After the regimen of our air travel to Vietnam, the near-chaos of Ho Chi Min City traffic left a distinct impression. The enduring image is of a mother zooming through traffic on her scooter with one child riding pillion with a satchel under his arm and another, no more than two years old, in the petrol tank – both children quite asleep.
The only rule I could discern was, “Hold your course, no matter what; that way people can dodge around you without hitting you.”
We adopted this as a stratagem for making our way across the scooter-ridden streets and it seemed to work.
Despite the potential for so much to go wrong it seemed that little did, although we were later told the grim statistic of 10 000 annual road fatalities and countless injuries.
In daylight the cars and trucks were less menacing, and the next morning we took ourselves on a walking tour that took in the old French Colonial Post Office, Reunification Palace, War Relics Museum and Markets
