I just came back from a trip to Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore. Whenever I leave my Comfort Zone, I always fly economy class so I never expect much. Maybe a thin foil bag of Planter’s peanuts and a plastic cup (half full) of warm diet coke. So I buy a turkey sandwich at Au Bon Pain and a bottle of water. Once TSA gets a whiff of my sneakers, they wave me through immediately. Getting to Asia I flew Cathay Pacific. Coming back I flew American Airlines. Do you know the difference between night and day? Is America a third-world country?
The seats on Cathay Pacific are wide and luxurious with huge armrests. They recline almost into a bed. The meals are served with complimentary wine or cocktails, and even the hoi polloi in steerage get cotton placemats and shiny cutlery. The flight attendants are well lip-glossed, shiny – like newly minted coins - and they never stopped smiling. If a wing fell off at 40,000 feet, I’m sure they’d smile sweetly and offer everyone another cocktail in 4 languages.
American Airlines reminded me of what it must feel like to be cattle going to slaughter. You’re held in a detention center euphemistically called the “gate” boarding area. The seats are plastic with no padding. The public address system sounds like a screechy dial-up Internet connection. It’s worse when you finally get strapped into the equivalent of the Electric Chair. Now I know how Julius and Ethel Rosenberg must have felt. The seats are narrow and uncomfortable, the video presentation before takeoff is garbled and incoherent (is my life vest under my seat? or is it located in the back of the seat in front of me? or is it located in a top-secret pocket in my armrest?). There’s no legroom, the overhead bins are small, and a “meal” consists of a greasy blueberry muffin with tiny containers of something called “jam” and something else labeled “butter.” I don’t believe a word of it.
I don’t want to write a travelogue; I couldn’t possibly compress a 2-week trip to Asia – with all of its exotic temples, pagodas, food smells, incense, gas fumes, knockoff designer jeans and eyeglass frames, spiky hair, motor scooters, missing teeth, shopping malls, unspoiled beaches, communism, and rampant capitalism into a few captivating paragraphs. So, go. See it for yourself. Eat street food (except for fish, it’s perfectly safe). Take a death-defying ride on a tuk-tuk (essentially a motor scooter with make-shift seats). Drink coconut water. Just don’t buy anything; it’s all made in China!
I’d been back for 2 days when my friend Cody called; he wanted to ‘hear all about it.’ So, we met for gin and tonics at a local ‘club’ (which isn’t really a club at all but likes to think it is). I’d been thinking how to answer his question. I didn’t want to give him a colorless litany of events. There had to be some theme or event that I could use to give the trip a meaningful narrative or exemplify the difference between life in the East and the West. I read over my meager notes; then read them again, and again. I scratched my head. Then, bingo, I had it. It’s the experience of crossing the street in Saigon (now officially known as Ho Chi Minh City, but still widely referred to as Saigon).
Crossing a street in Saigon is like entering a twilight zone; there’s an unreal feeling that you’re suddenly stuck at the intersection of walk-and-don’t-walk. There’s everywhere to go, and no way to get there because you can’t cross the street without upping your life insurance. In Saigon, traffic signals and signs are mere suggestions; everyone ignores them. It’s not uncommon for a frustrated cab driver to drive on the sidewalk.
Crossing the street in Saigon is like scampering across the track at a Formula One NASCAR event. It’s almost impossible. There are literally hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of motorcycles, scooters, pedicabs, motorbike cowboys, taxicabs, and cars engaged in their own horn-tooting, non-stop road race. Traffic never stops; drivers never look. Teenage boys and girls are too busy checking each other out over the handlebars.
At home, I wait obediently for the light to turn green and the little pedestrian icon to turn from red to white. Some intersections in Boston even have counters that tweet, like chirping parakeets, every second until the light changes. When the light does change, mirabile dictu, traffic stops.
Not so in Saigon. Here, fasten your seatbelt, so to speak. Past the pagodas and temples, past the teeming markets and ramshackle wooden shops selling silk, spices, baskets, and knock-off Rolex watches, this city is a dizzying, high-octane, chaotic free-for-all of commerce and limitless energy. The onslaught of traffic is so dense there’s actually no let-up, ever. Think of a tsunami of cars and cycles aimed directly at you. Add to that clouds of exhaust smoke, road dust, and the high-pitched whine of kamikaze pilots’ engines revved to the max.
Saigon is Vietnam’s commercial heart, a riverside metropolis of old and new with world-class restaurants and bars and a buzzing, seductive energy. If you want to cross the street in Saigon without ending up like a bug on a windshield, do not … repeat, do not … make the mistake of running quickly across it. Resist that temptation because you’ll die. Instead, cross the street slowly – very slowly – so that the kids on motorbikes can quickly calculate how to narrowly miss you. The traffic doesn’t stop for pedestrians or even slow down. Just don’t panic, don’t for gods sake stop, avoid any sudden moves, maintain eye contact, and - if you’re lucky - you’ll make it across the street.
Pat yourself on the back. You made it. It’s amazing in this motorized hornet’s nest that no one ever seems to get hurt.
A trip to Vietnam teaches an inexorable, albeit predictable lesson: we, who live in the West, enjoy a higher standard of living. Our cars stop at red lights, and pedestrians cross the street safely. But don’t confuse a higher standard of living with a better quality of life. Crossing the street in Saigon may be raw and dangerous, but it’s packed with adventure and challenge.