Category Archives: Motorcycle Diaries

Nov6

Don’t tell grandma: there’s a motorbike in my lounge…

Posted on by
Standard

I know I must be at least a little bit Vietnamese by now.

During the last few days I realised it was exactly 11 months since I arrived here for six months… and I am still here.

But far more telling of how I seem to be fitting into this city is that I have a motorcycle in my living room. It doesn’t get much more Vietnamese than that. I guess I could put one of those large round saucer-shaped hats on my head and comb the streets for recyclables, but I reckon that would be overdoing it.

So why is there a motorcycle in my living room?

Well, put simply, unless you live in a modern apartment complex, just inside your front door is where you park. In traditional, cramped suburban Ho Chi Minh City neighbourhoods, the alleys which lead to houses are usually only wide enough for motorbikes to access. In many cases, if you meet another motorcycle coming the other way, one of you will have to reverse up because there won’t be enough room to pass.

Some more modern houses have a porch where the motorcycle(s) stand under shelter and there is perhaps a second door into the living room. But for most people here, you drive on home and right up a purpose built ramp into the lounge.

Your motorcycle gets to watch the flat screen TV alongside you.

In our case, you have to step around it to open the refrigerator too (because living room, kitchen, dining room are pretty much the same place in houses like these).

If it’s been on a long run, it will likely be hot and there’s a residual smell of warm oil and chaffed rubber which lingers into the evening. If it’s been raining outside, it will leave a trail of dark, wet tread prints over the shiny tiled floor.

Getting into the fridge just got that little bit harder…

I can almost hear my late grandmother’s loud expression of alarm as I wipe the floor clean with absorbent tissues: Assuming her heart survived the initial shock of discovering a real motorcycle in the lounge, I’m not actually sure which issue would cause her most alarm: that I can actually now ride a motorcycle, that I am leaving dirty tyre prints on the clean floor or that an engine is running inside the house…

Our abode is wide by Vietnamese standards, but at only two stories, significantly lower than most of our neighbours’, whose homes can stretch as many as six or eight floors into the sky. We have double glass doors which have to be opened wide before parking.

I have yet to master the art, but my better half is an expert in driving inside. It’s more complicated than it sounds: the alley is too narrow to allow a proper run at 90 degrees and the steel ramp is barely 30cm wide. So it takes considerable skill to align it at an angle and get both wheels on the ramp in succession. Then you have to judge the power. Too much power and you plough right on into the back of the sofa. Too little and you’re stranded half in the door, half out. You can probably tell why I’m taking my time before assuming parking duties at home…

The bike is a Yamaha Nuovo. It’s primarily black, with bright strips of garish yellow down each side; not our choice of colour scheme, it was all the young guy who rents them had available. (Give me red and black thanks – I’m sure they go faster).

It’s about four years old and travels about 30 kilometres on a litre of petrol which costs about US$1 here. A tank holds about five litres, so for five bucks here you can get youself about 150km which makes these automatic scooters a pretty affordable way of getting about town. And which explains why there are literally millions of them on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City at any time.

It costs us 1.3 million Vietnamese dong a month to rent. That sounds a lot to a westerner, but it equates to a mere A$60 a month. There’s no insurance – if someone “Ali Baba’s it” (a local term) I have to cough up $800 to the renter. But it has a remote locking system with an ear splitting alarm. And if anyone overcame that and tried to steal it, they’d almost certainly give up after a few minutes, such is its frequent reluctance to start!

I’d like to say my licence to drive it fell out of a Weetbix packet, but that would be an exaggeration.

