Learning how to ride a motorbike in Saigon

Saigon is a city of motorbikes. It’s impossible to talk about it without mentioning the swarms of bikes you encounter everywhere. They clog roads, sidewalks and even the home where they are parked inside for safekeeping. When our couchsurfing hosts told us we couldn’t have a true Saigon experience without a bike of our own, we threw caution to the wind and rented one.

The traffic in Saigon makes rush hour on the 405 look like a leisurely drive down a Vermont country road. Most visitors find crossing the street an exercise in sheer will – walk slowly across and pray as bikes come within inches of splattering you across the pavement.  So when I first saw the solid mass of motorbikes whizzing down every street, I couldn’t imagine keeping pace in such mayhem. Before getting on our wheels for the first time, we received the most important piece of advice from our host. Building from that, here is our survival guide for driving a motorbike in Saigon:

• Only worry about what is going on directly in front of you.
• Stay as close as you can to the bikes ahead, making the area you have to concentrate your attention on even smaller.
• Don’t worry about what’s going on to your left, right or behind you. Someone else is watching them for you.
• There is no such thing as cutting someone off. Just throw yourself into traffic without looking and count on the people behind you to compensate.
• Tossing out all previously learned driving skills and go against your survival instincts. Waiting for a gap to open is not an option – it will never happen.

Following these simple principles, you’ll discover that what was once an unmanageable mass of vehicles is actually a well orchestrated group effort, where everyone is literally watching the back of the person in front of them.

Having a bike in Saigon gave us the freedom to explore, ride around with our hosts and come and go as we wanted. Without wheels and our great couchsurfing experiences, Saigon could have easily felt like just another city –  instead, it felt like home for a few days. After navigating the hyphy streets of Saigon, I see a lot more bikes in our future. It can only get easier from here.