Crazy Ride Through the City

We took a nap our first day here but still crashed early due to jet lag. We woke up rather early in traditional Vietnamese style and saw the sunrise at 6am. By late morning, we were sitting at a street coffee shop wondering how we should spend the day. Since the thousands of motos on the street are Saigon's defining visual, Peter came up with the brilliant idea of renting a moto ourselves.

The best way I can describe how motos drive on the street is by comparing that traffic to the microscopic footage we all saw in high school biology class of red blood cells crazily pumping through a vein, not at all fazed by the near misses they have with each other.

"Are you sure you can handle the traffic here?" I asked incredulously.

"Sure, no problem!" Peter answered confidently.

I was still was not convinced but I'm always up for an adventure, so I agreed. We found a hotel that rented motos for US$6 per day, but they needed our passports to release them. Our passports were on lock up at our own hotel, so we had to hire moto drivers to take us across town, pick up our passports and return us to the hotel that was renting the motos.





Upon completing the transaction, Peter sat down on the bike and the confidence that was on his face disappeared faster than a bottle of Absolut at open bar. Watch for yourself:



He chickened out fast.

We both had our hearts set on moto-ing across the city at this point, so we hired a couple of drivers to take us around the city for an hour and see the sights. Honestly, we didn't even care about the sights -- although apparently we saw quite a few -- like this one at Reunification Hall:





The exciting part was weaving in and out of Saigon traffic like we were in the middle of the chase scene from Bullet. (I shot a ton of footage from the bike. I'll edit it together when I am back stateside. Check back here then for a glimpse of our wild ride.)

By the time our hour and a half tour was over, I was totally bow legged from straddling the seat for so long. Strangely, we were both exhausted. I'm not sure why, since it's not like we were running or anything.




After some lunch and sitting out a brief downpour over a Tiger beer (a Thai brand), we returned to our hotel room for a little nap. 12 hours later, we both woke up and realized the sun would be rising in a little under two hours.

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Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, begins tonight at sundown. I haven't gone to temple in several years, but this year I AM going. Angor Wat Temple -- one of the most famous temples on Planet Earth -- is just outside Siem Riep, Cambodia, and we are catching a flight there this afternoon.