Introduction

1Public space in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam, remains unsettled. Like the city itself, which is undergoing a seemingly unending process of development and growth, HCMC’s public spaces are emerging, disappearing and transforming. For example, the small square in front of the main cathedral, a popular selfie spot, reappeared in late 2019 as restoration works on the cathedral progressed. The square in front of the famous Bến Thành market, where the city’s main bus terminal was previously located, had not yet reappeared after disappearing more than two years earlier into the building site for the long-awaited metropolitan rapid transit (MRT) system. In the midst of the construction works for the MRT (subway), HCMC’s main boulevard Nguyễn Huệ became pedestrianised in part to encourage people to gather in the disrupted city centre. Unlike a fear of spontaneous crowds in Hanoi’s public spaces noted by Thomas (2002), open-air public spaces constructed by the state, such as HCMC’s Nguyễn Huệ, promote the gathering of crowds for recreation and privilege pedestrian movements in ways that enable and potentially foster encounters between strangers. Stranger-encounters in Vietnam involve more than the co-presence and visibility of other bodies in locations. Practices deal with normative as well as new forms of social distancing. The physical limitations of public spaces shape interactions. Unwanted, undesirable or offensive bodily sensations of others transform how public space is experienced. Expressing, but more frequently suppressing, emotional responses also shape interactions in public space. While there may be similarities among citizens experiencing being-in-the-world in public spaces of socialist East Asia, such as the mega-urban regions of coastal China, modest cities of Lao PDR and rapidly developing metropolitan areas of Vietnam, this paper focuses on the mobile public spaces of Saigon Bus network in HCMC in an attempt to capture something of what Annette Kim (2015: 3) refers to as the city’s “wonderfulness”.

2My starting point is an acceptance that public space in socialist East Asia is malleable. The uses of HCMC’s public spaces change throughout the day, a point made by Stephen McNally (2003) in his observations of late-night open-air prostitution in spaces that are by day among HCMC’s iconic tourist destinations and, now, Instagram-worthy spots. Public spaces, thus, are not fixed and their uses may be characterised by temporal and spatial patterning. Stranger-relationality is fundamental to a space being experienced as “public” (Warner 2002). Citizens move through the world experiencing being-in-the-world and continuously interpret public spaces as they enact them, an idea captured by Pierre Bourdieu (1990) in his concept of habitus. Conceptualised this way, public spaces can be understood as continuously transforming as citizens live in and through them. Furthermore, this paper explores public spaces that not only transform in use throughout the day, but also move across locations. Within these spaces strangers generally do not share biographical information but may recognise each other by their occupations and activities associated with the place. Lyn Lofland (1989) points out public spaces like this have been understood as parochial space in which people are connected to others they know to some extent, such as through occupation. This conceptualisation contrasts with Marc Augé’s (2002) “semi-public space” of mass transit. I lean on Lofland (1989) who proposes interpreting spaces where strangers encounter one another across a continuum from private to parochial to public spaces. Examples from other socialist East Asia, such as Lisa Richaud’s (2018) study of old-age stranger encounters in public parks in Beijing, reveal stranger encounters in the public spaces are not simply oriented on everyday practices. The character of public spaces in East Asian cities is abstruse, sometimes perplexing, in part because it involves more than practice-oriented interactions. Lofland’s (1989) continuum provides useful tools for analysing abstrusity.

3Saigon Bus stops and onboard passenger seating highlight some of the ways in which public spaces are transformed throughout the day. The city bus illustrates that public spaces may not only facilitate mobilities but also move, sometimes in routine and regular patterns but other times in unusual or unexpected ways. Such mobile spaces can be unfixed or unmoored at the same time as characterised by an uneven yet progressive momentum. Public spaces of the Saigon Bus network are widely accessible, with a standard fare of 6,000 VND ($ 0.26/€ 0.22) for adults, 3,000 VND ($ 0.13/€ 0.11) for students and free travel for vulnerable and elderly people. Riders come from a relatively wide range of social backgrounds and demographic composition shifts across the day and between downtown, cross-town and suburban routes. The Saigon Bus network is a daytime service with the majority of routes running from around 4.00-5.00 am until 6.00-7.00 pm. Saigon Bus provides visibility as well as the potential for encounters and interactions between co-present strangers who share public space (see Figure 1).

4The “feel” of the city, as Georg Simmel (1950), John Raban (1974), Zygmunt Bauman (2003), Constance Classen (2012) and other authors suggest, not only shapes but is shaped by stranger-relationality through physical co-presence, shared sensations and social power that fluctuate in intensity, vary in value, and generate competing emotional responses such as uncertainty. Among the people who voluntarily conform to the norms of such places, some have social power to express preferences about what their bodies experience sensorially, how they move within physical limits, and how they respond emotionally to random encounters and interactions with strangers. In the following examples, I broadly follow an interactionist perspective coupled with sensory ethnography and mobile methods.

