My Ho Chi Min City sabbatical continues...


This place is a mad town, and is truly the only place I've been scared to cross the road. There are eight million people, living in Saigon, and they all own at least three motor bikes, and they often ride more than one at a time.....

Think I'm jokin, don't ya.

I'm not. If you're into crazed motorbike action, this is your town… I bumped into a couple of kiwi girls last night I first met on a bus ride in Laos about a month ago. We decided to head out for a couple, and inadvertently drank extremely heavily. This morning, I was too drunk to walk the streets, as to stumble about half pissed in Saigon, is to take your life in your hands… I walked about half a kilometer, and after three near death experiences, decided I would be safer in a bar, where I had marginally less chance of getting T boned by an errant motorbike.

Saigon is a cataclysmic vortex of two stroke chaos you have to see to believe. I went on the back of motor bikes twice yesterday, and both times, we hit other bikes, but, stayed on two wheels. You just bash into other bikes, bounce off em and keep going. Its madness.

I was on the back of a Vietnamese photographers bike the other night. He's a local, and so for him it was just a walk in the park. Sweet Jesus what an experience. Keeping right is not really a rule, more, a theory, which occasionally comes into play. This is especially relevant when crossing a road, as truth be known, you can be hit from a bike coming in any direction. To exacerbate this dilemma, the bikes blatantly on the wrong side of the road, are usually going flat stick, so they're not there for too long. They zap out of laneways etc, and you just don't see them. I saved Veronique from certain injury the other day. This maniac on a Honda Dream nearly cut her in half, she was looking totally the other way, which happened to be the right way, based on the premise that people keep left. And a bike shot out of traffic going past like a speed addled salmon on a death wish. All the bikes were going one way, except for this nut. I yanked Veronique back just as she was stepping into his path. It was touch and go. The injury you'd cop in an impact like that would be nasty; they'd hit you side on, and totally fold your legs. And once you're down, there are a few million bikes still coming. Seriously, you'd be lucky to find your patella in the ensuing melee....

Yes, so crossing the street, peak hour in Saigon, is no mean feat. You either proceed with total caution, and if a bike is coming straight for you with a rider looking indecisive, stand still, and point where the bike should go; you can end up looking quite suave if pull this off right. You raise your arm to a level with your eye, and then in the nanosecond you get the riders attention, you smoothly feign you're drawing a line on the road, on your left, or right side, depending on the safest rout for the bike. The rider will invariably grin and shake their head at this idiotic westerner, and follow your instruction with a smile and a blast of fiery Vietnamese invective as they hurtle by. It looks quite stupid on occasion, but I reckon it works.

If all this sounds too complicated, do as the locals do. Just wade into the traffic and hope for the best. Sometimes watching the locals cross the road you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching a suicide attempt. They seem utterly oblivious to the swirling two stroke peril that surrounds them. I've repeatedly gone to weird and dangerous lengths in my pursuit of the photograph that articulates this swirling two stroke madness. This has involved getting out amongst the peak hour traffic with nothing more than a Nikon and a death wish. A few days ago, I noticed two American tourists filming me. Serious… They were fat fiftyish pasty blobs of things and seemed to find my actions fascinating. And when I looked their way they laughed and waved delightedly at me, like I was some sort of circus freak… And all I was trying to do was get a few shots. I didn't mind the locals laughing at me. No, I'm an idiot in their country, and should be laughed at accordingly. But these fat bastards were tourists. I wonder what they say as they bore all their in-laws stupid showing them the footage of the suicidal photographer they gawked at in Saigon…

Eventually I had had enough of being their vicarious entertainment for one day. "Fuck you, you fat American fucks, fuck off", I shrieked repeatedly at them over the roar of traffic, gesturing at them contemptuously…

I must be said, that given the cachaphonous two strike din, it was highly unlikely they could hear a word of my rant, however some Vietnamese, on bikes, couldn't miss it.

The nodded grimly, whilst hurtling by.

Charlie knew what was going on.

I had found a tasty photographic locale opposite a market in district one where six roads all intersected, with a little battle scared concrete island in the middle. Just getting to this island was death defying, and once peak hour was in full swing, there was no way I was leave it without running the gauntlet of the traffic… I just hung out in the middle of the chaos and shot some panning shots as the millions of Vietnamese hurtled on by. You should have seen the looks I was getting as I leaned out into the traffic and panned my gaffer taped Nikon at them. And when I say them, I'm often talking about whole families. Its insane, on a 125 cc scooter, these guys can fit five or six members of their family, and the groceries. And they still duck and weave through traffic with stylish elan…

I ended up on this island between 4 30 and 6 30 PM three night running, and on the third evening, a lot of the riders seemed to recognized me, with quite a few doing a few laps and eventually pulling up alongside the island to say G'day and ask what the fuck I thought I was doing.

I love these guys, they're the only Asians I've met who seem to have a keen sense of Western humour and irony. They would ask "What are you doing" with a quizzical look on their faces. I would just laugh before I tried to answer. Then they would laugh too, and shake their heads. We both knew how stupid I looked, but they were trying to get past this, to get to the bottom of my activities. In other places, in the eyes of locals, idiotic behavior can somehow lose its humour. Not here, no, I find a very Western edge to the Vietnamese mind… And when I tried to explain, they were truly interested.

