Complicated traffic - Saigon, Vietnam

Motorcycles in Saigon

Traffic in Vietnam is a rather complicated matter, especially when it comes to motorcycles. When you have to face it while crossing a road at the beginning you might feel that what you are about to take on is an impossible deed. Then you put together all the useful virtues that you are equipped with: intuition, quick reflexes, previous experience in similar situations. And don't forget a massive dose of folly. So you take the first step. Every move must be accurately weighed: you can't afford any gross mistake, as you would immediately be run over; the minor ones can always be fixed with a sudden jump or an acrobatic number. Every single progression must be planned and measured with care as for timing, speed and maximum length. At the right time in fact it's necessary to resist the temptation of greed, content oneself with the space left behind, stop (even in the middle of the road) and immediately focus on the next try, just like in an American football game.

A pedestrian who dives into a typical continuous flux of motorbikes in Saigon must move in a resolute way, perfectly cutting in between the wake of the bike that just went by and the path of the one that is about to come, looking the opponent straight in the eyes. The motorcyclists, in fact, must understand at once the intentions of those who are crossing the road. Every advance must be carried out quickly but without sudden starts, which would inevitably puzzle those who have to decide without hesitation whether they should drive their bike behind or in front of us.

However, pedestrians are only one part of the problem after all: the unbroken sequence of zig-zags, abrupt braking and sudden side moves make it very likely for bikes to crash against one another.

On my first night in Saigon, ten years after my last visit, during the exploratory walk that I always take to get acquainted with a city, when I have already witnessed the usual pathetic squabble with insults and off-target slaps between an English speaking tourist and a local fake T-shirt seller I finally come across the scene that since the very first step out of the airport one keeps wondering why he has so far failed to see. Two motorbikes are leaning on the middle of a street while a bunch of people are forming a circle around a poor devil who is sitting on the asphalt holding his head. There is a puddle of blood between his legs. Fortunately everybody understands at once that it's just a scratch between his temple and eyebrow, nothing serious. The onlookers start to busy themselves with acts of solidarity both quick and extremely sensible. Obviously everybody here is used to this kind of operations. Without panic and confusion, following a surprisingly appropriate sequence, different people bring to the unlucky fellow tissues, water and finally band-aids. The poor guy's mood gradually changes: from stunned and desperate he becomes lucid and calm. When someone tries to tell a joke he laughs with everybody else. The guy who hit his bike offers him a cigarette: he takes it and the general burst of laughter that follows marks the end of this little drama. The injured guy stands up, starts his bike and leaves while everybody is still smiling: nobody complained, checked for damage or tried to obtain compensation.

A minor drama typical of this place, that the traffic of Saigon - like those old AKs that lie dusted and rusted in the Vietnam war museums - blasts away at its residents every day.

A couple of videos on the subject that I took in Saigon.

1. Chaotic traffic at a crossroads

2. Heavy traffic at twilight

Asian street characters

A patient of a large mental hospital is looking outside from behind the gate. He plucks up courage, stops a passer by and asks him: "Excuse me, just a question, how many of you live inside that place?"

Old funny story about points of view

Let's start with Kuala Lumpur.

The first one is an Indian man, bare chested, flapping pants made of light fabric, no shoes. His hair is long and ruffled, his skin is dark - Tamil chromosomes mark. His bones are exposed and his muscles darting, thin and tensed. He could be a sadhu whose saffron robe has been snatched by a thief or a natural catastrophe. His face is not thin as other thin faces are: it's a skull covered with dark leather and bristly hair, and little more. His eyes are two huge floodlights, goggled, like those of a hunted down beast. You can spot him everywhere in the city center, while he walks, almost running, fleeing from the enemy, only partly imaginary, that has been chasing him for years wherever he goes.

Then there is a bearded man, who constantly holds a banknote with his right hand, turning it over again and again, making it twirl between his fingers like a magician, while he carefully looks at it, studying it as if it were a mysterious object, fallen there from another world or another time. In the meanwhile his left hand is gently stirring in the air, leading an orchestra of ghosts that, no matter what direction he is facing, is always arranged in front of him.

In another road you can meet the one who never stops talking to himself, fast, mumbling, in a low voice, in god knows what language, continuously walking along the sidewalk, transversally, from shop to road, from road to door, from gate to road...

Another one, long haired and bare chested, always walks holding his pants with one hand, as if they were loose and he didn't wear a belt to keep them up.

There is also a guy who lies down on the sidewalk, his back leaning on the wall of the building and his legs stretched out, ready to trip up the wealthy and respectable passers by. The same cigarette, unlit, in one hand, while the other one plays an invisible piano. Muttering something with a satisfied look, he's stretching out there not really with the air of one who doesn't know where else to go but as if this was actually the most comfortable couch in the coolest living room in town.

