I had read about traffic in Ho Chi Minh, but couldn’t have guessed how crazy it would be. Every road is busy. They burst with the exhaust and noise of a thousand scooters moving by some inscrutable logic to every corner of the city. Traffic lights are either non-existent, or well-hidden in dense thickets of wires that form the city’s electric backbone. A cryptic reason underpins both the tangled cables and the traffic, and that reason allows this huge city to exist without apparent regulation.

At intersections, banks of drivers will wait, watching the counterflow until a collective will stirs to shift the flow of traffic. At first, entrepreneurs venture out of the crowd, inserting their scooters into the maelstrom and using themselves to open the lane for others to follow. The transition is quick and efficient, and immediately after, drivers begin to accumulate in the transverse direction to repeat the process.

Crossing the street is an act of death defiance, because you can’t rely on any break in the traffic, but must create one yourself. To start, step into the busy street, slowly, confidently and with a deliberate course. Eye contact seems to be a good way to force drivers to acknowledge you, but can also be very unsettling. When you look into the eyes of the drivers you see that they have their own calculus— each one deciding to let you live, but momentarily considering that choice.

I look forward to adjusting to simple things, like crossing the street. I can already see that, though individual drivers seem reckless and dangerous, I can trust the gestalt of traffic here. It strikes me as an interesting counterpoint to Vietnam’s centrally planned economy that in a situation where each driver is entirely goal-seeking and self-interested, the outcome is both efficient and compassionate.