Saigon Traffic

Traffic is Saigon is chaotic. Street traffic consists primarily of motorbikes, but in addition there is everything else that moves around the city: cars, trucks, bicycles, cyclos, pedestrians, people moving their food carts around. It is hectic. Add to that the fact that sidewalks are often completely covered by vendors or used as parking spaces, and you end up with something of a mess. On top of that, many intersections seem to have no traffic control--and when it is there, it is only halfheartedly obeyed. People are constantly driving on the wrong side of the road, going the wrong way on one-way streets, cutting over curbs, and running red lights even when there is steady cross-traffic.

Crossing the street and running a red light here operate under the same principle. Almost everyone is on a very maneuverable motorbike and moving at a fairly slow pace, so you just kind of walk or drive out into it. They may honk at you--they seem to do that nearly constantly--but mostly you just have to try to walk through without getting in their way too much, and they do the same. It took a few hours to get used to, but I'm starting to actually enjoy it.

The photo above is not a good example of the chaos, but it was taken from the seat of a cyclo cruising at a very slow pace down the middle of the street.