At early dawn, when the roosters, real or metaphorical, still roam through their coops, the first morning scooters buzz through the streets. Saigon1 is a city of three million scooters and motorcycles, usually loaded so much that their riders can barely see the road in front of them; tens of thousands of bikes head out for the first morning supply run of this Vietnam city with a million inhabitants. The bikes are loaded with everything the city needs to live, from the food to be had for breakfast by those lucky enough to still be sleeping, clothes for stores, refrigerators, plastic ducts for plumbing stores, all the way to raw material for textile factories. 

Motorcycles swarm in from the edges of the city loaded with baskets full of crab from the delta of the huge Mekong River that springs beneath the far away Himalayas. The crab, prepared in a dozen different ways, will feed the hungry business people from the modern office buildings during their lunch break in street restaurants. Apart from the early morning motorcycle riders who deliver all sorts of things into the belly of the South Vietnamese megalopolis, the first morning logisticians  and motorcycle repairmen are also out on the streets. 

When a hundred thousand Vietnamese head out to work, they will have their hands full. Placed every few meters along the streets, they will jump in and help anyone in trouble on their way to work, no matter if they have a flat tire, or need a quick change of the cylinder head. Purchasing a new motorcycle in Saigon, one of the richest cities in Vietnam, is still quite a luxury, so the streets are full of older models, especially from the times when Vietnam was a part of the socialist block under the umbrella of the former Soviet Union, so the repairmen have their hands full. These veterans from the time of socialism can usually be seen at early dawn, loaded to the brink of impossible. The amount of things that can be loaded onto them would probably surprise even their Russian designers, who did not care much about elegance in the Soviet times. Their only concern was the machine’s durability in harsh Russian conditions

 A flat tire in Saigon is repaired in ten minutes. The roads are lined with numerous tire repairmen who work on the site. Their equipment is simple – a bucket filled with water, some glue and a heat gun are the tools they can easily move around. Fixing a flat tire is a common sight in Saigon, just like congested road junctions in the city during morning rush hour is a common sight in European towns. When the alarm clocks go off and Saigon goes out to work, the scene in the street changes. Overloaded motorcycles and their skilled drivers are replaced by new driving scenes. The thing that will surprise the visitors is the multitude of children on motorcycles, driven by their mothers, fathers or grandmothers to kindergartens and schools. It is not unusual to see them sleeping on the motorcycles, especially in the evening hours when their parents drive them home. Some use the ride to school to have a quick breakfast on the go, and some use it to study.  

Riding the streets of Saigon in the early hours of the day is a true art, slightly frightening to the eye of the foreigners unfamiliar with the scene. The motorcycles fill the entire street from side to side, but the riders in Saigon demonstrate their exceptional skills by often starting at the same time, but in different directions, all without crashing into each other! Two-way street is actually a four-way street, because both lanes go both ways. It sounds complicated, but in order for you to understand it better, let us just say that everybody goes in the direction they find most suitable at a given moment. 

One-way streets are basically unheard of. Getting around on wheels in this mess, where everybody is in a hurry, luckily does not cause hysterical outbursts we often witness on the streets of Zagreb in the early morning hours. What about pedestrians, are there any pedestrians, you probably ask? Of course, not all of seven million inhabitants of Saigon are motorized. They, too, developed a special skill we might say is genetic, carried from one generation to the next. It is the street-crossing skill. Zebra crossings and traffic lights provide very little help, because regardless of the light currently on the traffic light, the stream of motorcycles keeps flowing in all directions. The technology behind street crossing is very simple. The thing is that the pedestrians need to cross the road very slowly, not using their normal pace, but simply by putting one foot in front of the other. In that way, the riders have enough time to avoid them, a scene that reminds you of bullfighting. The pedestrians are bullfighters, and the motorcycles are bulls, but the bullfighters, i.e. the pedestrians, do not avoid the bulls – the motorcycles avoid the pedestrians. 

