Motorworld by Jeremy Clarkson Page B

people have mopeds, if there were to be an accident, we’d be fine.
    Then there were the traffic lights – a graphic indication that Saigon is moving with the times. However, though they have been installed and are working, no one has explained to the locals that red means stop or that green means go. To our driver, and to all the other four million people in Saigon, they’re just pretty lights on poles which have no meaning.
    By the time we hit the Rex Hotel it was nearly midnight but we were wide awake. So we went to the Q Bar.
    And then we went to a dive full of Australians called Apocalypse Now. And then the Caravelle. And then some place where we sat on the floor and another place where we fell on the floor. And then we started to wonder if it was worth going to bed because it was only an hour until we’d have to get up.
    So we had a cyclo race instead. The cyclo is a bicycle at the back and an armchair at the front. You, the big nose, sit in the chair while Charlie sits on the saddle, pedalling you hither and thither. To go across town costs about three pence.
    However, if you splash out, your chauffeur will pedalfaster which, of course, leads to a silent version of Formula One. The person with the most money wins the race.
    There was something rather colonial about sitting there, cross-legged as a local pedalled as fast as he could to try and catch up with the cameraman. But it wasn’t until we found ourselves going six abreast down Saigon’s equivalent of Regent Street that I started to ask myself a big question.
    What kind of a country is this?
    If you can think of any other big city in the world where you could race in such a way, please let me know because, for damn sure, I’ve never been there.
    Vietnam is relaxed because it hasn’t really been exposed to the full horror of the Western tourist yet.
    You are occasionally pestered by street urchins who are trying to sell godawful postcards and I was pickpocketed once. But even though sex is very openly for sale, don’t be mistaken: this is not like anywhere else in Southeast Asia.
    Because the Americans have been kept out for so long, there’s no McDonald’s, no pavement Coca-Cola dispensers and no one has been exposed to the violence of Hollywood. There are no gangs, and no one wears their baseball cap back to front.
    You pay for everything with dollars but the government is trying to stop that. Under pressure from the idiots at the World Bank, steps are being taken to reintroduce the ridiculous dong.
    This is a currency that makes the lira look sensible. To buy a street vendor’s postcard, you need a shoebox full of the stuff. To buy an authentic wartime Zippo lighter,you’d need a Sherpa van to carry the cash. Oh, but don’t be tempted, because on the bottom of a real Zippo you’ll find it was made in Bradford, Pennsylvania.
    On the bottom of the Vietnamese equivalent, which is scarred and battered to give that ‘I’ve been through hell’ look, it says, ‘Rocky. Made in Japan.’ Western tourists are stupid but I fear even Wilbur and Myrtle will see through this ruse.
    They will, however, be impressed by the products of what was Vietnam’s first car factory. Tucked away in a jungle ten miles from Saigon is a hut where 30 shoeless women and children sit in silence all day, chopping up beer and soda cans which are then bent and folded to become model helicopters, cars and trucks.
    And they’re brilliant. I have a Citroën Traction Avant which, in a former life, was a Heineken can. The cameraman paid the designer £5 to make a model of his camera. The guy was a genius but his biggest problem was a complete lack of artwork to copy.
    When the producer gave him a dozen copies of
Top Gear Magazine
, stuffed full of pictures of Lamborghinis and Ferraris, he squeaked like a baby. I swear if we’d have given him a million pounds he’d have been less delighted.
    But then again, when he gets some Seven-Up Diablos out on the streets, he’ll have a damn