That’s because I don’t have a licence. When I mentioned that in passing to the rental entrepreneur he simply grinned and replied “This is Ho Chi Minh: you don’t need a licence”. Instead I can drive about the city merrily, knowing that if I am stopped an instant “fine” of $100,000 or $200,000 will be issued – between $4.60 and $9.20. Instant as in handed over instantly and on my way instantly. No need for paperwork, you understand…

The Vietnamese believe almost anything can be carried on the back of a motorbike – it all comes down to the individual’s ingenuity in how it is balanced or held while driving. Thus you frequently see large plates of glass being balanced upright between rider and pillion passenger, ladders often coming perilously close to the frequent city curse of low hanging power cables, mattresses (flat – I kid you not!), commercial quantities of crates of beer and giant water bottles, flat screen TVs, dogs, dining tables, cupboards, bicycles, watercoolers and – my favourite – a front loading washing machine!

So I felt right at home when we took the bike on its first domestic excursion – to buy a laundry basket from a shophouse facing Pasteur. It perched between us sideways and we saved a taxi fare for one of us back home.

The only worrying moment was when a policeman took more than a passing interest before deciding it was way too hard to pull us over given we were eight bike-widths into the main throughfare, deliberately avoiding them! I guess that, too, makes me a little but Vietnamese… there’s a definite art in avoiding the thin brown arm of the law on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City…

* My apologies to regular readers for the embarssingly long time since the last post. I now have a backlog of tales to share so will try to get back into a routine. Feedback is welcome, as always.

This is not the Yamaha, but I certainly wouldn’t mind if it was in my living room. I was never really into bikes when I was younger – I was firmly in the four wheel camp. But this Ducati is truly a work of art – it looks very very fast and very beautiful even when standing still!

 

Mar3

Motorcycle Diaries Pt 2

Posted on by
Standard
Motorcycle Diaries Pt 2

Taxis in Ho Chi Minh are very cheap and efficient.

Provided the driver understands where you are going – never a given here even if you show them a name card of the establishment – you can guarantee getting there in one piece in air conditioned comfort.

But what fun is there in that?!

Which is why I’ve started to use motorcycle taxis more and more frequently…

Unlike Bangkok where motorcycle taxis are an official, organised method of public transport and the drivers wear a uniform of sorts and run rosters on the street corners on which they congregate playing cards or board games between fares, it’s all a lot less formal here.

Actually, there is no formality whatsoever.

If you’re new to the city and off the main tourist strips, you may not even notice their existence until one greets you with a smile and mimes holding handle bars. The best way to spot them, is to look out for a guy reclining on his bike with his feet up browsing a newspaper or dozing; the telltale sign he might be a taxi driver is the presence of two helmets hanging from the bike rather than one.

Or he might be staring into his motorcycle’s mirror picking detritus from between his teeth (Isn’t it curious how men will stare into mirrors picking their teeth and women will stare into mirrors searching for blackheads…?)

Waiting for customers

As the weeks passed after my arrival in Ho Chi Minh and I got more confident about knowing where I was headed I started using motorcycle taxis more and more. They’re not really any cheaper than taxis and the quality of some of the bikes is – to put it politely – mediocre. But the majority of the drivers seem well seasoned to the challenges of negotiating Ho Chi Minh’s manic traffic and the seeming absence of any order or road rules.

In other words they’re old.

One regular driver I use – who now greets me like a long lost friend and shakes my hand smiling broadly before passing me a helmet – has only one eye. Yes, folks, I brave the chaos of Ho Chi Minh’s streets on the back of a bike driven by an old man with one eye. But I assure you it’s a very functional eye and this guy is no slouch – I swear I have been on bikes overtaken by others at a rate in excess of one a second and wondering if everyone else around me will have got to their destination, run their errands and returned home again before the smooth warmth of a hot Latte touch my lips!

One day, One Eye was nowhere to be seen so I continued another 20 metres down Ton Dan St to the corner where another driver was dozing. A friend sipping green tea and watching the world go by barked a wake-up call and the driver leapt to his feet and proffered a helmet.

I negotiated the price as usual. This is always essential before climbing on the back… foreigners are traditionally charged far more than locals, which is not really a problem when you’re talking of a fare difference calculated in one dollar if not mere cents, but it’s best to save that extra dollar up front, even if only to protect your fellow expatriates by setting new fare thresholds.

