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Every residence in Saigon seemed to own at least one television set. Countless Internet cafes were brimming with local youth online. Yet the concept of Automatic Teller Machines had not hit the mass market. There were only two in the entire city, and three total in the entire country of some 90 million people!
I was desperate. Cambodia had cost more than I expected. By the time the bus that I had caught from the border dropped me off at De Tham Street in the heart of Saigon, it was 7 PM. I had no money and not a clue what to do about it.
The locals gave me strange looks when I inquired anxiously about an “A-T-M ma-chine” accompanied by a suspicious gesticulation that involved thrusting a pinched thumb and forefinger forward in a way that could have been misinterpreted as lewd. Finally, one starry-eyed man who spoke a few words of English informed me of the paucity of such gadgets in Vietnam. He did, however, claim to know the location of one and offered to take me there on his cyclo.
Sensible cyclos
I dropped my backpack at a travel agent and crawled aboard this unusual pedal-powered taxi. In a cyclo, the passenger is seated in a reclining chair situated in front, while the driver sits behind on a raised seat and steers by turning the top rim of the passenger’s chair. My driver, a shrunken, leathery man who wore a frayed Mets baseball cap turned sideways, seemed especially enthusiastic about hauling me – or pushing me in this case – across town to the rare cash machine.
Darkness had taken over by this point and our cyclo had no reflectors or lights. We came upon an eight lane-wide roundabout. It was a disjointed jumble of traffic huggermugger. There was no order among the hundreds of motorcycles, bicycles, busses, trucks, and suicidal pedestrians. It was like the traffic encircling the Arc de Triomphe on acid.
Without hesitation my driver plunged right in and made a beeline for the other side. He made no regard to any semblance of directional flow or oncoming vehicles. Recall that my position was hoisted out in front of the cylco without the protection of sides, bumpers, or roll-cages. It was massively disconcerting. I felt as if I was trapped inside a frightening video game without a controller.
View from the Front
Then, as we were at dead center of this traffic bedlam, my driver reached forward and offered me a drag of his funky smelling cigarette that he explained was, “Mary Jane… and opium too. Is good for see!”
See!? See what? Pink giraffes? I declined the offer.
Pallid-faced and still gripping the edge of my seat, we finally arrived at the ATM. I peeled myself out of the seat and felt the blood that had drained from my head sloshing around in my feet. After withdrawing a cool million Dong (US$66), I eagerly scanned the scene for an alternative return of transportation. There was none. Then I realized with a shudder that I had no idea where we were. Only my driver had any hope of finding our return. Reluctantly, I crept back into the cylco to repeat the process.
As we rolled on my driver began to half sing, half babble nonsensically in Vietnamese. After sideswiping another cyclo, the other driver unleashed a string of Vietnamese expletives. My driver responded to him with a toothless smile and a high-pitched giggle. By this time I was numb with both fright and disbelief.
Eventually, I located our position on a map but noticed that we were not returning to our original point of departure. Soon we pulled over and a man rushed out bedizened in flashy purple suit and sequined gold tie shouting, “You want massage! Full massage?”
My driver, who by now held a hysterical gaze that suggested he was struggling to stay within our dimension, added, “Full massage! Hah hah! Happy ending! Happy ending!” followed by an outburst of maniacal cackling. I rejected the offer, jumped off the cyclo, threw a few thousand dong in his direction, and decided to take my chances the rest of the way by foot.
