This morning, I got to experience a Saigon bicycle ride for the first time! I had always been impressed by the flexible kids who cycled with a friend dangling on the back, or sometimes even two! Or the ladies in the conical hats pedaling their way around the crazy traffic of town very nonchalantly. Although nowadays motorbikes greatly overshadow bicycles on the streets in Saigon, it is still nice to see people using bicycles to get around the city. It gives a nice window to the past, where bicycles constituted an important aspect of Vietnamese culture.
I went around 8 o'clock in the morning with my friend, sitting on the back seat (not really a seat; it's a metal rack), and we had a small ride around the neighborhood, down to the canal near my place. Recently revamped, the canal has become an attractive park area for locals. Very early in the morning, seniors, dog-walkers, and active people of all sorts are drawn to the canal to do exercise when the air is cool and the sun is not yet blaring; throughout the day, men can be found fishing, hoping to catch fish (which I would not dare eat, considering how polluted this canal used to be just a couple of years ago); at night-time, the young couples come out and canoodle on their parked motorbikes all down the rail.
Feeling like a kid again, I was very excited and delighted the whole ride. Although sitting on the hard metal rack in the back got a bit of getting used to in the beginning, before I knew it, I left my legs dangling on the sides as I got to enjoy the local sights, sounds, and scenes around me. Saigon's streets themselves are such an invigorating thing to see, and I can't think of a better way to immerse in it all then from the back seat of a serene bicycle ride.
Come join me on this bicycle ride, followed by breakfast on the way home!