A trip to the city is usually 30,000 dong (about $2.30). Most drivers who don’t know you will start at 50,000, some are even braver (especially in the notorious backpacker district of Pham Ngu Lao; on a visit a year ago I foolishly agreed to 100,000 to travel from one bar to another, which turned out to be a distance of about one kilometre – you can get to the airport for less on a good day in an air conditioned taxi. But after half a bottle of red and a couple of beers $4.50 seems perfectly reasonable…)

Anyway, back to the corner of Ton Dan. I climbed on the back and off we went. Figuratively speaking. This guy’s motorcycle was as sleepy as its driver. One block down the street we slowed to a stop and he turns into a service station. We need petrol. I climb off and wait while 50,000 dong of fuel is poured into the tank – about two litres.

Back on and alas the extra fuel has made no difference to the motorbike’s performance. We struggle along, slowing even more when we come to the bridge over the canal splitting District 4 from District 1 and downtown. For a moment, I feared I might have to climb off and help push!

Downhill was marginally better and the momentum seemed to last until we reached a trio of xich lo drivers waiting by the riverside to dupe foreign tourists into an expensive circuit of the CBD. When we stopped dead. Now what?

Turns out the stop was intentional. My driver had no idea where I wanted to go! Vincom Centre is pronounced the same in English as in Vietnamese but this guy had never heard of the CBD’s largest shopping centre. After much waving of arms, slow phonetic pronunciations, spirited debates and a mysterious exchange of cigarettes and dong we were back on our way.

Thank god these guys aren’t on a meter!

Downtown motorcycle taxi drivers are another breed altogether. These guys – and the occasional women – are far craftier, but their mission seems more intent on extracting money from foreigners and commissions from various not-so-legal entities they carry business to.

When I first arrived I found them very aggressive. Every time you walked down the street someone was calling out “Sir, sir? Where you go? What you looking for?”. If that failed to draw a response the next line was always “You want lady?”. “Massage. Boom boom. Young lady. Very good. I know good place. I take you.”

It was a while before I learned a very simple way of sending them packing. At first I tried shaking my head, smiling in embarrassment. Or just smiling. Then I tired a loud “no thank you”, later “No, no.” Nothing seemed to work. These guys are thick skinned and they don’t derive an income from taking no for an answer.

One woman drive I have met a couple of times is no different. One afternoon in broad daylight she called to me: “Motorcycle?”.

I smiled politely. “No thanks.”

“Massage?”

Then one day I came up with the most effective response of all. Born by sheer accident, or perhaps frustration: “No thanks. I live here. Not tourist.”

It was as if I’d sprayed an aerosol which instantly incapacitated vocal chords! He simply vanished. Like the beautiful woman standing outside restaurants here encouraging you inside who vanish the moment you walk through the entrance.

So there’s the trick folks! If the motorcycle taxi drivers of downtown won’t leave you alone, tell them you’re local.

Just one of the many benefits of being a local in Asia’s most fascinating city!

Footnote: Apologies for the slow posting of late – blame it on a lingering dose of flu, overwhelming amount of work and four days in Bangkok. More to come soon, including Part 3 of Motorcycle Diaries….

Jan16

The Motorcycle Diaries – Part 1

Posted on by
Standard

Try to imagine the most chaotic, crazy maelstrom of metal, flesh, noise and smells imaginable.

You’re now about a quarter of the way to appreciating the experience of sitting on the back of a motorcycle traversing the crazily crowded streets of Ho Chi Minh City.

I’ve driven a car since I was 15; a tractor since before turning 12. But never a motorcycle.

This week I start my lessons – because if you want to get around Ho Chi Minh City in your own time, you get a bike, not a car.

But last weekend I ventured beyond the occasional five minute motorcycle taxi trip from home to downtown for what turned into more than two hours of knee to knee, wheel to wheel suburban driving in my new home city.

My special friend Thao was taking me to dinner at her grandmother’s, as it turns out a long, long way from downtown…

Thao driving with Saigon Rob on the back.

