motorbike way - Saigon

bikes and a street side food vendor

yup, riding on the side walk

Looking through some of my older stuff on vietnam-now.com  and found this piece on motorbike traffic and though you might enjoy it.  Think it was written  about 10 years ago but traffic hasn't changed all that much, other than we have much more, traffic that is. About twice the  number of motorbikes and what  really complicates things the is the increase in the number of cars trucks and buses.     
         click -  The Motorbike Way


Side bar: In 2011 3.671 motorbikes were registered in Vietnam - compared to 2012 at 3.282 million, and 2013 at 3.272 million. So the numbers of registered motorbikes are declining but still is one hell of a lot of motorbikes and on the horizon auto sales are set to pick up..  All this on unimproved roads originally built for bicycles and ox carts. 

com-by-ya moment in Paris - Doug thinks

Julien Warnand/EPA/Landov

The com-by-ya moment in Paris last week which was attended by many world leaders to show solidarity for freedom of speech and denounce terrorist acts was more form than substance. President Obama took a lot of heat for his administrations lack of participation but I'm thinking he saw it as it for what it was, a giant photo op and he keep us above that.

Blogger Daniel Wickham a student a the London School of Economics documented the realities of some leaders attending based on their records of these things at home. I'm sure you will agree this is not a group the president of the free world would want to hang with.

• Nigeria - President Goodluck Johnathan -  Who in his own country turns a blind toward the atrocities of the Muslim group Boko Haram.  Oh ya and how about the 200 school girls who went missing last spring, he is still looking into that.
• Saudi Arabia - Where a blogger has just be sent to prison for 10 years, fined the equivalent of 266,000 US and the worst part is the 50 lashes he will receive every Friday for the next 19 weeks. All for criticizing religious teaching of Celtics from the little know Islamic sect Wahhabism. 
• Turkey - Prime Minister Ahmet Davatoglw  - Presently holding the record for the most number 40, journalists jailed.
• Egypt - Meanwhile President  Abdel Fattah-Sissi  put to use novel way to cut campaign costs, jail the competition - jailing thousands. 
• Russia - Where journalism is considered a high risk occupation and dissidents are regularly jailed .

I'm in HCM City so I really can't give a first hand account of the event but only what I've gleamed from publications and the internet.  I've picked up on Vietnam's low keyed comments that they feel the world should adapt to our modern age and control free speech.  So incidents like the killings at  "Charlie Hebdo" wouldn't happen. 

The French are famous for flash but not for much dash regarding leadership in the solving international events.  So kudos to Barack for keeping the USA above the goofiness. Oh ya and John Stewart go do it to your self..    

Passing of a friend and old Asian hand like me - William (Bill) Henneberry

Bill in Saigon - about a week ago.

A hard week in Saigon - feeling alone and old..  Things just weren't clicking for me, than heard about the possibility my friend Bill had passed away in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.  After a few days of fumbling around, got my nerve up and contacted the US Embassy in Phnom Penh for confirmation. Hard call for me as his passing wasn't the real deal until I made the call for conformation.  A staff member mater-o-factually told me the authorities found him in a hotel room on the fifth of this month (January) and that Bill had died of cardiac arrest.

Always, the first week or so here is a readjustment in how my life is but this time it's went on for a month and now with Bill's passing, who knows.  Now I'm even considering heading back to the states as so far all I've managed to do is spend more money than I have, try to sleep on a bed that is lumpier than my 40 year old mattress back in California and drink to much, but I can do that anywhere.

Bill was a very interesting guy, merchant seaman, lawyer, writer and on his own a world traveler. Always, seeking new opportunities - in the last few years specializing in representing people with marijuana possession charges.  Learned about this first hand as my trooper and I ferried Bill and his clients around, also did airport runs and what ever was needed when he was away.  

His latest endeavor was establishing a goat farm in Oklahoma with

Puerto Rico

his nephew Sean Oni Raer, not sure how that will work out now.   Along with that he maintained a sail boat in Puerto Rico he used mostly as a floating condo. 

Bill also possessed a very personal travel philosophy, book a flight to a far off, mostly third world type country, land and take a walk around, grab an inexpensive room, settle in the room and read a book,  Not to think he was a nerd, he said before the week he came to visit me he had created an inexpensive special relationship twice. 

Bill we will miss you, the mornings at McDonald's discussing world politics, our mutual love of the sea and boats, hanging out together and arguing about the life we live, trading books and the quick meet ups in the parking lot, Bill was also my neighbor and always encouraging my writings and my biggest supporter.   

Then it was Vietnam - part 5 - Same, same but different

Get your motorbike running 

As lives do, mine did stabilize, but the Vietnam experience stuck with me.  That is the reason why some 35 years after my return from Vietnam I found myself thinking about revisiting. Since then I've made numerous trips back and once again arriving with my butt jammed into one of those ever shrinking seats in the economy class section of Cathay Pacific. We are arriving at Ton San Nhut, no longer a key US Airbase but now one of the two international

Saigon at night  -  by Nguyệt Cát

airports in Vietnam.  As a US Airbase it was on the edge of Saigon but now the ever expanding Saigon has grown around it.  As our plane taxi es up to the  terminal,  I watch through my window as the few remaining remnants of what was Ton San Nhut Airbase slide past.