5This paper draws on long term anthropological fieldwork among mass transit users in HCMC. In 2012, I started daily riding on the Saigon Bus, and regularly spending time standing in the sun or the rain, waiting at bus stops. Primarily I use participant observation and “deep hanging out” with mobile research subjects (Geertz 2005). As an observing participant on the move, I deploy the “mobile methods” of a “movement-driven social science” (Büscher, Urry & Witchger 2011: 4). I experience and explore the embodied practices of public bus riding, particularly social relations and interactions that occur in the context of co-riding (cf. Nash 1975). Becoming a bus rider involved learning the ropes and embodying the practices of bus riding. In becoming a co-rider, I was inspired by Loïc Wacquant’s (2006) methods for researching social relations in an African-American boxing gym by becoming a boxer and living the life of a club boxer. While facing qualitatively different challenges to Wacquant, I became a Saigon Bus rider and live the life of a public bus user. As a bus rider, I ride along with other co-riders. I do not take to bus to just ride around. I ride with the purpose of travelling to or from a destination, such as a workplace, a university campus, or a friend’s house. Thus, I travel on different routes and at different times on the diurnal service. Note that while the Saigon Bus is my primary form of transport, it is not the only mode I use. Being a bus rider involves riding along in-situ and capitalising on an immediacy of context to capture experiences (McGuinness, Fincham & Murray 2010). Because I am a co-rider, I participate in riding along and observe how others ride along. I make written narrative field notes, or simple sketches, in a chronological journal as soon as possible after a journey. On longer journeys, I note keywords and phrases during the journey on a scrap of paper or on my phone. My methods, which centre on phenomenal and sensory experiences, move beyond a normative discursive paradigm fixed on the collection of personal narratives (Culhane 2017). I present data in performative vignettes inspired by the “lively ethnography” of van Dooren and Rose (2016). In doing so, I explore what people do, instead of recording what they say they do. My approach aligns to Sarah Pink’s (2015) explanation of reflexivity in sensory ethnography as a critical response to the reflexive turn and production of constructed ethnographic texts of the 1980s which centred on the voices of informants. In line with this approach, I do not conduct and record research interviews while on the move and I rarely engage in atypical co-riding practices such as photographing fellow travellers. Also, I do not aim to interview authorities and policymakers about their views on the regulation and management of the mass transit system. Rather, I became a bus rider and I ride along to explore co-riding on Saigon Bus.

Ho Chi Minh City’s public spaces

6While Vietnam’s national capital, Hanoi, is the focus of much of the existing research about urban public spaces, particularly concerning daily activities in public places such as street trading (Drummond 2000; Eidse, Turner & Oswin 2016; Higgs 2003; Geertman, Labbé, Boudreau & Jacques 2016; Kurfürst 2012; Thomas 2002), there is a smaller but growing body of research that explores street life and public space in HCMC (Earl 2004, 2010, 2014; Gibert 2014, 2018; Harms 2009; Kim 2015; McNally 2003). The content of these studies, especially research on Saigon’s laneways —hẻms— and neighbourhoods, highlights Lofland’s (1989) observation that much research on public space focuses on the parochial realm in which people know one another through occupation or activity associated with the space, such as selling noodles on a neighbourhood street corner. Ulf Hannerz (1980), for example, contrasts neighbourhood relations of nearly kin with traffic relations of unconnected co-present actors who share both a purpose and a social space.

7Public space in HCMC is street-centred and generally not green space. HCMC’s public space is also not “official” space. Official space is a third sphere, Sandra Kurfürst (2012: 13) contends, that more appropriately describes monuments and squares, such as Hanoi’s Ba Đình Square, which she argues are located between public and private spaces. HCMC’s public space, while involving street trading and other commercial activities, is not designated as commercial space such as Bến Thành cloth market (Leshkowich 2014) or any of the city’s large number of department stores and privatised leisure spaces (Peyval & Gibert 2012). While Lofland (1989) proposes public space as not private and implicitly not commercial, Vietnamese public spaces typically include commercial activities. Throughout the day it is often not the same activity taking place continuously and perhaps not continuous commercial activity in one place. Moreover, some public green spaces charge an entry fee or security guards, for example at indoor public spaces such as airconditioned malls, turn away beggars and others. Writing on Hanoi, Lisa Drummond and Nguyen Thi Lien (2008: 187–188) define public space as recreational space that includes private and commercial spaces. Features such as these show that East Asian socialist public spaces challenge universal ideas about public space as shared and communal, and reveal there are a broader range of places that can be understood as public spaces. Perhaps akin to Michael Walzer’s (1986) multiple use, “open minded” space, HCMC’s public space is shared by a diversity of people and its changing uses are shaped by practices that take place while-in-use (see Figure 2).

