Christmas Day in Saigon

 Breakfast at home.

 Afternoon hors d'oeuvres with pals.

 A communal effort leads to a homemade feast of immense proportions.

Another victim of Saigon's unforgiving traffic.

The Streets of Saigon

A fantastic exercise in time-lapse photography with our swollen metropolis as subject and muse.

Traffic in Frenetic HCMC, Vietnam from Rob Whitworth on Vimeo.

My Birthday Surprise

I have been feeling a bit stifled.  We live in a city where you NEED two wheels to get from point A to point B.  There is some public transportation in the form of massive green buses, but they are weathered, cramped and sticky.  Without Gavin shuttling me around, my only other options are traditional car taxis or a xe om (motorbike taxi).  These are perfectly viable options when you have a final destination in the form of a concrete address to show your driver, but not so great for exploring.  Two months ago, I realized what I missed most about Istanbul was the freedom of movement provided by good pedestrian paths and reasonable public transport.  Thus, an idea started to slowly hatch.

Gavin tried to teach me how to drive his motorbike a few times, but unfortunately our last lesson concluded with me toppling over into a healthy potted plant.  The bikes here are just too big and cumbersome for me to get comfortable on. 

In Vietnam, there are "strict" laws on who can operate a motorbike.  You must be 18 years of age, have at least one eye, possess a drivers' license, and wear a helmet when you straddle an engine.  Most of the children and inveterate senior citizens opt for the traditional bicycle.  The landscape is uniformly flat and the obvious applies - bikes are cheap, healthy, eco-friendly, and easy to steal.  Alas, I'm not a big fan of daily exercise and cold vanity disallows me from showing up to work dripping sweat.  Woe was me...until from out of the blue, enters The Electric Bike.  Thanks to legal loopholes, anyone can drive sans license, even though you can reach speeds of 50 KPH!  So, like Todd Shaw so eloquently put it - you gotta get in where you fit in.

Ever since our trip to Vung Tau, where all of the cool teens whiz by on e-bikes, I have been inexorably begging for one.  As those close to me know, I can be very persuasive.  Every time I am on the road and I see an e-bike in the distance, Gavin gets a sharp pinch to the gut as I exclaim "There's one!".  After repeating this action about a hundred times I found myself in a bike shop.

After perusing several of the shops on Vo Thi Sau, we ended up at Xe Dap 152 (148B Vo Thi Sau). I picked out the one I wanted, then I had a shaky test drive.  Let's just say it ended with Gavin expressing severe reluctance to have me free on the streets.

But long discussions ensued and eventually I persevered. Today, Gavin and I picked up my very own sleek, charcoal black e-bike.  I now have the means to get me (and whoever wants to hop on back) wherever I want to go, whenever I want to go.

Neighborhood Celebrity

We headed downtown the other night to grab a few (too many) lagers with friends and  found ourselves in an atypical traffic jam.  We were surrounded not only by thousands of other bikes as usual, but bikes laden with children.  We had hit the after-school rush that usually occurs while we are working.  In Vietnam, the majority of families have one motorized vehicle and two children, clockwork.  It is not uncommon to see a family of four perched on their motorbike, the proverbial sardines. Generally, the youngest sits or stands between the arms of the driver, resembling a proud captain posted on the bow and gazing ahead to uncharted waters with a furrowed brow. The older child is then sandwiched between Dad and Mom.  It gets even more comical when you see mothers "carpooling" with an array of kids.  The most people I have seen on one bike here is six, but I'm sure some Vietnamese family out there has managed to cram more people on board.  As we slowly crawled our way downtown, we became a bit of a spectacle for the hordes around us.  Being a pseudo-celebrity can be slightly entertaining, but Vietnamese moms have a habit of forcing their progeny to turn around and gawk at us while they wildly point and produce Cheshire Cat smiles . They prod and poke while imploring the little ones to acknowledge these new, strange tall beings and  "Say hello!".  This situation can arise anywhere - the park, the market, in elevators.  Back in that traffic jam, we found ourselves the center of attention.  The cultural ambassador in me took control as I tore off my face mask to exchange smiles and reply to the children.  Although no handshakes were exchanged, I felt like a slimy politician greeting throngs of constituents during primary season.  I hope the kids don't have nightmares about the whole deal.  I did however manage to get the ultimate Christmas-in-Saigon picture out of the whole ordeal.  Behold...

A Life in Pictures

These are a few pictures I have been meaning to post that we have taken over the past week.

A monkey in a tree.

Traffic.

A mango as big as my face.

A mighty river seeping through the countryside.