However, the leading figure among the KL street characters, their archetype, their undiscussed quintessence, is the great globe guy.

When you have left the Malaysian capital and you've landed in Bangkok, across the taxi window the most bizarre character appears. A skinny guy, with broom-like hair and tow beard, walks around wearing only a filthy t-shirt: he's stark naked from belly-button to shins, his skin protected by a thin layer of greasy soot. Two stuffed plastic bags, tied around the ankles, wrap his feet like homemade Moon Boots. With other bags hanging from his hands, neck and shoulders, he's standing on a sidewalk, waiting for the green light among housewives and office workers. It's such a surreal sight that it could well be a mirage.

I met the old lady of the picture in Hoian, Vietnam. She came begging, hunched: thousand wrinkles were twisting about her face, forming ever changing shapes around the four fixed objects while she was imploring us to give her something. I pulled a note out of my pocket and handed it to her, along with an amused smile. She got hold of it and swiftly put it in her mouth. I don't know whether she did it for gratitude, to store it in a safe place or as a talismanic gesture. All I know is that she left, holding that precious worthless gift between her lips.

11.11.11 arrogance - Koh Samui, Thailand

A couple of losers got married on the beach at Chaweng on 11.11.11 because they believe it's a propitiatory date. With arrogance born of wealth and power they ordered two guards to stop the passers by on the shore-line (a public area) so that only the sea would appear in the background of their cheesy pictures.

A local old, weak peddler, sweating, bended under the weight of his ice cream case, who was just trying to make a living, had enough of that rich spoiled brat bullshit, got around the guard's baton and started to walk, ruining that fake, pretentious setting...and he made my day.

Endangered traditions - Moscow, Russia

Riumochnaya na Bolshoi Nikitskoi (in Russian Рюмочная на Большой Никитской, which means "Vodka glass on Nikitskaya Road") is one of the last, maybe the very last place of its type in Moscow. It looks like an old Italian osteria: a few squared tables scattered around a fairly small room, light curtains on the windows facing the sidewalk, a counter made of wood, like the bottle shelves and the panels that cover the walls. A messy toilet and a cubbyhole/storeroom. The supporters of sophisticated modernity at all costs can say what they want: I don't need much more than this to spend a couple of those hours which good memories are made of.

As soon as you enter you choose a table (after 6pm they might all be taken), then you go and get your orders directly at the counter, where you can find the courses of the day on display: meat, fish and vegetables, both cooked and row dishes. While the lady is heating your portions in the microwave you can order your drinks. The house specialty, of course, is vodka. You order it by the gram (yes, gram, neither bottle nor glass, nor with volumetric units of measure). 300 grams can fill a cruet and it's enough to make two people equipped with well armored livers feel the maggots crawling in their brains until bed time.

When everything is set up on our table we gulp down the first glassful, in one swallow. Then, in order to create the necessary sponge effect, we gobble up a delicious chicken breast topped up with sour cream, some lentils and a good portion of bread. 

"Between the first and the second glass nobody talks!" The Russian rule guarantees that the shortest possible time elapses between the first two sessions. C. and I are two incurable Italians though, and we are not able to undergo such an alcoholic-sect-ritual without indulging in a couple of comments before we drink our second glass, which we only half fill, just in case. This food is really tasty and we order a second round. 

Even some customers here - conforming to the style of the place - are very characteristic. The most picturesque ones are some unknown, semi-alcoholic artists. A poet whose verses have never seen a printing house hear us talking Italian and draws near. White hair and beard, already tipsy, with rudimentary English he indulges in typical bar pastimes that could work in Italy as well: jokes about Putin and Berlusconi and comments on unrestrained immigration, that in the case of Moscow is coming mostly from the former Caucasian and Eastern Soviet republics. When this lingua franca is not helping him he speaks Russian with C., who in turn translates what he says for me.

He leaves us for a moment, pinches the can of Sprite of a man who's reading a paper a few meters away and takes it to his own table. The other guy - a younger version of our friend, with still black hair and beard - fumes and complains a little at first but finally stands up and joins him. The newcomer speaks much better English and introduces himself as an artist too, without specifying his field.

After another hour of jokes, comments, talking, translations, snacks and vodka we stand up, we say bye like respectable drunkards do - with energetic hugs, awkward handshakes, foul breath and sentimental sentences - and then with a staggering walk we go out of the place, where we enjoy the pinch of the October cold on our spirit-inflamed cheeks.