8There are several other noteworthy features of (post)socialist Vietnamese public space that potentially differentiates it from public space in other contexts. Firstly, some Vietnamese public space is conceptualised as animate. Marie Gibert (2018) explains: the noun classifier (con) used to describe the road is the same one used for living creatures and organisms, but not one used for inanimate objects (e.g. cái), as might be expected in English. Building on Gibert’s observation, elsewhere I refer to the Vietnamese road not simply as a space but as an abiotic actor, an other-than-human actor, that can influence flow and shape mobilities practices and experiences in the (m)ôtô-cene (Earl 2021). The physical space of HCMC’s sidewalks, Annette Kim (2015: 213) observes, can shape social situations.

9Secondly, and widely accepted across the literature on Vietnam, a distinction between public and private space is blurred. Drummond (2000: 2378) points out how individual action confronts state interventions to turn space “inside out” and “outside in”. In a widely cited passage that describes space through practices that take place, she writes:

The distinction between public space and private space in Vietnamese cities in increasingly blurred both from the “inside out” and the “outside in”. By these terms I mean that, from the inside-out, families and individuals make use of so-called public space for private activities to an extent and in ways that render that public space notionally private. And from the outside-in, the state’s interventions in so-called “private” space, particularly the organisation of domestic life, are so invasive and wide-ranging as to negate or seriously compromise a conceptualisation of “private” space.

10Significantly, Drummond (2000) identified that in Hanoi there are noticeable state interventions which, while invasive and wide-ranging, are not accepted unchallenged by Vietnamese people. Drummond and Nguyen (2008) note that the state has receded from everyday life and stepped away from organised leisure. However, public spaces including squares are tightly policed and sidewalks theoretically patrolled. While the state attempts to control public and private spaces by delimiting the practices that should or may take place among co-present strangers, uses for public space are contested by a range of interest groups. Writing on traceurs in Hanoi, Stephanie Geertman et al. (2016) report a diversification of authority over public spaces, including private security guards, and users confronting multiple sets of rules that varyingly shape how and when they use, occupy and belong in public spaces. In HCMC, public and private spaces are similarly blurred with all kinds of personal activities taking place in view of others (see below). Nevertheless, in HCMC public space in the parochial realm of residential laneways (hẻm) is to a large extent self-regulating. What is notable is the lack if not absence of state intervention in regulating practices in many public spaces as it appears that, in analyses of laneways of HCMC’s District 4 at least, surveillance is not readily apparent (Stiff 2019). A range of measures have been trialled by the Vietnamese state with an aim to place limits on the practices that may take place in public spaces. Ola Söderström and Stephanie Geertman (2013) provide an explanation that, with no clear consensus on what constitutes public spaces among architects, planners and government officials, public space is constructed as a social problem requiring policy making. Delimiting measures may be implemented in the name of certain, often privileged social groups, such as entrepreneurs and leisure classes. Thus, they intentionally or otherwise operate at the expense of others by restricting their participation in public space and curtailing their livelihoods including, among others, a ban on roving street vendors, a ban on cyclo trishaws and a commitment to clear pavements of temporary and spill over trading. For example, Erik Harms (2009) noted the convergence of interests in state attempts to demarcate public and private space at HCMC’s iconic Turtle Lake (Hồ Con Rùa) that occurred between seemingly opposed groups in the name of a supposedly unified public. He comments that: “While one is free to walk along the sidewalks, there is no longer any space to linger. The sidewalks have been converted from spaces of social action and public encounter into spaces of anonymous transit and fleeting movement” (Harms 2009: 187). Attempts to place limits on practices in public spaces have been contested by Vietnamese people, some of whom are highly visible (such as traceurs, street traders or reputed food stall operators) while others remain virtually invisible (see Figure 3).

11Yet, a vibrant street life characterises daily life in HCMC. While is not unique to HCMC, the diversity of street-based activities there caters to a very wide proportion of the population for the whole year round. “The sidewalk space of the city”, Kim (2015: 2) asserts, “is the city to most people”. It is on the sidewalks that citizens experience being-in-the-world through embodied experiences of the physical, sensory and emotional feel of the city. In describing the dynamic street life that characterises communal living in an up-and-coming inner city neighbourhood called Tân Định, where I carried out doctoral research, I wrote:

As residents spend much of their day outside, they deal with private and personal issues —grooming, breastfeeding, arguing, crying, eating, sleeping— in full view of family, friends, neighbourhood peddlers, customers, and passing pedestrians and two-wheeled motorists […] [in public] spaces [that] require no membership or affiliation for entry beyond acceptance into the neighbourhood (Earl 2010: 94).

