Saigon cyclogeography – then and now…
No one could ever describe Ho Chi Minh City as a ‘bike friendly’ town but, alas, Saigon was once exactly that – let's take a spin through history from 1949 to the present day...
“And you would be flabbergasted at the number of bicycles that are half human, almost half man, half partaking of humanity…” ~ Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman
Saigon, 1949.
DEEP WITHIN AN INNER CITY WARD (pick a ward, any ward will do…), a young boy sits idly in a doorway among a skein of alleyways, wishing he had someone to play with. But it’s after midday, a time when it feels like the whole city has slid into a post-meridian slumber. So, the boy wanders down the laneway, kicking the dust up with his feet, only to hear the tintinnabulation of a ding-a-ling bell and, when he looks up, he sees his father riding high, and wearing a wide grin, on a fetching French bicycle…
‘Troi oi! Ba oi, did you buy a bicycle?! Is it really ours?”
His father gracefully slows to a halt while lifting his right leg over the frame. Then with one hand he pats the saddle to demonstrate his ownership. When neighbours – stirred by the boy’s giddy peals of delight – appear in their respective doorways, they each take turns congratulating the boy’s father, who has saved up for months to purchase this splendid steed1.
For a few weeks, the boy doesn’t dare to even ask if he can sit in the saddle, let alone take a spin, although he knows how to ride a bike. But one day, when his father comes home to eat lunch and take a nap, the boy can’t resist. He wheels the bicycle out into the alley. The frame is too high for him, so he puts his foot on one pedal and sticks his leg through the gap in the middle. It’s an awkward stance but he’s done this with other adult bikes and he’s quickly upright and pedalling down the alleyway and soon, without originally intending to do so, he exits the ward into a city that now seems wide open. The boy knows his father will be furious if he finds out about this escapade, but for a few minutes, the boy dares himself not to care. He cycles through the sunshine and into the shade beneath the long slender trees; he feels a breeze blowing through his floppy hair – at one stage he even manages to overtake a horse-drawn carriage – and as he hurries home, hoping to get there before anyone notices he’s gone, this boy can’t imagine anyone ever being this happy…
[INSERT AUDIO OF A LONG NEEDLE SCRATCH HERE]
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IT’S HARD TO FATHOM FOR ANYONE that has only ever known Ho Chi Minh City in the 21st century, but Saigon used to be defined by its cyclists, according to the journalist Pham Cong Luan, who wrote about his hometown’s on-and-off relationship with the bicycle in one of his many Saigon-focused books. In the 1930s there was even a sign that read: “Piste réservée pour cyclistes” where Rue Nancy (Nguyen Van Cu) met Rue Galliéni (present day Tran Hung Dao). Yeah, this city had cycle paths … well, on one road anyway.
According to Luan, in the late 40s owning a splendid bicycle was each Saigonese kid’s dream, and the 50s were the heyday of the bike in Saigon, a time when every household, rich or poor, owned at least one set of wheels (the most prized bicycles were French brands like Reynolds, Royal Stella, and Peugeot). Ah, just picture the beauty of the morning commute, when the sunlight in Saigon is soft and vague, as a peloton of civil servants, university students and high school pupils all pedalled and glided down one tree-lined street or another. Adding to the elegance of this imagined scene, for those wearing an ao dai (long silk dress), there was a bicycle with a special design – “a colourful knitted mesh that covers half of the rear wheel” – so their silken tails didn’t get caught up in the spokes. And at night? With a dynamo, or two, attached to their bikes, the cyclists collectively lit up the roads as they each wound their way home (Luan recalls one uncle of his that fitted one bicycle up with at least a dozen lights). And for those who had a little leisure time on their hands, owning a bicycle, for the first time in their lives, enabled them to take the long way home, or traverse the town on a whim, visiting neighbourhoods where they don’t live, and where they don’t work, allowing them to feel the pleasure of cycling simply for the sake of cycling and the joy of spontaneous urban exploration.
