Ho Chi Minh city is home to 10 million people, and 6 million motorbikes. It’s a fun fact I had heard often from people attempting to describe the beautiful chaos that is HCMC (formally Saigon). It wasn’t until Ms. Uyen, my pint-sized driver on the “Back of The Bike” <\/a> Ho Chi Minh tour cheerfully repeated it while whizzing through what felt like a solid wall of motorbike traffic, that I really got what that fact is trying to convey. <\/p>\n

There are a freaking TON of people in Ho Chi Minh City, and most of them are on the back of a motorbike. What I find most interesting about that statistic is that three seems to be the average number of riders per bike, so 6 million bikes for 10 million people seems pretty unnecessary! <\/p>\n

Tom is an extremely competent motorbike driver, and since we rent a scooter in nearly every town we visit has had tons of practice. However we took one look at HCMC and decided that we would not be renting a bike there. Maybe if we had a few months to get used to it, but definitely not for our (sadly) short 40-hour stay. Just crossing the street was enough to get our adrenaline pumping, though it did seem a shame to not participate in the honking, swerving, writhing mass of traffic. “When in Rome” and all that…<\/p>\n

Which is why I was so excited to read about the Back of the Bike<\/a>, a company that runs tours where locals pick you up on their motorbikes and take you around the different areas of the city. <\/p>\n

“When I first moved from my small town to Saigon, I didn’t drive a motorbike either” Uyen chirped over her shoulder to me while weaving around and through the 400 or so other honking and weaving motor bikes. “I was too scared!” she giggled “can you believe that?” I was finding a lot of things hard to believe at that moment. In some ways I did find it hard to believe that she had at one point been a scared little country mouse in Ho Chi Minh City. She was certainly navigating the traffic like a pro now while simultaneously carrying on a conversation with me over her shoulder and making sure that our whole weird biker gang was staying together. I was also finding it hard to believe how un-scared I was riding behind her. I looked over at Tom behind his guide Thi, and our friend Michelle behind her guide Nhi and saw them as equally relaxed making small talk with their local guides as though we were all at happy hour at a bar instead of being whizzed around the city on bikes. <\/p>\n