My Morning Commute

I have been a working woman for a month now and have pretty much settled into a routine. Because my working hours are from 8:00 - 4:00 and Steven's are from 8:00 to 4:30/6:00 when he coaches basketball, I have been riding with him to the school, taking the motorbike to work, and then picking him up in the evenings. On many mornings, I find myself musing about my commute and wondering if anyone I know has as strange a morning ride as I do.

Steven and I leave the house around 7:30 for the 10 minute ride to his school. He always drives when we are together because the bike is hard for me to balance when he is on the back. Our ride from home takes us out of our alley ways and onto a main tree-lined street with center lanes for cars and side lanes, separated by low cement dividers, for motorbikes. Every so often the drive is broken up by cars and motorbikes turning onto the street from adjoining side streets, a situation that causes us either to speed up to get ahead of them, or to stop to wait for them to pass, as there are no stop signs or lights in these areas. We have one big left turn onto the bridge, which is made infinitely easier when we are part of a large pack of bikes muscling their way through the traffic running east and west along the road. Usually there are functioning lights and police at these intersections, so it is often smooth sailing.

Once over the bridge, Steven takes a short cut to avoid major road construction which takes us through more narrow local streets and over a bridge revealing rows of ramshackle houses lining a trash filled canal. Once back on the main road, we encounter the first - and most unpleasant - obstacle of my commute: a ride on the sidewalk against oncoming traffic through a sea of construction debris.

For a time - while we still had to ride the wrong way on the sidewalk to get to the school - it wasn't unpleasant, as the sidewalks, as poorly maintained as they were, were usually free of debris and the only obstacles to avoid were the oncoming motorbikes riding the right way down the sidewalk. Now, as the houses along the sidewalks have been torn down, the sidewalks are literally covered with big blocks of jagged cement, broken glass, twisted metal, and all other manner of hazardous objects. If I were driving, I would either brave the road construction and take the long way to avoid this part, or I would - which I have done in the past - drive in the road along the sidewalk - the wrong way - for the short stretch of rubble strewn sidewalk and then ride back up on the sidewalk for the less precarious portion of the ride to the school. But I do not drive in the mornings, so Steven prefers to take us straight through the, now worn, path in the middle of the debris. Each time I squeeze my feet in as close to the bike as possible and hope the we make it through safely - which we always do.

Once at the school, Steven hands over the reins, I don my mask and I am off on my own. The second worst part of the trip is getting from Steven's school back to the bridge. At this time in the morning the busy thoroughfare is packed due to all of the construction. I usually stay in second or third gear and hug the sidewalk, even though there are more bumps and pot holes, because it keeps me out of the masses and a little closer to a source of less-polluted air.

Once at the bridge, men in slacks and ties, younger men in construction overalls, women in business suites, couples with young babies, and countless other Vietnamese on their way somewhere, fan out onto the wide expanse of the bridge and hasten their pace.

From the bridge, I cross over the divided, tree-lined street that brought Steven and me from home on to Le Than Ton, one of District One's most popular destinations, lined with upper-class restaurants of every persuasion, where I enjoy a more-or-less smooth ride, until I hit Hai Ba Trung where I must make a quick right onto the road which takes me all the way out of District 1, through District 3 and into the Phu Nhauh District where the VeT office is located. This part of my journey is spent mostly trying to avoid kids on bicycles who seem to feel themselves above the unwritten rules of the road, one of which includes driving more-or-less in a straight line and not weaving all over the road causing those around you to constantly break to avoid crashing into you. As environmentally friendly as they may be - bicyclists on the road are my nemesis.

Hai Ba Trung starts out in District One and, like the rest of the district, it is well paved, well maintained and lined with attractive buildings, shops and restaurants, but once it hits district 3, it is another story altogether.

Where Ha Ba Trung meets Dien Bien Phu, there is one of Ho Chi Minh's City's ubiquitous green construction fences surrounding one of many holes in the roads and blocking a large section of the lane of eastbound traffic. This leads to all of the eastbound traffic taking up the west bound lane, which leaves all of us westbound commuters routed up, over a broken sidewalk and into the parking lot of a park, which has become somewhat of a temporary replacement road, yet with none of the informal rules that lend themselves to driving on the regular roads. Once you hoist your bike up and over the curb into the park, you are often confronted with the impatient drivers of eastbound cars driving through the park on which ever side of the "road" the desire and also, often reducing the available space on the curb to the width of one motorbike causing a build up of motorbikes waiting to jump the broken curb to get into the park and around the construction barrier.

Once through the park, I drive back out onto the main road and continue a few intersections to my next obstacle. A short distance from Dien Bien Phu is a local market which causes its own distinct set of obstacles. Drivers leaving the market enter the road, again without lights or stop signs, merging into oncoming traffic, often with the intention of crossing to the other side of the road causing them to enter traffic at an angle and continue at an angle through the east bound traffic to the other side of the road. If you come upon a surge of income bikes just before or after their move, it is usually easy to speed up and ride in front of them or to slow down and swerve behind them, either way both avoiding them and the need to stop and wait for them to pass, as stopping in the middle of traffic is probably the most dangerous thing one can do, as it is just not done and therefor not expected by the countless riders behind you. The street in front of the market is also swarming with pedestrians either going to or from their morning shopping and must be avoided as they walk across the road. Finally, eastbound riders coming off the bridge from Phu Nhuan wanting to go to the market, often ride against traffic in the westbound lane to make their left turn into the market without having to cross oncoming traffic forcing westbound traffic to drive straight down the middle of the street between two streams of eastbound drivers. Through all of this, I am joined on the road by pedestrians, bicyclists, cyclo drivers, women pushing food carts, men on makeshift motorized vehicles transporting all manner of construction materials and bulk products, taxis, luxury cars (as most cars in the city are), hundreds of other motorbikes and the occasional bus.

Once past the market, I cross the bridge form Distrct 3 into Phu Nhuan and the first of my four Phu Nhuan construction fences. As by Dien Bien Phu, the fenced areas take up most of the road, leaving no eastbound lane and only a small rutted portion of the westbound lane. Luckily for us westbound commuters, the majority of the morning traffic on this stretch is westbound and those heading east simply ride on the sidewalk on the eastbound side of the fences.

Most days the only inconvenience caused by these fences is the need to slow down as the traffic clogs the narrow space left for us to ride and to avoid any bicycles, hand carts, cyclos or other manner of slow moving vehicles that happen to be going through at the same time.

After four fences, I make my turn onto VeT's road and drive through a mass of vehicles and pedestrians heading in all directions on the local street, up a few blocks to our alley, where I make a quick right and drive down the alley to the end, into VeT's courtyard, where my journey ends...until the drive home.

A year ago, I would make this morning commute with trepidation, but these days it is just another part of my life that once seemed strange but now seems normal. I realized just how normal, the other day as I was riding with one of my local co-workers and a visiting French staff member to lunch. We had come to a stop at a light, me on my bike and Thomas on the back of Ngoc's bike, when Thomas, looking out at the mass of pedestrians, bikes, cars and all other manner of assorted vehicles on the road, remarked, "This is crazy!" Immediately both Ngoc and I turned to him and said innocently, "What's crazy?"