“Since their invention in the mid-Victorian era, bicycles have been associated with freedom allowing previously immobile groups of people to become self-propelled and socially mobile, to discover the landscapes they inhabit.” ~ Jon Day, ‘Cyclogeography’
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SO WHAT HAPPENED? Well, the 60s arrived. The Americans, too. Of course the French had brought a fair few cars and introduced buses, as well as an automated biped (the iconic Vélo Solex), but the Americans fast-tracked Saigon’s transformation from a mellow tropical garden city into a smoggy, motorised town. By 1967, not only were there military vehicles barreling around but Chevrolets, Chryslers, Mercedes Benz, Volkswagens, Triumphs (and, more alarmingly, white men in sport shirts and drip-dry pants). “The American soldier, bumping along in a jeep or a military truck, resents seeing all those Asiatics at the wheels of new Cadillacs,” the journalist Mary McCarthy observed in ‘67, along with billboards advertising Triumphs, Thunderbirds, MG’s, Corvettes (‘For Delivery here or Stateside, Payment on Easy Terms’) while scores of locals buzzed around on Hondas and Lambrettas… 2
Surveying the scene, after getting stuck in a traffic jam, and trying to get over the culture shock she felt from being in what looked like an American city (‘a stewing Los Angeles, shading into Hollywood, Venice Beach, and Watts’), McCarthy, like so many of us have done in Saigon, couldn't help feeling a sense of loss over a former version of the city, one that she had never seen or experienced, but still yearned for: “Even removing the sandbags and the machine guns, and restoring the trees that have been chopped down to widen the road to the airport, the mind cannot excavate what Saigon must have been like ‘before’.”
And for good measure, here’s the journalist Jon Swain’s first impression of Saigon, after stepping off the hot tarmac of Tan Son Nhat in 1970 (when T.S.N. was one of the world’s busiest airports): “Saigon, once the languid Paris of the Orient, was a frenzied place by comparison to the Phnom Penh I had left behind. Americans were everywhere. The streets stank of exhaust fumes, choked by an endless torrent of motorbikes, army lorries, cars, jeeps, cyclos, buses, American embassy cars and little blue-and-yellow Renault taxis…”3 Which is just another description that would make me think twice about pre-ordering ‘Day trip to Groovy Saigon’ whenever I get my subscription to the metaverse and a pair of VR goggles.
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“The bicycle […] allows the rider to sail past pedestrian eyes and be overlooked by motorised travellers. The cyclist, thus, possesses an extraordinary power: he is invisible.” ~ Valeria Luiselli, ‘Manifesto à Velo’
THE BICYCLE WOULD HAVE A RENAISSANCE IN SAIGON. According to Pham Cong Luan, it became a leading mode of transport for adults and, especially, students, when the price of gasoline in the period after 1972 began to rise4. And as a result of Saigon’s demoralised economic fortunes, the bicycle would continue to be a common mode of transport for many, through the late 70s and the ‘80s – friends who visited or came to live in the early 90s, recall bicycles (and xich lo) being far more prominent on the streets. But the bicycle’s glory days had obviously passed. By then every household dreamed of having a motorbike (or two), just as nowadays many dream of having a car in what is one of the most revved-up cities in the world – statistics vary (that’s a disclaimer) but last year it was reported that Ho Chi Minh City had 8.8 million registered vehicles, including nearly 900,000 cars, but as more vehicles pour into the city from other provinces, we can assume that on any given day, there could be over a million cars and over nine million motorbikes clogging up the streets…
Which might make someone think: who would willingly cycle in such a city?
“The cyclist is his own gyroscope. He produces not only movement but equilibrium. The faster he turns his legs the more harmonious this equilibrium becomes: he’s spinning.” ~ Paul Fournel, ‘Need for the Bike’
WHEN I FIRST MIGRATED SOUTH to Ho Chi Minh City in 2012, I never noticed anyone cycling around town for the fun of it. Every cyclist I saw had a purpose and/or cycled out of economic necessity. Pupils pedalling home from school; home-cooks bound for the nearest wet market; single-item vendors selling banh mi, flowers from the Central Highlands, or seasonal fruits from the Mekong Delta, and the odd forlorn scrap picker. At lunchtime, I spotted more than one dextrous fellow balancing bowls of hu tieu, or some other noodle soup, on a tray over his head (a very local style of ‘delivery’ service).5 And at night sometimes I’d see (and hear) a đấm bóp dạo (a cycling masseur) roving the streets while jangling a set of keys to attract customers.
As my network expanded, I did meet some expats with bicycles. But they weren’t casual cyclists. They were (sorry fellas) MAMILs (middle-aged men in lycra), who jumped into the saddle more to escape, not explore, the city. I now know there were others taking a more leisurely spin around town. It’s just I was blind to the concept. For years, I rode a gas-guzzling Vespa PX 150, adding to the noise and air pollution, and even when the Vespa died (after years of neglect), I never considered buying a bicycle, opting to jump on the back of a Grab moto for short hops, or into a taxi for longer rides.