12By identifying a range of practices, what I highlighted is what Lofland (1989) relays from Strauss’ study of the American city as a “location” (contrasted with a “locale” like an airport). A location, like a hẻm (Saigonese residential laneway), is bounded non-private space in which people are similar and known to one another, and in which interactions and behaviours are witnessed by co-present others. I also made the point that aspirational social climbers, who wish to distinguish themselves from others socially, may also foster a sense of belonging —co-location, sensory familiarity and emotional entanglement— to the neighbourhood by participating in the public space of a location in ways that are recognisable to others (Earl 2014).

13In this paper, I extend the idea of public space to recognise its characteristic malleability. I lean on Lofland’s (1989) geography of the public realm to consider how mobile public spaces of Saigon Bus operate as public spaces. I hone in on encounters and interactions among co-present strangers who find themselves riding together in mobile public space. Stranger-relationality in HCMC’s public spaces occurs through practice-oriented interactions, such as street trading or bus co-riding, that involve direct encounters between co-present non-kin including strangers who do not share biographical information. Taking a step further, stranger-relationality also occurs beyond practice-oriented behaviour and communication through co-location in terms of the strangers’ shared physical co-presence, shared sensations, and emotional responses to shared encounters. Pivoting to Erving Goffman’s (1972) analysis of social relations in public, I draw on and contextualise aspects of situational and egocentric “territories of the self” as multi-sensory interactions that characterise co-presence in HCMC’s public spaces. Overall, I show the HCMC’s public spaces are malleable and on the move, somehow stuck in motion.

Stranger-relationality on the Saigon Bus

14Mass transit in HCMC has opened up new mobile public spaces. The Saigon Bus network was re-introduced into HCMC from 2005. The public bus is not a widely popular mode of transport in HCMC as it is in other large metropolitan contexts. Recent department of Transport figures record there were 305 million bus passengers in 2012, and in 2020 the forecast is for only 159 million, making a 48% decline in demand over eight years that nevertheless is being linked to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic (Gia Minh 2020). Public bus services have generated new ways of being mobile that challenge some long established certainties of urban, particularly metropolitan, daily life. Riding on the public bus and waiting at bus stops offer novel spaces that are malleable, temporary and which emerge while-in-use and disappear when not in use. This illustrates that public space is malleable and can be located on a continuum of public-parochial space as Lofland (1989) proposed.

15Co-riders and co-waiters of the bus network experience being-in-the-world in public. The spaces of their co-presence may constitute a common locale (like an airport) and a common location (like a neighbourhood bar) simultaneously or periodically. For example, at the central bus station at Hàm Nghi there are strangers who do not share biographical information, such as passengers waiting for bus services that travel in all directions across the city; strangers who know each other by occupation, such as drivers from different bus companies who queue at the terminal; and others who work together at the terminal, such as street traders who sell drinks and snacks or xe ôm (traditional motorbike taxis) who wait for customers alighting buses. Who is using the space and their relations to each other also potentially transforms public space while-in-use. The bus terminal can be concurrently a locale and a location while-in-use (see Figure 4).

16The novel malleable spaces of Saigon Bus enable stranger-relationality. Goffman (1972) notes (in a footnote) an observation made by his former doctoral student Harvey Sacks on a stranger being a fellow user of public space, not merely an unacquainted other. He recognises there is a kind of relationship among co-present strangers who share experiences of being-in-the-world. For Michael Warner (2002: 57), this is an “ancient” sense of the stranger. Contrasting with Bauman (2003: 106), who points out that the constant presence of and possible interactions with strangers and outsiders (whom he calls “aliens”) in metropolitan daily life fosters the “perpetual uncertainty” city dwellers experience, Warner’s strangers are not aliens but belong to the world and are a normal feature of the modern social imaginary. The co-presence of strangers helps public spaces make sense. Their interactions, Thaddeus Müller (2012) contends, are a feature of the “warm city” where stranger relations are not anonymous and fleeting but have personal and intimate dimensions. For Ulf Hannerz (1980), the crowding of strangers on mass transit (on a bus) generates a type of anonymous but purposeful interactive that shapes repertoires and inventory of performances and which contributes to experiencing the lifeworld of the city.

