Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham Page B

“Now, sit up straight. Don’t slouch. And put your hands on your knees. It’ll help you keep balanced. If you have to grab something, grab the seat. Just don’t grab me.”
    â€œYeah, right.” I don’t trust him and prepare to abandon ship at the first sign of an imminent hit. Twice motorbikes graze my legs. Within fifteen minutes, we see three accidents, one of which is serious, involving a cyclo and a motorcycle.
    The air becomes toxic, unbreathable as all of Saigon struggles to get home from schools, market, and work, and all the commerce from the rest of the country pours into the crazed streets. In their blue-and-white uniforms, children ant out from their school, eager to go home, to play. High school girls in their impeccable white ao dai uniforms, as pretty and perfect as unlit candles, wiggle their bicycles through snarls of minivans, construction rigs, eight-wheeler trucks, cars, and ox-drawn wagons. Construction workers push carts loaded with bricks and sand. Peasants ride motorbikes hitched to produce
carts. Pedestrians cross the roads in clusters, holding hands and eyeing the oncoming motorists, mincing through the mad roar slowly, careful to keep their profile to a minimum.
    The intersections are the worst, particularly for those who need to make a left. Traffic lights are rare. Where there is one, there is never a turn signal. When Viet wants to make a turn, he simply does it, plunges in ahead of the coming traffic, hoping that his timing is right so they don’t run us over. He goes into it, blasting his horn, dodging moving obstacles as aggressively as everyone else.
    At the free-for-all junctions, Viet waits until enough traffic going in our direction accumulates—this never takes more than ten or fifteen seconds—and moves forward with the flow when our team inches into the intersection. With such a large contingent, the cross traffic screeches to a halt to prevent collision. But close calls and accidents—if one can call them that—are common, so Viet instinctively worms into the center of the pack to minimize our chances of being hammered on either flank. Do it the Vietnamese way, he hollers at me. Let others take the risk. Travel on their lee and let them take the hits. It is more difficult than it sounds because everyone else uses the same principles. No one wants to get hit, but there’s always a hothead who happily leads the effort.
    We park the motorcycle in front of a fancy saloon. Viet hands over his motorcycle to an attendant like a cowboy handing over horse reins. He tosses the boy a dime bill and tells him to wipe down the seat. The boy mumbles, Yes, sir, hands Viet a numbered ticket, and walks the vehicle into the sidewalk parking lot, corralled off by ropes.
    Inside the bar, Viet introduces me to his friend Binh, a successful tour operator. I flag the waiter for a round of Saigon 333 Beer, a brew waterier than Coors. We start shelling boiled peanuts and exchanging jokes.
    Binh is a short, rotund man whose sun-dark face is even merrier than Viet’s. “So, Brother-friend, ” he drawls to me after the third round. “Brother Viet tells me you’re planning to ride your bicycle alone to Hanoi.” He eyes me closely . “True, no?”
    â€œFirst, I’m going to ride out to Vung Tau and sit on the beach. Then I’ll ride north to visit Phan Thiet, my hometown. From there, I’ll head north on
Highway 1 all the way to Hanoi. What do you think? You’re a tour guide, how’s the road to Hanoi?”
    â€œNot good. Very dangerous,” he replies. “ You know that’s seventeen hundred kilometers—over one thousand and two hundred of your American miles.”
    On cue, Viet asks his friend, “Don’t you have a group bike tour coming up in a few weeks?”
    â€œYes, I do. Maybe, you, Brother An, should join my group. I’m organizing a bike tour from Saigon to Hanoi for fifty-two