Get Your Motor Running. Head Out On The Highway.

I'm alive.  This is something of a small miracle considering what we went through yesterday.  Just kidding, Mom and Dad.  Let me back up and start this story from two days ago.  On Tues, we simply spent some time just walking around Ho Chi Minh City and just relaxing after a VERY long bus ride.  At night, we discussed plans for the next day (Wed).  We knew we wanted to go to see the infamous Cu Chi Tunnels.  The Cu Chi tunnels are located outside of HCM (near the town of Cu Chi...of course).  However, our group had different ideas of how we were going to get there.  There are of course a multitude of tour companies who are all too happy to take you out there for a pretty reasonable fee.  But they all seemed a little bit boring to most of us.  Then Tim came up with an idea - we could rent motorbikes ("scooters" in the U.S.) to go visit the tunnels.  Unlike in Siem Reap, foreigners are allowed to rent motorbikes in HCM.  Now, before we went to HCM I had asked about the tunnels and had heard that they were 50 km away.  Tim was convinced they were more like 15 km away.  After all, it looked so close on his iPhone map.  With the right zoom, Beijing looks pretty close too.  One of us turned out to be wrong.  So very, very wrong.  Tim, in an effort to convince us, told us it'd be a couple of turns and in five minutes we'd be out of the city traffic and into the countryside where it would be a easy and lazy ride out to the tunnels.  Did I mention that one of us would turn out to be wrong?

Martin was up for it but didn't want to drive because he didn't have a license.  James didn't want to drive at all because he called the traffic "bloody insane".  Yes, he's a Brit.  But he also had a somewhat valid point.  Allow me to illustrate.  Remember how I mentioned in the previous post that HCM consists of over 9 million people?  To put it into perspective, that's about the same population of Bangkok.  Hong Kong "only" has 7 million.  The vast majority of the HCM traffic is comprised of people on motorbikes; I'd say roughly 80% of the motorized vehicles on the road.  And remember what I posted about traffic in Siem Reap?  Well, it's about 10 times more populated, the driving is equally chaotic, and the intersections are enormous with hundreds of vehicles in them at any one point going in all directions.  But Tim was quite excited for the idea.  He's had years of experience with a motorbike back in New Zealand.  Me?  I've had years of experience with Mario Kart.  I was very moved that Sara trusted me enough to be a passenger.  On a more serious note, if Sara's family and/or boyfriend are reading this, I assure you I drove with extreme caution, I never took any risks, we all had helmets, and I would never undertake such an endeavor with a passenger unless I felt safe doing so.  I'm happy to say that the driving itself was blissfully uneventful.

So the next morning, Tim and I went down the block and immediately found a couple of 100 cc automatic Yamaha motorbikes.  Tim gave me a quick 5 minute tutorial of all the controls and we took them for a quick spin around the block.  I drove around in crowded traffic until I felt comfortable.  No problemo.  After about 5 minutes, it really started to feel second nature.  So we met back in front of our guesthouse and then Laura and Sara hopped on.  To avoid having my backpack snatched, I wore it while Sara sat behind me.  And off we went...

The supposed 5 minutes to get out of the city turned into about 45 minutes of weaving and dodging through some of the most amazing traffic I've ever been in (and I've driven through Boston, New York, DC, SF, Seattle, and LA).  However, interestingly, unlike in the U.S., traffic in Vietnam NEVER seems gridlocked.  Part of it is that people only partially pay attention to little details like traffic lights, lane markers, and sidewalks.  Curbs in Vietnam are at a 30 degree angle to the road and thus, they appear to be designed to be driven over.  You know, in case that 80 year old woman on a bicycle is holding you up.  So anyhow, there's no gridlock (that I've seen) because if anything is holding up traffic, everyone just goes around said blockage.  If they have to drive into oncoming traffic, or up onto the sidewalk with the pedestrians, so be it.  I'll admit, this seems insane to most Westerners at first glance.  But when you actually drive in it, for whatever strange reason, it works quite well, and it really isn't as scary as it might seem from a pedestrian's point of view.  A big part of it is that road rage really doesn't seem to exist in any SE Asian country.  No one is in a competition with you to see who "wins".  I quickly discovered a couple of tricks to driving in HCM.  Don't rush, but also don't hesitate.  Follow the crowd, make sure you can be seen, and you'll be just fine.

As we drove out there, we found the town of Cu Chi but got a bit lost and there wasn't a single foreigner in sight.  But we finally found a couple of kind souls who knew enough English that they figured out where we trying to go and pointed us in the right direction.  It turns out that the tunnels are quite a bit outside of town (another 15 km to be exact; so 15 km from HCM was *slightly* off) and we arrived there a little after 2:30 pm.  Which gave us just enough time to explore the tunnels before closing time at 5:00 pm.  The tunnels were quite the visit and I'll write more about that in a followup post with photos.

At around 5 pm, we hit the road with the realization that we were not going to make it back by dark.  We took what we thought might be a faster route back, but it turned out to be a much smaller road that went through several small towns.  It was certainly scenic and the sun setting over the rice paddies in Vietnam was absolutely gorgeous - breathtakingly so.  For a little while as we passed the amazing scenery, my thoughts turned to my dear Uncle Bob who passed away just before my trip.  He was a kind soul who always lived in the moment, never had a negative thing to say about anyone, and took great joy in being surrounded by the people he loved.  His passing served as a reminder to me to always try to find ways to savor life and be happy.  It's too short to sweat the small stuff.  Uncle Bob, wherever you are, I hope you are continuing on in your awesomeness.  Gan bei!  Cheers.

