(As for motorbikes in cities, I'm not a fan due all the noise and pollution. But electric bikes are great!)
Vietnam's traffic fatality rate is 26 per 100,000. About the same was America's traffic fatality rate in early 1970s before Ralph Nader convinced people to care about safety. But Americans had no problem driving on roads in 1970s. Virtually no one thought it was too dangerous to drive in America at those fatality rates.
(Today fatality rates are down ~50% from those numbers thanks to Ralph Nader.)
And the Vietnam numbers continue to decrease as the country develops. The WHO numbers are based on 2016 numbers. There were a reported 8,417 fatalities in 2016 but the WHO assumes that's a lie and adjusts upwards to 24,970 fatalities. In any case, fatalities have been dropping by about 5% a year. In 2019 there were 7,624 fatalities, for instance.
I thought HCMC was the common nomenclature and saying Saigon would be like saying Ceylon rather than Sri Lanka.
In official stuff they'll say Ho Chi Minh City but in casual conversation, I'd guesstimate 80%+ of the time people say Saigon. But if someone drops in a Ho Chi Minh City instead it isn't especially noteworthy.
Saigon also gets used on things like, say, book titles: https://www.fahasa.com/sai-gon-ky-an-cuoc-phieu-luu-cua-nhun...
or movie titles: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12937684/
Saying "Saigon" doesn't have any particular connotation. Like, it doesn't mean "we refuse to accept the North won" or "we refuse to accept the renaming". (Some Viet Kieu in America are crazy about that kind of thing, though.) It is mostly just that Saigon is two syllables and Ho City Minh City is five syllables.
That said: "Saigon" tends to refer to the inner metro area. "Ho Chi Minh City" actually covers a massive area -- it is the size of a province. It is divided into 24 districts and I don't think anyone from the outer 5 rural districts would say they live in "Saigon".
Also note that the airport in Saigon still has the code SGN.
As someone who lived in NYC most of my life, hold on to that pepper spray and that 4" pocket knife real tight.
And make sure no cops see it, because they love collecting souvenirs and couldn't care less about the legality of your self-defense items.
Now, with the police budget cut $1B dollars, crime is skyrocketing.
Gotta love how this kind of stuff can happen in broad daylight with little no immediate security response:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaF2AdlXAus
Gotham is back baby!
And if we aren't gonna talk about crime, let's talk about that beautifully sludge smelling runoff from the subway tracks whenever it rains. Quick way to a nice putrid hair conditioning!
And let's not talk about the condition of the tracks and how much electricity is being wasted by the poorly lubricated trains and tracks. Those thunderous sounds when the subway passes? That is the sound of energy being wasted, being converted to sound energy instead of locomotion.
I hate everything about NYC except the melting pot of intellectual diversity that it is.
P.S. I still live here, so don't tell me that my perspective is an outsider's one.
I can't stand the subway. LIRR on the other hand is quite nice.
I haven't been on any train after 6pm that wasn't loaded with drunks, in either direction. It gets especially bad going back out around 1am. I wish they didn't allow drinking on the trains.
I'd rather be loaded with drunks on LIRR than take the trash chute that is the subway any day of the week.
EDIT: boxing fight
Of course the video's edited to only show the pissed of cyclists.
Having done a lot of this kind of riding, let me tell you what likely happened: The kids were riding as a group, acting stupid (running reds, popping wheelies, etc.). BMW driver either said something to them, or drove aggressively near the group. The group rides, surrounding his car to fuck with him a little. BMW driver hits his brakes rather than slow down, cyclist crashes into the SUV (this part is confirmed). Kids are livid, and the pedestrian camera rolls.
The alternative to that sequence is that these kids are beating the shit out of an SUV with their bicycles unprovoked. Not buying it.
The driver's problem is he's in his own little bubble and was infuriated by bicyclists inconveniencing his drive (oh dear). I bet he'll tell people how scary NYC is, like commenter `goldenkey` above, and hopefully won't return to be so inconvenienced by kids on bicycles. His conundrum was 100% avoidable by not being a tool.
Anyway I hate selectively edited videos like that, making the driver look like some victim. It's Andy Ngo-quality material.
If you were there during that era, you can wear it like a badge of honor...like yeah fuck, I survived that fucking place, yeah man I can survive anywhere....
NYC has been Disneyland since 9/11. Even before that it had almost a decade of cleaning up.
It might feel like the mid-80s again now, but only JUST now.