A piece of tradition that holds out in the very heart of Moscow, right in front of the conservatory. Like the popular banyas - centers with saunas and steam baths, consisting of huge, badly lighted and worse furnished rooms, simple equipments and dingy structures, where groups of friends or colleagues spend a few hours talking and relaxing, while sweating near the oven, shivering in the freezing pool, flogging themselves with birch and oak twigs or sipping tea and eating snacks in the refreshment area - hold out amid the new luxurious wellness centers.

It would have taken very little to be still able to enjoy such an evening in Italy as well: we could have avoided to replace at least one quarter of our old osterie with trendy pizzerie or - even worse - pretentious wine bars. But in most of the cities that I know of, ruining is a service provided in full, and that little conservation effort was not made. The old simple wine list (1. red, 2. white, 3. prosecco, all of them strictly "of the house") was replaced by a sequence of names that I hardly understand and that, unlike a lot of people, I don't enjoy pretending to know. Bottles with wonderful labels of high-sounding origin that have absolutely nothing to do with the local territory and culture, sold by the glass (beautifully made crystal goblets that many hold by the stem with recently developed presumptuousness, swollen like barrels but thriftily served only one-third filled) at the price of a full bottle of the good old poison.

Times change, traditions die. A good nostalgic as I am, I enjoy looking for them elsewhere.

Flexibility - Moscow, Russia

Your kitchen tap is leaking, the electricity system is not working, your oven is broken or you need to install a new curtain in the living room. The expert is very expensive and busy: if you call him today he will be available in one month. No need to worry, there is the husband by the hour. We're not talking about extra-marital relations or polygamy here. You call a guy whose number you found god knows where, one who doesn't have any specialization but can do pretty much everything, just like the good old husbands. You explain what he has to do and agree on a price on the phone, he will come soon after that, with all the tools and materials needed for the task. If he didn't know how to solve the problem he asked someone else to teach him or sent a colleague who can do it. He solves the issue, you pay him (prices are reasonable), bye bye.

You need to move to another neighborhood, to send some furniture to your uncle's flat or to get rid of something bulky. You are by yourself, you'll never make it. You walk downstairs, get out on the sidewalk and look around. As soon as you spot an immigrant from the Eastern republics of the former Soviet Union - a Kazakh, an Uzbek, a Tajik - you stop him.

"Good morning, I need to move some furniture."

He already knows what you are talking about and doesn't lose his composure. He won't think that you are crazy nor crack up laughing.

"How big? How many floors? Where to?"

You explain everything, you negotiate the price and you walk him to your place. If backup is needed he will take care of that.

You went to a party that ended late, you didn't come by car because you knew you would have a drink too many and the area where you live is not well served by public transport. Taxis are expensive and need to be booked in advance. You go out, you stand near the curb of a main thoroughfare and stretch an arm, waving your hand. Not when you chance to see the first taxi...when you spot the very first car! Like that, random. If it's not a Jaguar or someone in a hurry they will certainly stop. And if the first vehicle won't, the next one will. You explain where you have to go, they will propose a price and if you think it's too expensive you can negotiate. When you come to an agreement you finally get on the car. It didn't take you more than a minute.

Who would have thought that one day we would have envied the former Soviet Union for it's flexibility?

Secret and mistery - St. Petersburg, Russia

I'm following the continuous human flow of the Nevsky prospect sidewalk until it disperses in the huge space that surrounds the Hermitage, then I turn left, bound for St. Isaac's Cathedral. When I am a few meters away from this Russian version of Rome's St. Peter, I catch glimpse of a little paper stuck to a door, half hidden by the scaffolding of some restoration works. Museum of the history of political police. Basically a magnetized asteroid in front of which I suddenly turn into a tiny hair pin.

The church also exerts a strong attraction though. I stand on that place for a few seconds, my thighs shaking, following the alternating impulses that push me here and there. I process the little information that I managed to gather and I make a brilliant non-decision, postponing everything: typical of me in cases like this. The museum closes at 6pm and the ticket counter at 5.30. I still have thirty minutes left and the Cathedral is only a few steps away. I'm going there first and I'll see what she's got to say. If she whispers sweet words in my ears, gently tickling my lobe, I'm going to stay there, otherwise I'll come back here. And the latter is exactly what happens, only it takes me twenty minutes to realize it. When I open the door to the museum building it's already 5.26. After trying two dead corridors I manage to find the right one, I push the handle but the door doesn't budge. I am about to leave when I hear something creaking and I see a woman getting out of the room.

"Yes?"

"I'd like to visit the museum."

"I'm sorry, it's too late."

I put on a pitiful expression while I mutter something. She murmurs something back with an uncertain air. It's the cue I was waiting for: I move closer to her.

