Experiencing Vietnam on the back of a moped

About 20 minutes outside of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, it occurred to me that hitching a… About 20 minutes outside of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, it occurred to me that hitching a ride 80 kilometers out to the Mekong Delta on the back of a moped might not have been the smartest idea.

Not that I don’t trust Minh. A 46-year-old ex-Viet Cong fighter with a bullet in the hip to prove it, he won my confidence when he saved me from an unsanitary street vendor. “You don’t eat here,” he yelled to me, appearing out of nowhere moments before I would have handed over 10,000 dong for a bowl of soup. “It make you go bathroom.”

Taking my hand, he led me to a visibly cleaner dining establishment, where the open-air terrace looked out onto a bustling street market scene. I was grateful for the tip and the company, and I spent the rest of the day exploring the city on the back of his speedy motorbike. He didn’t know much English, but we got by on important words like “beer,” “cigarette” and “food.”

So while I knew that Minh was on my side, the traffic — and traffic-related statistics — was not. A typical road scene in or around Ho Chi Minh City resembles, without exaggeration, the panicked evacuation of a city just hit by a nuclear bomb. Rules of the road are completely non-existent. Right-of-way goes to the largest or ballsiest vehicle on the road, be it bicycle, big-rig truck, rickshaw or moped, and Western vestiges of road travel — shoulders, medians, traffic lights, speed limits — are irrelevant, existing only for show. Driving progresses with a rhythm and abandon more often associated with walking. There is bobbing, weaving, grazing of body parts, turning on hairpins and stopping on dimes. And it is all done with dangerously fast-moving machines. The result is an alarmingly high traffic-related death rate. Rough estimates claim that about 30 people die every day on the roads of Vietnam’s largest city.

What the hell was I thinking, riding on a rickety moped with a slightly crippled guerilla fighter whom I only understood 40 percent of the time? Short five-minute trips around town are one thing, but by agreeing to a three-hour round trip, I’m playing the odds a little too closely. He’s driving fast, pushing 80, and so is everybody else on this four-lane highway. There are anywhere between four and 10 bikes sharing our parallel at any particular time.

The road is a dusty, smoky, wind-blown adventure. Particulates sting my eyes, forming thick dark chunks in the corners. A massive truck comes barreling up the left side, farting black smoke into our faces. I cough, squint, and pull my elbow in to avoid losing it. Meanwhile, another truck pulls a U-turn up ahead, completely blocking the road, except for a narrow corridor through which three bikes speed in the opposite direction, straight at us. Three schoolgirls hunker on the median, waiting to cross.

I try to relax, to succumb to the beauty, the romance and the exhilaration of road travel in the Third World. I cannot. It is a language I do not speak, and for one of the few times in my existence, I literally fear for my life. I pass the time determining the best way to fall if and when we finally crash. Should I attempt to hit the ground running, springing from the bike moments before our inevitable collision? Should I put a shoulder into the flickering pavement? Which side would I fall on? Definitely my right. I could still manage, albeit with great concentration and practice, to play the guitar with only my left hand. The calculus of my mortality whizzes past my head like the hot, dirty wind rippling past my cheeks.

After about an hour of these frenetic mental musings, Minh makes an unannounced stop at a roadside bar. I dismount the bike, gratefully, and find that my oil-stained feet are still vibrating from the constant puttering of the bike’s footrests. In fact, my entire body is shaking, and I take the cigarette he offers me with limp, unsteady fingers as we approach the small table. I order a Pepsi, and it arrives warm, accompanied by a large tumbler of what I am convinced is disease-infested Vietnamese ice. But I’m thirsty, so I attempt to avoid ingesting the ice by pouring the soda in the mug and quaffing it quickly down, ensuring minimum ice meltage and consumption. I am successful, but upon finishing it, Minh graciously refills the mug from a pot of scalding hot tea, instantly melting all the ice. You can’t turn down a drink in Asia, so I smile amiably and finish the entire glass.

Against the paranoid odds I concocted in my head, Minh and I did indeed reach the Mekong Delta — and with my bowels intact. Since the government runs a monopoly on the river tours, it’s overpriced, overrated and overwrought with tourists. And given the emotional intensity of the journey there, it was pretty boring. I spent the majority of the river tour thinking about how I got there, how the entire journey had been a leap of faith of sorts, a test of my belief in many things: faith in the kindness of a total stranger and in the indecipherable rhythm of a foreign land; faith in unknown turning radii and in unseen drivers’ licenses.

On the way back we stop in a small roadside village to meet Minh’s mother. She’s a small woman, tan with leathery skin and a tailor by trade, judging by the old Singer sewing machine hunkered in a corner of her house, draped with colorful works-in-progress. Her face grows wide and excited when she sees me. Minh’s daughter is there, too, catching a nap on a corner mattress. Afterward, Minh takes me across the street to a dim bar with concrete floors and walls, and we have a beer with his brothers. I look around and realize that I am witnessing and experiencing the sanctity of Minh’s daily ritual. Four of us are drinking beer from one bottle and sharing snacks from a communal plate. I am being treated as an equal.

The pace of traffic has diminished significantly with the setting sun as we make our way back to the city limits, and so has my fear of dying. Maybe people are on their way home from work, or into town for dinner; perhaps they are taking extra caution so that they arrive in one piece. Minh and I are an odd sight to see, I realize, and we draw our share of gasps, smiles and laughs from the throngs of people heading south. We pull over and pee on the side of the road together — the kind of thing that two friends on a road trip do.

My father would kill me if he knew I did this, I think to myself. But he doesn’t — yet — and I still have a good 30 miles until I share my secrets with anybody. I look at Minh in the Mickey-Mouse ear of his rearview mirror. His face is smooth, his eyes shaded by imitation Ray-Bans. He looks composed, effortless in his driving, armed to the teeth in cool denim. He knows what he’s doing. Today, Minh is my god, the master of my destiny, cradling my future in his hands. So I remove my own hands from the support bar behind the seat, close my eyes and ride, hands-free, into the Saigon sunset.

Jonathan Check is the foreign correspondent for the Pitt News. To hear a very funny story about his trip to a seemingly innocent Vietnamese massage parlor, e-mail him at Jonnycman@hotmail.com.