17Dealing with strangers is a normative experience of everyday life in large metropolitan and mega-urban contexts. In HCMC, normative politeness governs stranger-relationality and sociality. Grace Chye Lay Chew (2011) explains that Vietnamese practices of politeness among strangers are not uniform and are understood differently in different regions of Vietnam as well as between urbanites, rural dwellers and rural-urban migrants. In general among Vietnamese, expressing politeness when dealing with non-kin involves a blending of respectfulness and camaraderie, with camaraderie preferred over formal deference when possible and polite behaviours aiming to maintain social harmony through reciprocity and warmth. In Vietnamese using kinship terms in interactions with non-kin is typical. On Saigon Bus, the passengers and bus crew —the driver and conductor— use reciprocal kinship terms to address one another. For example, on a route 139 service one weekday morning in September 2020 a teenager in a school uniform got on and took a seat to wait for the conductor to approach and sell him a fare. Since the 139 has no conductor, the driver called out to the boy using the pronoun “con”, which is what a parent calls his own children, to come up the front and use the ticket machine. The fare is 6,000 VND ($ 0.26/€ 0.22) he added, perhaps assuming the boy was not a regular bus user. Without a conductor to oversee the passengers, route 139 services are mostly self-regulating space with the driver responsible for overseeing the self-service ticket machine. Passengers get on the bus using the front door, they place their fare in a Perspex box, push a button for a full fare or half fare, and take a printed ticket. If a passenger does not have exact change, the driver is able to change small notes. One time, also in September 2020, on the 139 a passenger was waiting for change when a second passenger leaned across the first to deposit her own fare, push the button and take her ticket. By doing this she was able to enter the bus and avoid causing a delay. This behaviour of the second passenger towards the first one resembles what Goffman (1963) refers to as “civil inattention”. Lofland (1989: note 10) interprets civil inattention not as disregard for another but as a form of politeness. The prevalence of civil inattention on Saigon Bus contrasts with other passengering studies, such as the “hateful behaviours” on a public bus in Birmingham (UK), analysed by Helen Wilson (2011) and public reparation among Paris metro riders noted by Martin Aranguren and Stéphane Tonnelat (2014). In other ways Saigon Bus riding shares features with Paris metro riding, such as rarely expressing emotions and fleeting non-verbal exchanges and civil inattention.

18Many interactions on the bus between passengers, such as selecting unpopular window seats that sit in the full sun, and between a passenger and a conductor, such as purchasing a fare, involve non-verbal communication, such as an initial nod and hand gestures. Chew’s (2011) study of normative politeness among Vietnamese stresses the importance of non-verbal and paralinguistic behaviour. Paralinguistic behaviour has become increasingly prevalent with formalised social distancing measures and compulsory wearing of face masks (khẩu trang) to combat the COVID-19 pandemic (see Figure 5a). Mask wearing on Saigon Bus was a practice of normative politeness before the pandemic that served not to protect the self from others but to protect others from the self (see Figure 2). Wearing a mask does not show uncertainty in the face of strangers but camaraderie with strangers. Saigon Bus services display signs informing passengers of the requirement to wear a mask prior to boarding (see Figure 5b). This example highlights that in everyday riding on Saigon Bus camaraderie-deference of normative politeness rather than feelings of uncertainty and wariness appear to characterise the stranger-relationality and togetherness of co-riders. It shows that stranger-relationality shapes how “warm” the public spaces of a city can become while-in-use.

19Common-sense and patterned behaviours, such as normative politeness, shape self-regulating public spaces. On mass transit, co-riders’ intentions differ from those of co-present strangers in other types of public spaces to the extent that, together, co-riders share an intention to go to a destination, which provides some predictability of their actions. Bus conductors and drivers also share intentions that makes their behaviours generally predictable. On established routes and among familiarised riders, stranger actions and behaviour are characterised by predictability. Tim Cresswell (2013) draws on Bourdieu’s (1990) concept of habitus to suggest public spaces can be continuously interpreted as citizens enact them, for example, by interpreting common sense in avoiding dangerous roads. At a micro-sociological level, Goffman (1972) similarly points out that patterned and predictable street behaviours enable pedestrians to use common sense and sensory awareness to avoid collisions with others. On Saigon Bus, patterned behaviours constitute a code of riding.

20On a new mass transit system, or among newly initiated riders, actions and behaviour of some may generate discomfort for others due to a lack of predictability and adherence to accepted practices. To encourage predictable alighting behaviours among co-riders on the Saigon Bus network, buses make announcements or display signs that instruct passengers how to behave. For example, route 139 services broadcast a recording at every stop: Để xuống trạm quý khách vui long nhấn chuông để thông báo. Ra được vào cửa sau. (To alight at a stop, passengers are requested to ring the bell to notify the driver. Exit by the rear door.) Unpredictable or subversive behaviour may provoke formal regulation or informal intervention from the conductor or a co-rider. For example, on a route 20 service I rode in August 2020 the bus crew had taped a typed paper sign above the front window to notify passengers that unless they call out loudly 50 metres before the bus arrives at the stop it will not stop and they must wait to alight at the next stop (see Figure 6).