But then a global pandemic came along, and for a while we were all free to roam in Ho Chi Minh City, but there wasn’t really anywhere to go (gyms, cinemas, etc, were all shuttered; cafes/ restaurants had been reduced to doing deliveries). So I bought a seven-speed Townie (in a city without a single hill, this is all you require). I also got some lights and a helmet, but no lycra – as the musician David Byrne, a keen urban cyclist, remarks in his ‘Bicycle Diaries’: ‘You don’t really need the spandex.’ Then every evening (when temperatures usually drop to around 30 degrees Celsius, or lower if you are lucky), I pedalled around in no particular direction, taking great pleasure from being able to alleviate my cabin fever. And sure, I was happy to burn a few calories along the way, but the impact on my mental health far outweighed the physical benefits, and I soon started to wonder why I hadn’t thought of buying a bike before (forgetting that the congestion-free streets I was navigating were an aberration).
“The bike is a good place to work for a writer. First, he can sit down; then he’s surrounded by windy silence, which airs out the brain and is favourable to meditation.” ~ Paul Fournel, ‘Need for a Bike’
I WASN’T THE ONLY ONE trying to cycle my way out of the (soft) lockdown blues. Bicycle sales in Ho Chi Minh City surged at this time. And with far less automated vehicles around (no buses, no trucks, no taxis, etc), everyone who roamed around got a glimpse at what a bike-friendly environment can do for a city (even this city). Every time I cycled alongside the Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe canal, a 9-kilometre-long, breezy waterway that snakes across the city, I saw clusters of cyclists, and solo cyclists, too, who like me were making the most of the relatively light traffic. In December, 2021 the city’s first-ever bike sharing program (TNGO) was also launched and with the help of TikTok/ Instagram, it was pretty popular with young Vietnamese, who were, for a period, happy to play tourist in their own town. But these were, I suspect, passing fads for many. Judging by this last dry season, when daytime temperatures soared to 40 degrees, the majority of TNGO bikes in District 1 sat motionless, baking in the sun – a reminder that a tropical city with negligible shade is not bike-friendly. And I can’t be sure of the cycling habits of others who purchased bicycles during the pandemic, but most of my neighbours, now that the traffic has returned to full throttle, seemingly stick to doing laps of the apartment-villa complex where they live (the more adventurous might cycle over the Saigon river to take a spin in Thu Thiem, where there is more space in certain underdeveloped parts, or Sala, a tranquil urban zone that feels safe for cyclists of all ages)…
Since the traffic returned to pre-Pandemic levels, I have continued to cycle across town, although my routes and habits had to change – no more freewheeling down Dong Khoi to the Saigon river, or circling a desolate Ben Thanh Market. It’s impossible to avoid major streets on any crosstown cycle but you never have to go far before there’s an opportunity to slip into a side-road, backstreet or, best of all, an alleyway where the four-wheelers can’t follow. And on pretty much every aimless exploration, I find something. Something that I didn’t know I was looking for, something like this ultra mellow neighbourhood backstreet…
Definition of a ‘cycleur’: ‘A person who has discovered cycling to be an occupation with no interest in ultimate outcomes…. [and who] knows he/she possesses a strange freedom which can only be compared with thinking or writing.” ~ Valeria Luiselli, ‘Manifesto A Velo’
WHEN LOOPING AROUND THE CITY (I usually cycle for an hour and a bit, rarely more than two), my thoughts are often clarified, and if I am really lucky, the ending to a story like this one starts to materialise (or at least seem within reach). And sometimes I don’t think about much. I just enjoy the spin for what it is. It can be a meditative experience, but only in spurts. Because, in Ho Chi Minh City, you really do have to keep your wits about you when in the saddle. Over the last three years or so, I’ve had a few hairy moments, here and there, and I have also been guilty of going too fast in the wrong places, and the righteous aggression I used to feel so routinely as a motorcyclist in Hanoi (regrets? I have a few…) has on occasion flickered (for example, when a SUV, slaloming taxi or bus has bullied me onto a pavement). But more often than not, I find that cycling reminds me that I am fond of my surroundings, and that even a city as large and diverse as Ho Chi Minh – forever described as ‘frenetic’ and congested, and routinely hyped up by realtors and investors as a city of towering skyscrapers and luxury condos – can also be defined by its calmness or mellow evenings in one neighbourhood or another. And while I can’t be sure it will work for everyone, my hunch is that cycling down a street like Suong Nguyet Anh with its long slender cay nau (Hollong trees) or Tu Xuong with its plush garden villas, right as the sun has started to fade, and the skyline is tinged with a pink, ephemeral glow, might just cheer up even the grumpiest of old bastards.
