On a shady lane in the old French quarter of Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, a grayish concrete house stands back from the street surrounded by a wall topped with barbed wire. Marxist who has run afoul of the ruling Communist Party by advocating democracy and a free economy. No policeman guards the gate but several muscular men sit sipping tea outside a shop across the street to keep the house under surveillance. A block away, on a boulevard called Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, an armada of motorcycles, bicycles, cars, trucks and buses thunders by in near-anarchy. Few traffic police are to be seen and they are hapless.
Traffic lights are almost non-existent.
Drivers think nothing of riding on the wrong side of the street against the flow of traffic. Crossings and traffic circles are a jumble as riders weave through in four directions. Pedestrians risk their lives crossing a street. These contrasting scenes suggest that the Communist rulers of Vietnam, against whom the United States fought unsuccessfully from 1954 to 1973, may control the politics of this nation but they sure do not control its traffic. Moreover, conversations with Vietnamese, other Asians, and Westerners indicate that the regime controls little else and is failing to provide the basic services of governments everywhere.