About 45 minutes later, the sun set and we were on the outskirts of HCM.  We were stopped at an intersection with about 100 other locals on motorbikes.  Just about all of them were staring at us.  Quite a few of them were pointing at us, saying things in Vietnamese, and laughing.  Perhaps they were saying, Look at the foreigners.  Remember their faces.  We're going to see them again on the 10 o'clock news tonight.  At this particular intersection, there was also a family on the motorbike - a father who was driving, a mother who was on the rear seat, and their 2 year old infant was sandwiched between.  They were smiling at us at first as well, but then as we took off from the intersection, they caught up to us and started pointing ahead at Tim and Laura, with concerned looks on their faces and shaking their heads in disapproval.  The mom was grabbing something invisible out of the air and saying something very rapidly in Vietnamese.  I shrugged my shoulders.  Finally, looking at Laura we figured out what they were trying to say.  Laura, on the back of Tim's motorbike was holding her iPhone out at her side, using the GPS to navigate us back home.  This was not a good idea in a city that has a reputation for street thieves.  We caught up to them and called out to them to put the iPhone away.  If someone managed to grab it, it'd be too easy to get away with the city's maze of dark alleyways.

While we were filling up on gas earlier, Laura also informed us that the phone battery was down to 25%.  Tim and I waved it off, figuring that gave us at least a couple of hours.  Well, we were both wrong about that.  The iPhone went dark right almost exactly when the sun completely disappeared.  Laura pulled out the Lonely Planet map and figured she could get us home using just that.  We were still roughly 20 km from home at this point.  Well, unfortunately we got quite lost.  From all the traffic and brightly lit buildings, we were obviously in the city.  But the streets go in seemingly random directions and after about 20 minutes of driving, I don't know that we really knew where we were headed, in spite of Laura's assurances.  But the buildings were getting taller and the lights were getting brighter, so at least it *seemed* like we were headed in the correct general direction.  Then again, as I said, HCM is a BIG city.  So I suppose what happened next was an inevitability.

Tim and I were both in the left hand lane of about 4 lanes of traffic and then Laura started gesturing vigorously to the right.  Tim veered off to the right.  Sara started calling out, "Go right! Go right!".  I looked over my right shoulder and saw about 30-40 motorbikes each on average about a foot apart.  There was no way in hell I was going to be able to cut across.  So I kept going and it turned out I was in a left hand turn only lane.  So I was forced to go left onto a one way street with no way to turn around.  City blocks in Vietnam are very very large.  It took me at least several minutes to reach the end of the block, turn right, go up another block, and turn right again to get back to the intersection where we were separated.  We finally got back about 15 minutes later, but Tim and Laura were nowhere in sight.  Crap.

So there we were, in a city of 9 million, at night, in rush hour, with no GPS, no map, and no fluency in Vietnamese whatsoever. But we did have a full tank of gas.  So there's that at least.  There was nothing to do at this point but keep on driving down the road.  We finally found a small street with very little traffic and saw a small hotel where I pulled over, hopeful that someone inside spoke English.  Sara ran in to find someone.  While she was inside, I saw a young Vietnamese man standing on the street just ahead of me.  I waved to him and asked him if he spoke English.  He shook his head, but walked over anyhow to see if he could help.  I tried pronouncing anything I could remember that was in our neighborhood.  Pham Nga Lao District? De Tham Street?  Ben Thanh Market?  23 September Park?, but to no avail.  He motioned for another woman on the sidewalk to come over.   I tried all the locations again, but again, I couldn't be understood.  Finally, they both called another woman over who did speak a little English.  But even then, she didn't know any of the locations I listed.  Sara then walked out and shook her head.  No luck.

Then, suddenly I realized something.  Somewhere in the back of my head, I had enough common sense when I rented the motorbike to grab a business card that had the address on it.  I quickly dug into my pockets and found the card and handed it to the young man.  As luck would have it, he had an iPhone 4 on him.  So he pulled it out and entered the address into his GPS.  He found the address and showed me the route.  It showed that we were 6 km away.  Not too bad even though we were on the wrong side of the city.  However, the route first took a convoluted path through a bunch of small streets before finally getting to a large road that would lead us all the way back.  They had a discussion for a few minutes about what to do with us while I listened intently, as if I could understand them if I only focused my attention enough.  The woman who spoke a little English started writing down turn by turn directions. Then the man suddenly had an idea and he ran off down the street to talk to an older man (we were guessing he had to be at least 75) on a motorbike and talked to him for a couple of minutes while showing him the map on his iPhone.  The two women said to us "seo" and gestured with their hands to indicate that we should follow the old man.  The old man drove up to us on his motorbike and gave us a price: 40,000 dong.  2 USD.  That was the easiest decision I had to make in a long time.  Before we drove off, we profusely thanked the three other Vietnamese locals for helping us out.

About half an hour later, we finally got back to our street.  But we were worried for Laura and Tim because their motorbike was not back at the store and we weren't sure if they had an address card.  Sara went off in to go find us a couple of victory beers while I waited in front of the rental store.  After about 5 minutes, I turned to see Laura and Tim waving at us excitedly from across the road.  It turns out that they waited for about 10 minutes and then continued on.  They lucked out and happened to come across the one big road that took them all the way home.  And thus, our adventure came to a happy end.  It was an absolutely awesome day and over dinner, we re-lived every exciting minute.  It's going to be hard to top this day.