21What these examples show is that in new or unknown situations rules may be devised to actively teach people which practices are expected behaviour norms. However, there are also multiple forms of authority shaping interactions on Saigon Bus that range from formal regulations to social behaviours of civility, camaraderie, kindness or protection. How these are applied or policed varies at different times, in different situations and on different services, but also on the same services at different times and in different situations. The malleability of public space is shaped by temporalities also.

22Sometimes following a formal regulation may be a surprising behaviour. Also occurring in August 2020, the conductor on a service I rode asked a frail aged man to leave the bus because he had no money to purchase a fare nor a vulnerable citizen’s card (entitling him to a free ride) in his possession that morning. Even though he explained his situation and even after another passenger offered to pay for his fare, the conductor would not overlook the regulation and, in line with the regulation, insisted he leave the bus at the following stop, one located on a major arterial road away from shops where there would have been people who could help the frail old man. After he left the bus, the conductor and driver —but not passengers— had a loud discussion between themselves confirming the behaviour had been appropriate. The passengers’ non-participation aligned to normative deference and a regulation that passengers should not speak to the driver. On this service, a lack of kindness of the bus crew limited camaraderie among passengers.

23Regulations about public space in Vietnam are interpreted socially. Kim (2015: 17) points out that society creates rules to shape what is considered as legitimate in its context, and sometimes the result deviates from plans and policies. Similarly, Drummond and Nguyen (2008) report that youth in Hanoi recognised a need for regulation of public spaces but disagreed about which regulations were appropriate. On Saigon Bus services social interpretations of regulations, like the public spaces they govern, are malleable. For example, recently I travelled on a suburban service towards the end of the crew’s morning shift, when I was the only passenger and the conductor was taking a nap. At this time, instead of waking the conductor, I called out directly to the driver to request the next stop (ghé trạm). By doing that I ignored the regulation that instructs passengers to not speak to the driver and by stopping the bus to let me off the driver allowed me to do so. Besides this example, my field notes record many instances when rules are completely ignored when it is raining. The influence of heavy seasonal rain on uses of public space highlights its malleability.

24While rules may be devised and disseminated to guide behaviour, it is naïve to expect that people will automatically follow norms imposed upon them without taking into account what is considered appropriate, tolerable, civil, or polite. The presence of a rule does not compel a person to obey it. While some rules on Saigon Bus are followed and enforced by drivers, conductors and/or co-riders, other rules are overlooked or ignored. This highlights a risk assuming that rules designed by an East Asian socialist state will be accepted willingly. Rather, in socialist East Asia, as in other contexts, people contest, protest and resist unfair, harsh or irrelevant rules so long as the consequences for doing so are not significant. Needless-to-say rules are not the only way people’s behaviour in public space is influenced. On Saigon Bus, the physical limits of the bus seating arrangements and embodied responses to unwanted sensory invasions are among the other influences on passengering behaviour.

Stuck in motion on Saigon Bus route 34

25Route 34 is a suburban service that runs from the 23 September Park city bus terminal to the District 8 bus terminal. The route picks up at major stops in District 1, traverses District 4, weaves through the wards of District 7 in the north from east to west, in the centre from west to east and in the south from east to west, before terminating in District 8 (see Figure 7).

26My field notes record a journey in which I am travelling on a late afternoon service on a weekend in December 2019. The bus is travelling from the downtown city centre towards Tân Kiểng, one of the poorer wards of District 7. Like me, most of the passengers on the 34 are women, many are older and would be experiencing or anticipating grand mothering. These older women wear sombre coloured patterned suits and most wear some sort of sunhat and a face mask (khẩu trang). Many of the masks are disposable medical face masks that can be purchased in a packet of 5, 10, 50 or more throughout the city. Others wear reusable multi-layered cloth masks, most are decorated with eye-catching patterns, cute characters or appliqued flowers. Colourful face masks have been a typical part of a co-rider’s outdoor clothing, as Figure 2 (see on p.108) illustrates for young women changing buses at the former city bus terminal in 2015. The 2020 COVID-19 “pandemic season” (mùa dịch) has reinvigorated the market for reusable face masks which can be easily purchased from roadside sellers (see Figure 3, on page 109).

27Although it is the weekend, the women passengers appear to be returning from work as cleaners and kitchen hands. Among the smaller number of younger women (các em, literally “younger sisters”) are a couple of college-aged girls (các cháu, literally “nieces”, “granddaughters”) who appear to have finished café shifts; they are still wearing their badged shirts but not their company aprons. Like many other passengers, the younger women’s faces are partially hidden behind disposable blue or pink face masks. The girls hold out their fare and their student ID cards and receive pink half fare tickets from the conductor. She stands blocking the aisle and, with a gentle hand gesture, invites them to move forward and take a seat at the front of the bus. Up front, where I sit, it is becoming quite crowded. Before the pandemic, no one paid much attention to the crowding. More passengers join the 34. When they are entering, as we did, they notice almost immediately that there is an unpleasant odour permeating the bus. They put their hands to their noses, they turn their heads. Near the rear of the bus is the source of the stench: a man. He is slumped in his seat, motionless. He is clothed in indistinct rags, unshaven and barefoot. A passenger with his unkept appearance is unusual on a Saigon Bus service, and indeed in HCMC’s city centre where he joined the bus. In contrast, his extreme drunkenness in the afternoon is not so unusual among the few mid-age men who ride buses. Male riders are more often well-dressed city commuters, school boys or grandfathers.

