ABSTRACT
It was just over seven years ago when I first started riding a motorcycle in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). Knowing nothing about motorcycles or the riding of them, I bought a brand new red Honda Airblade, got a license – on someone else’s bike – and more-or-less just hit the streets (I still have this same bike, which has probably now done about 60,000 HCMC-kilometres). Just for fun, I would sometimes wake early and go riding with the sunrise, staying out as the traffic slowly thickened around me with people on their way to work, and I became one with what seemed like the whole of humanity, flowing, homogenously mobilized. Sometimes I would ride and just let myself get lost and then try to pick my way back, anxious, nervous, but excited.