"Damn", I think to myself,  all these years when so much has changed and still so much seems the same - "same same but different"

On my first trip back, taxing in was really eerie as the terminal had the outward appearance of base ops of the 60's where my first Vietnam experience began. Since 1999 it went through several upgrades and then a few years ago a new modern terminal was erected. Through the entry drill has remained pretty much the same.

On arrival our flock deplanes, guided by strategically stationed, cute ao dai clad attendants, directing us towards customs and immigration's.  We queue up at immigration's to have our visa's checked and have our entry stamped in our passports. Nowadays this is a quick and painless process, gone are the days of those little slips of paper they called entry permits and wondering if you need to slip a fiver in your passport to speed up your entry process.   Still immigration officers in general are a grim bunch but guess it's part of the job. Though an exception to this was the immigration officer in Singapore who noted I wasn't feeling well, offered up a smile and a cherry sucker.

Head to the luggage carousel, grab a cart and wait for my bags to show up. Load my bags onto the cart and head to customs.  At customs you pull your bags off and send them through the x ray

tunnel, really not sure what that is all about as you only have to send through the big bags and they don't really look at the x ray screen.  Maybe they just want to see you struggle with your bags. Anyway, nothing to declare and my luggage passed the x ray test, so once again I'm officially in Vietnam.  

Bags in hand I look around the terminal, seeing a few currency exchange outfits, some travel operators but as usual the terminal seems strangely vacant. That is until you peer out the exit door of the terminal lobby, looking past the security and the vacant rectangular shaped patch of side walk to see a wall of people.  You work your way through the wall which is a mix of relatives, friends of folks arriving, taxi cab and motorbike types, hotel and guest house drivers flashing cards with their new guests names drawn out in magic marker and of course their are always those enterprising gents who are probably in search of a expeditious way to increase their fortunes. For some unknown reason, anyway to me, people aren't allowed into the terminal to wait for arriving flights.

I work my way through the mass of folks out to the taxi queue.   Taxi queue, in the past it was up to you not to get ripped off and conversations such as "Yes, I know you have a meter but what do you think it will cost" were common conversations as arriving passengers tried to waylay creative long expensive rides to the city center.  

We leave the airport and enter the traffic filled road taking us into city center district 1.  Motorbike traffic in Saigon is legendary and that was when motorbikes were expensive and now a mass of cheap Chinese bikes are available, population was less back then and added to this now you have a tremendous increase in the number of cars on the road which makes traffic a bigger mess then ever. Looking out my window past the congestion of motorbikes, cars, taxi's, buses and trucks and still a random push cart or bicycle I see newly built, modern looking buildings but still much of the old Vietnam shows through.  As one of my friends shared with me "after 24 years of living here, they can make as many physical changes as the want but the Vietnamese people are the same and because of this I stay". 

So, without putting much strain on my brain, even with all the changes, vestiges of pre 1975 Vietnam slip out of my memory and another times comes flowing back...   

                                 "Same, same but different"                    

                                                       

Doug does the Dentist in Saigon

I've been back in Saigon for a couple weeks but a couple months before that my teeth starting falling apart. It all came to a head about three weeks before I flew out to Vietnam.  I had spent over $2,000.00 on dental work and needed more stuff done, so they said.. So convinced the dentist in applying a temporary $400.00 fix thinking I would check out some off shore dental work. Oh and the quick fix lasted about 3 days and fell out.

                                     

Thailand is famous for this kind of thing, with slick, state of the art dental clinics/hospitals.  In the past I had used  Bangkok Hospital Dental for a checkup and cleaning and it was satisfactory but wasn’t sure a trip to Bangkok from Saigon was in my budget. So got on the internet and looked at having some work done in Saigon.

Found Dr, Vu Thi Thanh Tuyen who was billed as having a small practice but a loyal following.  We exchanged e-mails regarding her practice but I was still unsure until receiving a call from her in Vietnam reassuring me of her abilities and it worked for her, the next day I booked an  appointment.

After arriving in Saigon she contacted me again, offering to pick me up saying “it is a very complicated place to get to” and it was. Though in fact I'm thinking the real reason was that she was afraid I would chicken out.  I have a motorbike guy who is great at this kind of thing and even he got turned around a couple times.

A real low key operation, works in her bare feet, not even an assistant and if

the job requires a specialist she has a friend who is one, who on her request will stop by and do the specialist thing. For x-rays she sends you to x-ray place in the back of a shop house about 15 minutes away by motorbike. You have to go by motorbike because the alley is too narrow for a taxi.

What it costs:

             Examination

             Tooth extraction

              Full mouth ex-ray-from the ex-ray shop

              Motorbike guy – 3 hours

                                             Total cost    900,000 dong = $41.00 (US)

  

 Dr, Vu Thi Thanh Tuyen DDS

 Golden Smile Dental office

 123/19 Nghia Phat Ward 6

 Tan Bin District,  Saigon

    0903 014 680

                                                   

Thanks for stopping by,,,  Doug