“Cycling, like writing, forces you to think not just in terms of individual steps but in terms of conjunctions, routes and structures: how and to get from here and there? How will I get to the end?” ~ Jon Day, ‘Cyclogeography.’
BUYING A BIKE IN HO CHI MINH CITY CHANGED MY LIFE. It really did. But don’t mistake this for a manifesto or some kind of evangelical persuasion. I’m not here to tell you that cycling is an ‘act of defiance’, or to echo the words of Mark Twain, who upon discovering the pleasures of pedalling around, proclaimed to the world: “Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.”6 Because, the roads in this city are dangerous, not just for cyclists, but for everyone on two wheels. Just the other day, while mulling this essay over in my head, or trying to remember where I’d had a killer bowl of Mì hoành thánh7 in the side streets off Vo Van Tan, I made the mistake of cycling through central District 1 at 8pm, and it wasn’t so pleasant, and when trying to cross Cách Mạng Tháng Tám, one of the most feral thoroughfares for traffic in town, someone drove over my foot. I also wouldn’t want to be responsible for introducing an aggro expat cyclist to the streets lest they start tilting at the windmills to right all the wrongs they see on the road. One pal who said he did buy a bicycle, somewhat inspired by knowing I cycled everywhere, admitted he had too many North American biker’s rights in his head when trying to get from A to B. Personally, I try (without always succeeding) to follow the lead of the Vietnamese urban cyclists I see, all of whom appear to be accepting of the chaos that swirls around them [Noteworthy: unlike my hometown Dublin, there is, as far as I can tell, zero “Cyclist versus Motorist” civil strife in traffic, despite the complete lack of infrastructure for protecting cyclists. In other words, Vietnamese cyclists are enhancing the harmony on the roads, not battling for it, and well as the old poem goes: If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you…]
But, if I have gone too far and now you wish to explore Saigon’s older districts on a bike, please just remember patience is required. For starters you would be well advised to wait for the sun to start its descent. For six to seven months of the year, the rains will be a deterrent too (don’t worry, the showers come and then they go, and post-deluge, the city will be cool and fresh and beautiful). And if you want my opinion, there is no need for apps that track where you go, and you don’t need a speedometer, or a mapped itinerary of any kind. All you have to do is get in the saddle and follow your instincts. Pick a ward, any ward will do, and pedal toward it, enjoying the sense of equilibrium you feel as a human gyroscope, spinning freely. And whenever the opportunity presents itself, slip into the backstreets – if the four-wheelers can’t follow, all the better. From there, should you come to a fork in the road, well, just take it. And as you pedal through one mellow Saigonese neighbourhood, or another, perhaps one you had never previously visited, exchanging hullos with the kids running along the alleyway, or the punters having a beer outside their own homes, or perhaps just furtively soaking up all the low-key wonder of the place, you might realise that you do have one regret — that you didn’t start doing this years ago.
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This section of fiction is inspired by Pham Cong Luan’s uncle’s recollections. Luan is a prolific writer and has published a multitude of books about Saigon. Unfortunately they’re not translated although even if you don’t speak Vietnamese, some of the illustrated works can make for nice coffee table books.
Mary McCarthy’s reports from Vietnam were published in 1968 by The New York Review of Books.
From ‘River of Time’, Swain’s memoir of working as a journalist in Indochina.
In 1973-1974, Bastos (a tobacco company) organised a race for men and women in the Nguyen Hue - Bach Dang Wharf area. The ulterior motive was advertising a new filter cigarette – during the race, the company distributed free cigarettes to spectators and cars with loudspeakers escorted the cyclists, not to supply drinks or help repair punctures, but to promote the new product.
Part of this section was originally written for ‘The Monocle Companion: Fifty Ways for a Better World’ (2023).
From Twain’s short piece of non fiction, ‘Taming the bicycle’
A dumpling noodle soup.
There are at least three đấm bóp dạo who still frequent the Phạm Ngũ Lão ward of Saigon's D1.