Like some of the passengers, I begin to watch the man, fearing he is no longer alive. Together we are startled when, appearing to be still unconscious, he suddenly emits a loud snoring sound. Laughter breaks out among us women. The laughter, like a smile under a face mask, is an important non-verbal means of polite communication. The brief outbursts serve a purpose in normative politeness; laughter masks emotions and helps another person, in this case the unconscious man, overcome embarrassment or other negative feelings caused by an unfortunate situation. Laughter builds camaraderie among co-riding strangers suffering a violation of odour.

Most of the passengers who laughed are women and we are together at the front where the man’s odour is less strong. As co-riders join the bus, women up front gesture, beckoning new passengers to join the group. We soon become crowded in and there are no spare seats. Some of the younger ones stand, showing normative deference to their seniors. They raise their hands in front of their noses. Behind their face masks, many are gently giggling, others are quietly complaining to a companion.

Something is different now travelling on this bus and this ride among strangers. The feel of the bus has transformed from an anonymous shared space to something else. It is public but also has features of the parochial realm since a sense of commonality developed among us and we communicate with fleeting remarks and gestures. Yet we remain unacquainted. What we share is not yet a community of neighbourliness. How abruptly can a “community on wheels” (Nash 1975) form and unform?

Suddenly, the man is on his feet and lurching across the bus aisle. The women’s group contracts further in the already confined space up front. He has risen at the same time the bus is taking a corner. The movement throws him off his feet and he lands in an empty seat on the opposite side of the bus. He falls unconscious again almost instantly. There is a silent pause among the women. Then, it continues as before.

The bus also continues, making its way on its route through Tân Kiểng ward, an area of known for bustling wet markets and street trading, high rates of intravenous drug use and gambling, and relatively low household incomes. Tân Kiểng contrasts with District 7’s other wards; Tân Kiểng actively promote public health campaigns on street side billboards, while other wards such as Tân Quy, Tân Phú and Bình Thuận are decorated with commercial advertising and neon signage promoting local businesses. The man has regained consciousness. He is moving, looking out the window. The conductor gestures to him, asking him if it was his stop just past. He does not stand. It is unclear if he sees or hears her. She is unable to find out where the man wishes to leave the bus.

Other passengers are beginning to alight in Street Number 17 (Đường số 17), so the bus is stopping frequently. Each time the bus stops, the conductor looks to see if the man will leave. Suddenly, he makes a move to the door, but then changes his mind and takes a seat. At the next stop, he stumbles into the stairwell. His exit is awkward and the conductor has to call out to the driver to wait while the man finally leaves the bus. The driver checks with her: “Is it okay to go now?” (Được chữa?) She looks outside. The man has fallen on the road tarmac. She leans and looks more closely to make sure he is clear of the wheels. He has recovered himself and is standing. “Yes”, she replies, “get going!” (Rời, đi!) The driver starts off with the rear door open which allows a blast of fresh air to enter the bus. The conductor walks along the aisle to check the seats the man has used. She starts breaking up the crowd up front, directing the remaining passengers to disperse throughout the bus, to spread out and take seats individually where they will be less cramped, more comfortable and more relaxed. Her actions break up the camaraderie of the group and change the feel of the bus, transforming it from a warm location to an anonymous locale.

28This example reveals several features of public space in Saigon Bus. Its public spaces are widely accessible, that is available to be occupied and shared by almost anyone. Like the other co-riders, the drunk man was able to hail and enter the bus, and to travel on the bus (after purchasing an inexpensive ticket) and to continue to ride the bus despite his co-presence causing noticeable offence to others. Even though his appearance and demeanour differed from the other passengers, and indeed from the majority of bus riders who use the Saigon Bus network, the man’s co-presence was accepted by his co-riders. Co-riders have little control over with whom they share the public spaces of the bus and their reactions may involve accepting or rejecting stigmatised and non-normative bodies (Earl 2016).

