Saigon 23-08-09
I am on an early morning run in Saigon. It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that hot, humid, over-populated, polluted cities with sidewalks reserved for street vendors and scooter parking are not ideal for marathon training.
If I want to run outdoors it has to be done at the crack of sparrows. Two reasons. First, it’s too hot to run after about 8am. Even in the evenings the heat of the day lingers while the smog settles in for the night. Second, by 8am there is already too much motorbike traffic on the roads (and sidewalks) to run.
On weekdays I am generally confined to the electric highway in the gym. On the weekends I venture out into this urban combat zone.
There are some advantages to treadmill training. The gym is air-conditioned and the machines face a floor to ceiling window. I have a view on a busy downtown intersection. From here I can watch near misses as scooters run red lights towards oncoming buses. Or see the occasional legless beggar negotiate the crosswalks that drivers routinely ignore. Scenes like this stop my mental whining about having to run in-doors.
Fartlek, tempo and interval runs are also much easier to manage on a treadmill. Below are two pace graphs of Fartlek runs. The first was outdoors and the second on a treadmill. If an intern working the late shift at the ICU saw that first chart she would surely call for a crash cart and a de-fribulator.
The out-door runs have their advantages too, compared to France. I don’t have to worry about water. It’s for sale at sidewalk stalls every 50 ft or so. Also available are noodles, frying tofu, cigarettes, strange soy drinks, motorbike repair shops, petrol for sale in milk bottles, barbers, puppy-for-sale, racks of sub-standard motorbike helmets and just about anything else that you can imagine. When I see a stretch of sidewalk with absolutely no vendors I know to cross the street. These are generally the areas that the neighborhood citizens have by mutual consent agreed will be a public toilet. They get a lot of overnight use judging by the smells.
The streets of Saigon are incredibly active from even before sunrise. I am not the only one who has discovered that it’s too hot and crowded to do much outdoors after 8am. There are hundreds and hundreds of people out and about along the roads and small parks that I run through. I ran over 280 kilometers in the time I spent in France. I saw only one other runner and the occasional cyclist there. Saigon mornings couldn’t be more different. There are crowds to rival the panicky shoppers found at a Wallmart on Christmas Eve.
I see comrades of every age engaged in both familiar and exotic exercises. A type of speed walking is common. It’s not the Olympic style speed walking where after 20 miles skimpy shorts are wedged tight up the sweaty cracks of athletic women who look best from behind. It’s something that involves a very energetic swinging of the arms while walking at a fairly normal pace. I’ve been hit pretty hard in the thighs and nearby regions a few times when my vigilance fails. A polite apology always follows along with a bit of shock when the accidental offender sees that I am a foreigner. I’ve yet to see another foreigner on the runs around my house but I am sure a few have passed me in cabs on their way home from the bars in Pham Ngu Lau.
There are Tai Chi groups scattered about and once I saw a woman practicing slow concentrated movements with a very sharp looking sword. She had a respectful amount of space around her. In a few parks there are regular jazzercise sessions going on with very loud, blown speakers , an awful musical selection and always one or two incredibly camp looking dudes who have snuck into the midst of the pack of middle-aged women. What are they thinking?
Badminton is very popular especially amongst the very old. They string nets across pathways and tie them off on trees. If they use fishing wire I have to be extra careful not to garrote myself on a line. Since the players are so old and short these are sometimes strung very low. I’ve only been caught up once. So far….
On Sunday mornings I regularly see a troop of very serious martial artists. Or they might be a very competitive Dragon Dance team in training. Mostly teenagers. All in black Karate outfits. In idle moments, they do standing back flips while waiting for the next drill. The drills are done in unison and sometimes dangerous sticks and poles are flung about. Surprisingly, there are very few runners and not many of those look like they are running distance.
Almost everyone, whatever they are doing, looks content but also determined. I feel that they are preparing for an energetic day ahead. One full of hope, promise and progress. This is what I like about Vietnam. It moves ahead. Not always in the way I would like or in ways that I understand but ahead anyway.
Getting up at this time and seeing what people do in the very early mornings explains a lot to me. Saigon is a town of early risers, even on the weekdays. This is not unusual in a culture and econmy that is fundamentally an agrarian one. Now I know why the girls in our call center quickly scarf down their noodles or rice then turn off the lights to nap through the rest of the lunch hour. I understand a little better why people in the office start to fade or get cranky around 4 or 5 pm. And now I know why they have dinner as soon as the sun goes down, slam down 5 beers and a bottle of whiskey and are home in bed by 8:30pm.
I did see something new on my long run this morning. My house is near the Tan Son Nhat airport. Access to the airport is via a flat, straight six-lane road of about two kilometers. The road is one of the few with wide and relatively clear sidewalks so it’s inevitably part of my long run course. Today, it seemed that that motorbike traffic was bigger and louder than what I would expect. At the end of the wide street the sidewalk was lined with people sitting on their parked motorbikes, which were pointed towards the street. I thought they were looking at new billboards on the other side of the street. I really am an idiot to think this. But I work in advertising so what should I expect?
It seems that while I was gone someone decided to set up an illegal drag strip for even bigger idiots on this stretch of road. These guys have removed mufflers or whatever else slows them down. They have bored out the cylinders of their 50cc scooters and probably a fair amount of gray matter between their ears while they were at it. They remove their helmets. I suppose its just added weight or perhaps it’s a condition of betting that helmets are not allowed. In any case, there are obviously very few brain cells to protect. They wait for the light to turn and off they go popping wheelies on ridiculously small scooters, trying to look cool in front of the gathered crowds. They generally speed against traffic to get back to the start line when they finish. It saves them about 3 seconds by not having to cross over the correct side of the road.
I’ll probably see some of these guys again. They will be the new paraplegics trying to cross the busy intersection below my electric highway at the gym. I only hope they don’t crowd out the land mine and Agent Orange beggars that really need the cash.