"5.30, closing time..." she says, while another lady pops up from behind the door and crosses her forearms like some kind of referee to make me understand that it's closed. I show them my phone that reads 5.28. Hand in d4: checkmate!

"OK, follow me!"

95% of the exhibition is explained in Russian but the lady hands me a set of plastic-coated sheets where one can find the photos mapped out wall by wall and the relevant captions translated in English. Although this is a good idea it also tells a lot about the scanty number of foreign tourists that visit the museum. 

I've always been extremely fascinated by everything that has something to do with the most elusive, sinister and controversial aspects of history. I watch all the black and white photos, standing in admiration in front of those that thrill me the most, reading the explanations on the precious sheets that I turn back and forth. The old times of the tsarist spies, then the Bolsheviks and Dzerzhinsky restructuring. His death, the images of Trozky, Stalin, Bukharin and Molotov who carry his coffin. The CHEKA, the KGB, the cold war, the Cuban missile crisis and the secret prisoner exchanges with the USA. The missions in Afghanistan and Chechnya, internal terrorism and present day FSB. 

In the wonderful room where Dzerdzhinsky used to work I run into a guided tour group. What a good choice, deciding to come and visit this museum I have taken care of two of my hobbies at once: history of espionage and beautiful women (in this case the hobby only consists in admiring them, of course). Now between a picture and the following one I can't help glancing at three or four specimens of these giraffes that have kept tormenting my thoughts since the moment I arrived to Russia.

Their guide is a pedantic and verbose old woman though: I leave them behind and in a matter of minutes I'm in the last room, where the lady who sold me the ticket, who had already come and helped me earlier, gives me some further interesting details. She's wearing a pair of slippers, thick stockings, a plaid-like-skirt, a felted sweater and G.P.'s spectacles. She has no make up and her hair is tied in a ponytail, of course. She reminds me of a librarian of a B-movie, and a little bit of Grandma duck as well. A very kind woman indeed. She plays down her nice gesture explaining that I owe the opportunity to visit the exhibition well after the closing time to the group of hotties that I've just seen: she'd had needed to wait for them to leave anyway. I ask her if there is a guest-book and while I'm writing my comments, choosing my words with care, she begs me not to mention the fact that she personally helped me.

"I'm not an expert."

"But you were great!" I answer thinking that it's just a display of false modesty.

"I do know some details but I don't have a good general knowledge of the subject. And then it could cause troubles with my supervisors."

It seems that she has been swallowed up by the atmosphere of secret and mystery that shrouds this place, as if she were also scheming in the web of an organization that operates in the dark.

"Well, in that case, I definitely won't!"

I end my comment writing that the staff is very kind and polite. This should be a rather discreet and neutral complimentary remark.

I steal a last look at the booted sex bombs that one after the other are flocking into the room and then I go out, while the powerful arms of the Baltic climate strike my face with a frozen whip. Fortunately it's still October. Not such a red October, but a rather gray one. 

Photo "Alexander Column, chair and backpack" by Fabio

Elections and scams - Bangkok, Thailand

July 2011. It's election time in Thailand. Continuous waves of people are converging toward the main arteries of Bangkok - Sukhumvit, Vipawadee, Pahonyothin - headed for their provinces of origin, in most cases located in Isan, in the North-east, close to Laos.

I'm walking W. to get a taxi that will take her to Mochit, a bus station that today is sunk in a grounding-time international airport kind of chaos. A tuk-tuk driver offers his service for 300 baht when normally, using a metered taxi, the ride should cost 100-150. We get rid of him quickly. The first taxi driver asks 300 baht as well. She lets him go and waves another down. Same story. The third cab too, as well as the fourth one.

This smells fishy. It's a stench that pricked my nostrils often in the past. I follow my instinct, as if it was one of those lines of smoke chased by the long and quivering noses of the cartoons. While she's walking toward the center of the road to give it another try I stay near the curb and look carefully around. As she's drawing near the window to speak with the driver, the tuk-tuk owner that wanted to cheat her is waving his arms about and signaling to his colleague to ask her 300 baht. The other follows his advice and W., obviously, dismisses him.

This time I got you, lousy swindler. I take W. by the arm and walk her a few meters away. She follows me - incredulous while I tell her what I've just seen - far enough from the scoundrel, where a taxi driver - honest like most of those who don't swarm around the tourists - agrees on using the meter.

"Thais should never behave like that...especially with other Thai people..." she keeps repeating until the door is closed.

"...with anybody..." I think while I wave her goodbye.

She won't be able to reach home and vote, as all the bus seats are sold out until the next morning, but at least she managed to hold on to her dignity. And a few banknotes as well.

Image by globalvoicesonline