The sensation of crossing the street in this way is quite a memorable experience. It lasts a bit longer, of course, but it is worth giving it a try, because it is less dangerous than actual bullfighting. Of course, it is advisable not to look left and right while doing so in order to avoid panic attacks. It may sound insane, but it is completely feasible to cross the road with your eyes closed if you use the one foot in front of the other technique. In this crowd, your author has never experienced having his foot run over, let alone being knocked down by a motorcycle. You can tell how frustrating crossing the road can be best if you look at the faces of stunned foreigners, standing petrified along the road, not daring to venture into such an unusual adventure. This problem is solved with the help of a special police force deployed on pedestrian crossings in the center of Saigon, where most foreigners move around. They have only one job – to take the frightened foreigners across the road, like ducklings. 

When the rush hour subsides, it is time for the events of midday. Although it is a bit less busy than in the morning rush hour, the streams of motorcycles keep on flowing. In the newer parts of town, where the streets are wider, the rush hour is noticeably less intensive, but in the older part of Saigon, the one built at the time when Vietnam was a French colony, the streets are narrow, so the traffic jams are still quite significant. However, the motorcycle riders are different here. There is plenty of girls and women on motorcycles, going shopping, or for a chit chat with a girlfriend, and this provides you with a chance to see the latest fashion and other trends. When it comes to fashion, we can conclude that the girls of Saigon pay equal attention to fashion as girls from London, Munich or Paris. However, while the girls in European cities mostly demonstrate fashion as pedestrians, in Saigon, this happens on wheels. At that time of day, you can see that fashion does not only involve clothes and the mandatory helmets in the case of girls in Saigon. The motorcycles themselves are a fashion item, susceptible to adding fashion accessories. Still, when it comes to fashion, the evening hours are the time when fashion expands to its full potential, especially among young people. Since most of their day revolves around motorcycles, it is not surprising that young people also spend their evenings mobile.

 Instead of sitting in bars, the evenings are spent cruising around town on motorcycles. There are several spots downtown that are an absolute must. You spend some time there, take a photo with your mobile phone, and post it on Facebook, then move on. Just like in Croatia, where everyone uses their mobile phones while driving, although it is a violation, it is the same in Saigon. Talking on the phone, reading text messages while driving – these are all usual sights. Vietnamese police officers cannot be considered true protectors of law and order, so the tickets can easily be neutralized with a donation to the police officer. 

Instead of sitting in bars, the evenings are spent cruising around town on motorcycles. There are several spots downtown that are an absolute must. You spend some time there, take a photo with your mobile phone, and post it on Facebook, then move on. Just like in Croatia, where everyone uses their mobile phones while driving, although it is a violation, it is the same in Saigon. Talking on the phone, reading text messages while driving – these are all usual sights. Vietnamese police officers cannot be considered true protectors of law and order, so the tickets can easily be neutralized with a donation to the police officer. 

Motorcycles occupy so much space in the streets that there is almost no place for cars. The only four-wheeled vehicles are taxi cabs, with six or more seats. One thing that never changes on the streets of Saigon, regardless of night or day, are the repairmen out on the streets. Seeing tire repairs all around, people would think that the people of Saigon use the worst tires in the world. No, that is just an illusion, it is just that there are millions and millions of motorcycles on the road, so the number of flat tires is simply bigger than in a city where the number of inhabitants far exceeds the number of motorcycles. The rhythm of life on motorcycles in Saigon, because so much time is spent on them that you can easily say that one lives on them, goes deep into the night. The reason for this is the tropical climate; there is no cold that would empty out the streets. The same goes for frequent tropical rains. When these warm showers come down, the motorcycle riders stop to put on their plastic rain ponchos, and simply drive off. As soon as the shower comes down, numerous sellers of light plastic covers come out. Their price does not exceed a third of the price of a cheap pack of cigarettes in Europe. 

Just like in most cities in Southeast Asia, the public transportation system is undeveloped, as an inheritance of the days when the countries of this region were European colonies. The already rare city buses in Saigon stop driving around 8 pm, and taxi cabs are expensive, so not having a motorcycle in the evening hours totally sucks, to put it bluntly.

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FILM BUDGET

Shooting .........................40%

Postproduction...............60%