Victor Paul Borg - Writing & Photography

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Adventures on a Moped

An encounter with a slick tourism operator in Vietnam

Travelling in Vietnam I got the sense that the Chinese moped had replaced the water buffalo as the new beast of burden. No haul is too large for the trusty moped: a family of five could fit on a moped, and so could a whole market stall, or a wardrobe. In Ho Chi Minh City it is estimated that there are at least three million mopeds. It’s a figure that is believable: the din of engines whines through the air, motorbikes flow through the streets like a flashflood, and crossing main streets is like running a gauntlet of mopeds trying to gun you down. In crossroads – engines revving, horns bleating – the motorbikes become something like trapped and choppy and angry water.

Riding is another story, as I discovered on the motorbike taxis, always feeling shaken and exhilarated after a ride. If you drive slowly, or hesitate, someone could hit you. Overtaking is more dangerous still, drivers breaking ranks and slipping into the opposing lane, weaving through the opposite onrush of bikes with suicidal carelessness. But driving is always tinged with playfulness, like being on the controls of a video game where you have to dodge the onrushing barrage of obstacles: hold tight, surge ahead, and brace yourself for the impact.

But I found riding the motorbike taxi exciting to the point of addiction, and the driver did get me safely to the bus station on the day I decided to go south to explore the vast delta of the Mekong River. The bus to Cantho – a destination I chose because I wanted to see the floating market – was dusty and stuffy, the aisle cluttered with sacks of vegetable produce, and the twenty-something boy next to me, whose feet stank of sweat, slept on my shoulder for five hours of the eight-hour journey. It was an uncomfortable journey in an overcrowded bus.

Few Westerners travelled in public buses in Vietnam, as a parallel tourist infrastructure had been extensively set up – large confederate travel agents that provided everything a tourist might need across the country, including a network of buses which were a lot more comfortable than local buses, and only marginally more expensive. So the Vietnamese on the bus to Cantho regarded me as an eccentric and accessible Westerner, especially as I was dressed, like them, in a T-shirt full of holes and sandals that had been stitched together by a street cobbler, and carried my belongings in a dirty cloth bag. I was shown curiosity and kindness, and offered fruits and nuts and sweets and cigarettes.

The bus broke down on the way, and when we resumed the journey it was already dark. Darkness filled me with consternation – no one could speak English, and I didn’t have an idea where I had to get off the bus, or how Cantho looked like. How would I find accommodation in a strange town in the dark without a map or a guidebook? Then the bus drove onto a ferry, and on the deck a young woman came to speak to me. When the ferry had crossed the delta, she said: “The bus station is on the outskirts of town. If you come with me, I can take you to the cheapest guesthouse in town. It’s owned by my English teacher – nice family, clean house.”

“Take me?”

She smiled and pointed to the moped parked next to the bus. “Come!”

I hesitated: her eagerness made me suspicious. What did she want from me?

“Come,” she said again, and I got on the moped. She drove in a cruising manner, and I enjoyed the flutter of her hair in my face. The guesthouse was fine. I checked in. Then we went for dinner, where I found out more about her. Nga, 29, came from a poor family who lived in thatched hut in the scruffy settlement across the river, and she came to town in the evenings to see her uncle, to get online, or to sing at the karaoke. She said she had a degree in business studies. She was well-dressed and confident, and her large innocent curious eyes, unflinchingly fixed on mine, made me think she liked me. It was an idea that made me careless, and I became deflated when she told me she had an American boyfriend – a soldier serving in Afghanistan. She showed me his letter, which was full of typos and grammatical mistakes, and in which he meditated about his loneliness in the desert, and how the stars at night made him think of Nga.

Hours later, when I was tipsy and giddy, Nga asked me if I wanted to take a boat tour with her cousin. I would see the floating market, the backwater canals, an orchard, a paddy field – a six-hour tour, at US$3 per hour. No orchard and paddy field for me; I wanted to do three hours. She said three hours wouldn’t be enough to do the whole loop. She took a form book and wrote something, and then she tore out the form and asked me for an advance of US$5. My head was racing; earlier she had said she was on holidays. I asked her again about a job.

She said, “This is my job.”

So this was why she had helped. Everything she had done had led to this point. A slick, professional operator: she got a free meal, free drinks, and booked me on a tour. The US$5 was her cut.

Then she drove me to my guesthouse, and a group of men who were drinking snake whiskey in the alley insisted I had to have at least one drink with them. One drink led to another and another… and the next thing I remember is the loud bangs that crashed into my sleep. I was in my room; the banging was jarring and painful. I scrambled towards the balcony, and down below in the alley there were four children banging cooking pots with sticks; around them stood a group of older people gawking smilingly. Dawn was breaking; I wondered if I was dreaming, and then the woman who ran the guesthouse appeared next to me. I shook my head sardonically.

“Sorry,” she said. “I forgot to warn you. Our neighbour died, and in our culture we make loud drum music at the start of the funeral.” So that also explained the drinking last night.

Later, as the sun had broken from the horizon, I stepped into the canoe of Nga’s cousin with trepidation. The constant wobble of the canoe and the dizzying reek of the cranky engine’s exhaust compounded my nausea. Everything slid past in a misty blur: the sea gypsies in their houseboats trading vegetables and seafood, the women and girls washing cooking pots and clothes in the side canals, the fishermen scooping their nets through the water. Nga’s cousin wanted me to stop at the orchard and the rice field. I had seen a thousand paddy fields in Asia: why would I pay money to see more? But I had already agreed to this itinerary.

We had been moving at a numbingly slow pace; even pinching myself didn’t stop me from drowsing. I realized we could have done this tour in three hours at a leisurely pace; five hours was being inventive. Another thought occurred to me: How could my skipper, a withering old man, be Nga’s cousin? Afterwards, in my guesthouse I saw the man of the house, the one Nga had said was her English teacher. I told him I had met Nga. He smiled and called his wife. She said, “Sorry, he doesn’t speak English.”