Hot, Wet And Noisy - I Love It!

Having got through immigration and collected my luggage, I made my way to the exit (half expecting to be asked for my boarding pass again) and was met by a wall of noise, people, heat and humidity and a bank of Vietnamese women all demanding that you take their tour bus/taxi/shuttle/hotel etc quoting all the prices for everything at record speed in Vietnamese dong, Malaysian ringget and $US! Welcome to Vietnam! 

A far cry from the relative genteel-ness of Malaysia...Rather shell-shocked, I ordered my taxi from one of the fierce women in the the ticket office outside the terminal and was lead by the hand by this very lovely woman to my taxi driver.

I really was not prepared for the complete contrast to where I had just arrived from: people everywhere, mopeds everywhere, noise everywhere, madness everywhere! And all in the torrential rain. He drove me the seven kilometres to my hotel on the Saigon River, very slowly through the moped-congested streets and I am glad I didn’t hire any transport – I thought the roads in Kuala Lumpur were crazy – they are positively tranquil compared to this apparent carnage! 

The rain is pissing down as we make our way along the streets and I soon realise that this carnage has some order to it. You just don’t stop and everything flows as one almighty moving, beeping and honking motorised-cum-pedestrianised beast – everything on the streets is traffic. There are some traffic lights to give you a chance at moving at some of the larger junctions (though it does seem that these are largely ignored) and the scene is extraordinary – hundreds of mopeds gather at the lights and are all geared up to bomb off as soon as the lights change.

It’s quite difficult to describe this atmosphere – photos and words just won’t do it justice, so I attempt to use my iPod nano to record the goings on – though I expect that it still won’t really capture the true essence. I can't seem to load it here, so I've linked to it on my Facebook page until I work out how to embed it here properly...

Beep Beep Beep BEEP BEEEEEEEEP!