Photo of the week: The best of my Ho Chi Minh experience

Cyclo driver, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

It was March 2008 when I was first in Vietnam. There was little notion of the financial shambles that was to occur later that year so my company, confident then, as most banks probably were, of remaining in the pinkest of health, took around ninety of us on an all expenses paid four day trip to Ho Chi Minh City for a bit of team building, company debrief of the year that was, and general innocent fun.

In the hazy office hustle and bustle in the last few weeks before getting there, I hadn't given Vietnam much thought. The only time I stopped for a moment to consider it was when my secretary chased me across the office with a seamstress measure so that she can take my measurement for a tailor-made au-dai that we had to wear on the first night's formal dinner. Standing in the middle of the floor with colleagues busy on phones at their cubicles, I dropped my folders and thrust my hands to the sky. What are they doing to me?

In hindsight the entire trip was a gross misrepresentation of what Vietnam probably is. We were collected from the airport by the chauffeur driven town car owned by our 5-star hotel, expressed checked-in by the frazzled but overly friendly staff probably unused to 90 people checking-in at once, and whisked to our individual rooms where our perfectly fitted au-dais and welcome stuffed bears were waiting on our 700 thread count sheets.

Morning cast a more revealing light over the place. Vietnam is well ordered but cramped with anything between 60 and 600 motorbikes roaming any single street at any given time of day. The air smelled like boiled fish balls and fresh cut pandan leaves. There was no sense of desperation among the people I saw as you might stereotypically (and might I add, unfairly) expect after watching a Hollywood movie or two. And I did feel a bit safe to wander about alone one afternoon after managing to break free of my colleagues to do a spot of shopping at Ben Thanh Market. It was splendid.


The best of my Ho Chi Minh experience was riding the cyclo as part of a full day of an Amazing Race style game we played. A cyclo is a modified trishaw where a single passenger is placed in the seat attached at the front of a bicycle. I was so close to the ground and very exposed to the traffic that I'd be lying if I said there wasn't one or two moments when I felt a little anxious. We were each assigned a specific cyclo driver who would be responsible to take us to the various designated venues. We weren't introduced, just made to jump on his cyclo like you would on a ferris wheel car as it passed by. Delicately trying to mind the gap.

By this time I had had a rough night before and the world around me was swirling a little bit so I couldn't be trusted to remember my man. But the miraculous thing was, he remembered me. I would finish doing a task at a particular venue, say a large indoor gymnasium where we'd just been challenged to a round of tai-chi with the locals, stumble out into the heat and feel a hand gently grab my arm and leading me to a cyclo. I'd get on, after discreetly checking that this was the right cyclo troop and that my equally dazed colleagues around me were doing the same.

All day he led me in and out of venues that way like a father holding on to his kid in an intense crowd. It was the oddest most reassuring feeling.

I did not bring a camera during this trip, a mistake I hope to remedy by going back to HCMC one day to properly get to know the place. The only visual memento I have of the trip was this photo captured using my camera phone of my cyclo driver from the back as he pulled the contraption around to face another way. Now, three years later, and I'm still fascinated by the funny words at the back of his shirt and the fake gold Rolex on his tanned and veiny arms. How I wish I had asked his name.