I never tire of seeing motorcycle drivers sleeping in Ho Chi Minh City, sprawled on their bikes beside the road, or vendors on bicycles hawking everything from goldfish to knife sharpening.
Street life in Vietnam recently got a glowing review in the San Francisco Chronicle, which gushed about "multifunctional Vietnamese alleys" where "all kinds of people are smashed together" in chance encounters. That, said the newspaper, is quite unlike what it calls its own "uptight" city, designed to keep people in their homes and cars rather than sharing public spaces.
