How to ride a motorbike

The most frequent advice I hear on how to best drive in this city is "drive slowly." It's probably in the top three. I'd have to say "pay attention" is number one. Followed by "expect the unexpected." Cause if you don't pay attention and you drive slowly, you're still going to get dinged. And if you don't expect the unexpected you're in for one hell of a surprise.

Clearly my number one fault is driving too fast. I wouldn't say I'm speeding just perhaps going too fast for the speed of traffic. Throwing off the flow. But I'm certainly not the only guilty party. It does, however, create a nuisance for some folks, who clearly don't know how to drive, but have adjusted to the frenzied "fuck the rules" style of driving here in Vietnam.

Two weeks ago today, I got in my first wreck. I am fine and dandy. Last week, this guy got clipped just ahead of me and I saw the wreck unfold before my eyes. I stopped and watched the guy writhe on the road before the clipper came back to tell the clippee why it was his fault. I couldn't do much and felt like I was the person at fault so I just took off.

Two days ago, a friend of mine went down. He said he was going too fast. The guy he hit got up and took off. My friend fortunately got up, collected a few random bits from his motorbike and made his way to the side of the road. Nobody else stopped. They just veered around and/or gawked from the side of the street.

Last night, as I was making a left turn with the rest of Ho Chi Minh City, the girl in front of me got clipped by a taxi. She wasn't going that fast, but fell off her bike to the right and I nearly ran over her hand. Fortunately, my bionic vision saw that this was going to happen and I crammed on the brakes and narrowly missed her hand.

Then I assisted in picking up her bike all the while staying on my own. Bionic strength, I guess. Or maybe it was the two other guys. Again, I felt like I was at fault for helping and because I couldn't say anything. Well, I could have said "I'm sorry" but it wasn't my fault so I didn't.

Good times. Accidents happen. Shit happens. You combine the amount of motorbikes in this city with the number of reckless drivers, bad drivers, women drivers and increasing number of automobiles and well, I'm kind of surprised I'm not seeing more carnage. Fortunately for me, I haven't actually seen blood and guts.

I was just kidding about the women drivers. It's usually some punk ass male swerving in and out of traffic. And it's that same guy who gets a nose in front of you and then swerves into your spot. And that's the truth. Pay attention. Expect the unexpected. And drive slowly. If you combine the three, they basically say drive safely.

-Written on Tuesday, July 1