You can't have a hot dog without a dog.
You can't have a milkshake without milk.
And you can't have Ho Chi Minh City without the scooters.

I laugh when I think back to my early days in Istanbul, when Joe and I routinely escaped death by taxi ramming. "These people are crazy," one of us would say every five minutes. It seemed like having an insurance policy to cross the street wouldn't be such a crazy idea.

That was before I got to Saigon.

Bob Marley would start singing about a rat race. Dave Matthews? Probably about some ants marching. I, personally, have no words to describe this spectacle.

But just know that these dudes below are a dying breed.

"The motorbikes began about ten years ago," Hien, a business friend of Danny's, told us in the backseat of a taxi our first night in Ho Chi Minh. "Before that, it was all bikes."

How much nicer the city must have been on the ears back then, I thought inwardly. Instead of the chorus of a concrete jungle aggravating stress levels across the board, I yearned for the sounds of a million bicycles -- with their bells, and rusty chains, and charm -- and inhaled a big breath of pollution.

"Of course," Hien continued. "The concern is that in another five years, it will be all cars."

"Another Bangkok," Uncle Dan said, before telling his Bangkok story: Two hours, one taxi ride from the airport to the hotel, zero air conditioning. And lots of frustration.

But crossing the street. Istanbul, you're a cakewalk. You're not even like taking candy from a baby. You're like taking candy from a baby in a vegetative state, compared to crossing the streets in Saigon.

"My strategy," Dan said, having just given me a free demonstration, "is to walk steadily, at one speed, and confidently. If you do that, he will move."

"Yeah," I said, "but the only problem is that I never assume the driver isn't drunk, or that he is going to stop his car for little old me. I've been in Serbia for the last two months, after all. What do you expect?"