One thing about this maelstrom in which we all drive here is that you lose the sense of speed. Every other motorcycle – wait, add to that taxi, car, bus or articulated truck! – is so close there’s a heightened sense of speed. So I am embarrassed to look over Thao’s shoulder at one point when we seem to be fair honking along to discover we’ve just surpassed 40. That’s kilometres per hour, by the way, not miles. In the old days I could almost cycle as fast as that. Uphill.

Yet the speedo is marked up to 180.

“Is it really possible for this to go 160 or 180?” I ask.

“Sure.”

I’m dubious.

“How fast have you driven it?”

“80.”

80? In this traffic.

“Ghost Rider!”

Thao tilts her head back as she laughs and I see the gleam in her eyes between the brim of her helmet and large white face mask.

Later we exceed 50kph. We’re really honking along now. Then a tiny young woman in a bright orange top zooms past.

“There goes Mrs Ghost Rider!”

We both laugh, but neither of us has any desire to catch her up.

Thao is nothing like your typical Ho Chi Minh motorcyclist. I know this because we are 45 minutes into our journey before she uses the horn. I was beginning to wonder if perhaps it didn’t work… or maybe it was stolen like the right side rear view mirror she’s never got around to replacing. (I told her I’ll buy her one if she teaches me to ride well enough to gain my licence).

Everyone on the roads of Ho Chi Minh – OK, everyone except Thao – has an insatiable addiction to their horn. My apartment is 15 floors above street level with relatively tightly sealed aluminium window frames. Where the background noise in Sydney might be birds cheeping and the occasional ambulance siren, in Ho Chi Minh it is a relentless chorus of horns. From the warbling of buses and the high-pitch klaxons of trucks to the electronic chirping of motorcycles, they create a disconcerted symphony of endless wailing.

Just like the pensioner who lives beside the railway line never really notices the trains thundering past in the wee hours, I was all but oblivious to the street noise after the first week. But it’s always there, almost reassuringly at times, whenever you care to listen.

On the road Thao seems so polite. Make no mistake, she’s no soft touch, yielding only when absolutely necessary to avoid actually hitting someone: she’ll aim full speed ahead at the empty space just like the next rider, and like everyone else here, she always seems to know precisely who should yield and at exactly the moment the race has been won or lost. It’s uncanny to watch from the pavement; more than mildly disturbing from the pillion seat. But you get used to it, like turbulence on a jet plane or that moment when your bungy cord tightens just in time to avoid hitting the water.

Thao just doesn’t feel the need to add her chords to the Infinite Symphony. Nor does she seem to need to yell abuse at someone who cuts us off, causes a handlebar kiss or brushes our knees. It just doesn’t seem necessary to her.

There was a moment in the journey when I pointlessly questioned the parentage (in a language he did not understand) of a yobbo who narrowly misses us heading full speed towards us on the wrong side of the road. “Ah, he was probably just drunk,” Thao explains in a way it seems perfectly rational, dismissing the event as an inconvenience rather than the potential bone and bike breaker it sure threatened to be from where I was sitting!

I fear that adopting a similarly unflappable attitude when I get behind the handle bars is going to be a hard act to follow…

When we stop for beer I am scratching my head. I foolishly assume there is a natural law of physics that prevents two people sharing a motorbike balancing a 24-can box of Heineken (price circa $17). At that point I still believe we have a two minute drive to our destination.

But Thao has the shopkeeper place the box on its end before her, between her knees but without any need to brace it. I’m dubious about how long it will stay on board – especially when Iearn we’re only a quarter of the way into our journey!

“Babe, don’t worry about me back here,” I assure her. “I’ll be fine. Just watch out for that beer.”

She just grins sympathetically at the naive hapless foreigner. I sense she’s done this before…

Actually, the gravity-defying, incredible load-bearing capacity of your typical Vietnamese motorcycle is quite astonishing. I soon discover our cargo of Heineken – which I all but forgot about two minutes after it was stowed and which never moved a centimetre in the time it took to reach our destination – was totally unremarkable.

In Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese ingenuity allows one to ferry practically anything on a motorbike. In downtown I’ve seen giant panes of window glass being carried by a pillion passenger. I thought I’d seen it all one afternoon when my taxi overtook a motorcycle with a double bed mattress balanced on the back. Flat.

But I hadn’t (seen it all). Five minutes later as I exit the cab at my apartment entrance a motorcycle pulls up at the electrical store across the road with an automatic washing machine on the back. I kid you not! Somehow he managed to come to a stop and keep the bike upright until two colleagues came out of the store to help lift it off.

On the evening journey with Thao I watch a young couple zip home with an expensive new Samsung flat screen TV on board. Why wait for someone to deliver it? Even if delivery services are almost instant on demand here (that’s another story…)

One of the aspects of being on a motorcycle in Ho Chi Minh that I never expected was how much of a sense of the city you get which you’re never aware of in the backseat of an air conditioned taxi. It’s never hot (even at 30kph the wind flow keeps you cool). But you become immersed in the sights, the sounds – and yes, the smells – of a big city with 10 million inhabitants and 7 million motorcycles (No, I don’t know who counted, I just believe the tour guide – actually it seems like there are far more than that. More people and more motorcycles!).

At one point as we zip along a main road in an informal convoy I discover we’re near the airport. I know this because there’s a thundering roar and a Malaysian Airlines Airbus appears from nowhere, so low above our heads you almost feel you can reach up and snatch it from the sky. It’s a wonderful moment for a novice (although I suspect a constant irritation for those who travel this road every day, but hey I’m new to all this).

Elsewhere I learn those canals that weave about the city really do smell when you’re not sealed inside a Toyota Avanza taxi. It’s something in retrospect I realised I had no desire to prove.

But there are good smells too… the small pavement fires before hawkers’ stalls where lucky paper brings good fortune, spit roast pork rotating over flame, fried chicken and at one point a flower stand we’re travelling slow enough to notice.

Families chat as they share a motorcycle, there’s an occasional pair of cycles with a couples on each, gossiping as they wind their way through the masses. More worryingly, another couple appears to be having a domestic dispute which is on the brink of turning violent (a rear elbow jab thankfully misses its target). When you have a domestic in a car no-one notices, but on the back of a motorcycle on a crowded street the whole world can hear… but, of course, no-one seems to notice.

Thao assures me motorcycles have only one set of foot rests for pillion passengers because technically you are only supposed to have two passengers on board – including the driver. But anywhere I look I can spot bikes carrying three or four. (I’m sure I’ve even seen five although that was one evening when I was walking home from the sports bar, so I could have been mistaken…)

What happens then, I ask?

“Oh they just share…”

A typical Vietnamese family seems to comprise mum, dad and two kids. It’s tempting to think this could be by design – so the whole family can fit on the back of a motorcycle – but it is more likely a reflection of the economic reality – it’s hard to afford to raise any more than that in this city.

Social issues, aside, it can be surprisingly moving seeing some families enjoy a night out… Dad usually drives, the eldest child sits in front of him, the youngest behind and mum brings up the rear. Sometimes, the youngest is standing so as to enjoy a better view (and give mum a greater share of the seat no doubt). I’ve seen a woman with an infant in a carry pouch, ‘safe and secure’, lying on her back facing mum as she zips along… one hand on the wheel the other holding her mobile phone.

If there is a law here about using your mobile phone when driving, no-one takes any notice.

But then that’s not uncommon in a city where traffic lights are generally considered a suggestion and those white stripes on the road a form of road decoration inspired by the cover of a Beatles album to help break the boring monotony of grey tar seal.

People frequently drive one-handed while holding a phone – or balancing cargo. And somehow they seem to make it to their destination in one piece. Well, more often than not anyway…

Well, tomorrow it’s my turn to start the conversion from awe-struck pillion passenger to suicidal driver.

I’m sorry, but I probably won’t answer the phone if you call me…