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Postcards from Vietnam Shepard, and his boyfriend,
We looked at our son, Ben
By John Muncie & Jody Jaffe Job Zheng, for help. They’d

been in HCMC for weeks
and were old traffic pros.
Dear Ron,
Traffic in Vietnam is famous. “What do we do?”
Maybe not tourist-attraction “Just start walking.”
famous, but definitely a “WHAT?”
phenomenon.
This is how Ben ex-
plained it: “Wait until only
motorbikes are bearing
down -- no trucks or cars
– then step out. Walk,
don’t run. Not too fast,
not too slow. Steady. Everybody will swerve
We’re talking about motorbike traffic. Motor- around you. It’ll be fine. We promise.”
bikes swarm Vietnam like monster bees. Buzzing, What to do? On the one hand we didn’t want to
roaring, put-putting down every street, along ev- die, on the other, Ben and Job were OK.
ery alley, across every sidewalk, squeezing through We held hands and stepped out. Thelma and
the aisles of outdoor Louise pedestrian style.
markets. There are 90 It was a kind of miracle.
million people in Vietnam The Red Sea parting. The
and 45 million motor- motorbike horde slipped
bikes. Cars? Maybe a around us, one side or the
couple million. other. Nobody slammed on
Traffic lights are a big brakes, nobody yelled. No-
deal, too. There aren’t body seemed to pay us any
any. OK, a few. But we’ve attention at all except to
seen more traffic lights navigate around us as if we
along Broadway than we were traffic cones.
saw in all of Ho Chi Minh “See,” said Ben when we
City. reached the opposite curb
We faced the motor- unscathed, “that’s how it
bike phenomenon on our works in Vietnam.”
first day in HCMC. There That’s the way it worked
we were, innocent for our entire three-week
tourists, poised to visit Vietnam trip. In HCMC, Dalat, Hanoi, Hoi An and
Ba Chieu Market, a wonderful, chaotic place where in Phu Quoc, an island off the southern coast.
you can buy everything from exotic fruit, to crazy The first step was always trepidatious but we
shirts, to great street food.
eventually got used to motorbikes zooming all
It was right across the street -- a multi-lane around us. Motorbikes are the ocean and pedes-
street flooded with an endless tsunami of motor- trians are the fish. You just start swimming. And
bikes.

146 WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE 2020