Last night, the guy fixing my 120 camera rode up to my little concrete island with his wife to say hello. He had seen my mini portfolio in the repair shop and liked my photo's there, and now, here I was, in the middle of the street clicking away. He was fascinated. I have no idea how these shots are going to look, as I can't say I've shot motorbikes en mass before, however I've incorporated a few techniques that always bode well for rock and roll photography…

I seem to find my self on the great ten shots a decade photo odyssey that every decent photographer's got to drive themselves along with if they want their work to remain relevant. And for all the photographic majesty of Saigon and its crazed bike culture, I'm not remotely confident of getting a definitive shot. A shot that captures something that almost overwhelms my senses. Jesus, have I ever taken a shot that overwhelms anyone's senses… I doubt it… And that doesn't make the task I've set myself here any easier. I wandered miles yesterday, and ended up on a bridge crossing the river, and leading into District Four. A district all and sundry have told me to avoid at all costs. It was a striking scene, and the cloud structure was insane. I paced about, looking for the angle, to get a representative shot. Eventually in frustrated desperation, I threw my camera bag up onto a concrete platform that led up to the best position of elevation I could see, then climbed up there. Getting there entailed walking about fifteen feet across a wall, with a five metre drop on one side, and a thirty metre plummet the other. Many locals stared, nodded, and laughed with a vague understanding. It was weird. When I finally got up there, the shot was, well, the best I was gonna get, but it just wasn't 'the' shot. So I just sat up there, in the 40 degree plus tropical heat, and watched the traffic roar by. I'd been shooting traffic stuff for almost four weeks now. I've only shot four rolls, but then, I've discovered I'm not a particularly loose shooter, which has probably got nothing to do with my photographic technique, and is just another manifestation of my tightarse backpacker mentality…

So I just sat there, and tried to figure out which angle I'd missed. Slow shutter, fast shutter, pan and blur, pan with rear sync flash, 400 speed HP4, 50 ISO pan F, 120 format, 35mm, 20mm to 200mm focal length, filters, yellow, red, or polarizer, shoot from the gutter, shoot from the hip or shoot from elevation… Dawn, dusk or mid day… Anyone who's ever shot in a madly built up city will know mid day can be the only time to get decent light in the rabbits warren of laneways. I'd even manages to source a 16mm 2.8 Nikon fisheye in one of the insanely well stocked camera stores in District One. I was foolish, and didn't conceal the glint of anticipation in my eye, and my Vietnamese photo friend didn't miss it either. Fifty US dollars for one days rental, was his price, as I tried to work a deal, his delight was all encompassing. It was one of those uncorrected little mind benders that could just the thing I need…. He smelt my desperation. Fifty dollars it was…

It rained while I was out there shooting pics off my little concrete island last night, and I witnessed the weirdest thing; you'd go to Saigon to see this alone. It started raining around five, one of those classic torrential monsoon downpours, and within twenty seconds of the first drop hitting the road, traffic stopped completely. Everyone pulled over, or just stopped where they were, and grabbed their raincoats. For about thirty seconds I would say ninety percent of riders were stationary. And, within a minute, they were all underway again with no noticeable drop in speed clad in their raincoats. It was like watching a huge urban ballet go from frenzy, to lull, to frenzy again. And then the light really opened up as the sun shone through the clouds onto the wet roads. Saw a couple of decent stacks too as traction went out the window.

And when the suns set on traffic photography, well, its time for a drink. My economy drive re beer continues. As per most places in Asia, the beer is never that cheap. Unless you really shop around; and by shop around, I don't mean just note prices in hotels... No, for the sort of bargaineering I've been up to in the beverage stakes, you've got to take geographics into account. Through days of uneasily slinking down dodgy lane ways, and skulking about the market scene, I've discovered the local, draught beer. Now, this is something of a misnomer, as its not really draught beer at all; it was, draught beer.

The Vietnamese have pioneered a new lager technology. It's simple. They pour draught beer into any obscure container the vendor provides, then said vendor on sells it, by the litre. Brilliant. Unfortunately, you're never sure how old the beer is you're buying. Usually you end up with a listless, flat brew, varying slightly in colour, and varying enormously in aftertaste, from one vendor to the next. Depending on the hygiene level of the container, before filling, the texture of the beer can also display marked variety. Sometimes, it's as clear as day, with no incumbent residue to speak of. Other times, you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd just picked up a bottle of cold tom yum soup...

Its called "beer hai", and I've been drinking quite a lot of it; oddly enough, I'm polishing of a litre now. The above, relates to the characteristics of a fresh batch of beer hia i.e. you've struck a vendor who has recently filled their container up, and has a fair beer turnover. Vendors new to the beer hai game should be treated with a fair degree of caution. I stumbled across a sly grog vendor the other night, and was pleasantly surprised by his competitive rate, and ordered a litre of beer accordingly. However, when the lager arrived, it had the bouquet of a formula one pit lane. All across Vietnam you see people selling petrol in plastic containers to motorists, this bloke had obviously decided, mid morning, there was a better margin in beer than fuel and had upgraded his product range to reflect this. The beer was putrid, a petrochemical / hops cocktail; I struggled to finish it.

The worst scenarios occur when you get an "aged litre". I won't give a detailed run down, suffice to say, its best to cut your losses, insult the vendor as gently as possible, and split. Naturally, you pay for the beer.
You just don't drink it.

Mw