please pick me up in District 8? Also, can you call a couple of ambulances? Ask one to stop by Hai Ba Trưng, yes, right outside the garage.” Last night, I just wanted to lie down and sleep until midnight, when the traffic became bearable.
After last night, I have new-found respect for a. Đức, and the Mai Linh taxi drivers whom I have taken for granted for so long. They are a special breed. They are a cross between a ninja (patience), a brain surgeon (precision), and a kamikaze fighter. If you find yourself in Saigon and miss the pleasure of driving your own car, try to resist such temptation by other forms of self-pleasuring. Let someone else do the driving, and be very nice to that person.