29The visibility of the man situated him in relation to other co-riders. Yet it was not his visibility that revealed his co-presence to other passengers and shaped stranger-relationality on the 34. Co-riders faced sharing other sensations beyond the visual, particularly an offensive olfactory invasion and startling snoring noise. They also cramped themselves into the limited seating at the front of the bus to avoid getting too close to the man. While the man’s dishevelled appearance and extreme level of inebriation may have drawn criticism from his co-riders and his homelessness and destitute state may have drawn pity and empathy from them, on this journey his co-riders did not express their feelings out loud. The co-riders did not draw attention to a negative situation. Rather, they remained silent and appeared disengaged, except when they empathised by masking assumed feelings of embarrassment or humiliation with their laughter (Chew 2011). This ride illustrates that public space is social (Lofland 1989), and it is made through its use. Further, the public space of the bus is self-regulating space and it transformed from an anonymous public space shared by unconnected strangers to a warm parochial space in which co-riders shared a sense of commonality through which they were involved with each other (Lofland 1989) and, finally, to an anonymous public space. This happened temporarily and unpredictably, which shows that public space is malleable and difficult to define clearly at a point in time and space.

Olfaction and social distancing on Saigon Bus

30Goffman’s (1972) “territory of the self” describes how an individual may exert control over which aspects of the self are presented and to whom. It centres on control of information sent and perceived by others through the visual and other senses in social encounters. In the previous section, the majority of passengers on the 34 seemed to detect the man’s co-presence, initially at least, not by sight but through their sense of smell. Goffman (1972) considers an invasion of odour or noise, such as the man’s loud snoring, to be a territorial offense and modality of violation of others. Odour as a form of bodily excreta is an agency of defilement. While both sight and smell operate over distance and in all directions, smell lingers and does not stop as a stare can. Offensive sensations, such as unavoidable strong smells and unexpected loud noises, affect co-present others albeit to varying extents. Unlike an exclusive or private space where people may be able to control the sensations their bodies experience (Earl 2018), co-riding in the public space of a Saigon Bus service may expose one’s own body to unwanted but unavoidable sensations that other bodies give off.

31In public spaces people create impressions of themselves by expressions that intentionally “give” or unintentionally “give off” information that others can interpret (Goffman 1963). Smiling and speech “give” an impression to others that is consciously transmitted. But, people also “give off” impressions through other less-controlled behaviours such as body language and odour. The man’s odour gave off an impression to the other passengers. Their behaviours to accept his presence and not insist of his removal from the bus, for example, suggest that the impression they formed of him was that he is vulnerable and deserving of empathy.

32The other passengers were also acutely aware of the man’s “territory” even though he did not demarcate it through exerting control over preserves of territoriality Goffman (1972) identifies, such as his “personal space” or “possessional territory” claimed by placing a jacket or bag on the adjacent seat. The man’s odour demarcated his territorial demands further than a single passenger would typically assert and caused others to feel as though they would be intruding if they came closer. Their reluctance to enter the man’s extended territory stemmed from their own desires to avoid unwanted sensation of his odour which violates the territories they would otherwise be occupying. The unwashed man giving off an odour demarcated a large territory by violating the potential territories of others. It limited how others encountered him and interacted with him. In physical moving to the front of the bus away from the man and avoiding non-verbal communication with him, other passengers did not interact with him nor intrude on his territory of the self. The physical space of the bus shaped social encounters by crowding the passengers together who were seeking to avoid the man and dull their exposures to his unpleasant odour. It also insulated, or isolated, the man from the crowd of women.

33Among the women riding the crowded bus, public space was experienced through reciprocal visibility as well as through other sensations, particularly olfaction, as well as the physical limits of the bus seating arrangements and suppressed emotional responses to the embarrassing situation in which they found themselves. Focusing on the crowd of women up front reveals a tension between sociability and social distancing in stranger-relationality. I turn to Goffman’s (1972) preserves of territories of the self. The preserve of “personal space” which surrounds an individual, when entered by others, may cause an individual to feel encroached upon. In a crowded situation, an individual may be able to tolerate encroachment as personal space varies according to the setting. In a very crowded bus, it may not be easy to behave too differently to others. In a dense crowd, people may be compelled by the physicality of the situation to behave in harmony with others and with the limits of the physical space while-in-use. A crowded space, like fixed seating, can provide a physical restriction on an individual’s movement. As Goffman (1972) points out, individuals seek to avoid situations in which they may be “contaminated” by others. Yet, in a crowd they may be unable to move in the direction they prefer. The group of women cramped at the front of the bus faced limits about how to move as well as where to go. In the temporary crowd, we had little choice about what we could do with our bodies and limbs as well as little choice about what sensations our bodies could experience. While we were physically near each other and shared the same sensations, and perhaps emotions, we temporarily felt a kind of connection and expressed this through gestures and shared laughter. But after the destitute man alighted, when we spread throughout the bus, this shared feeling dissolved and we returned to being co-present strangers on our own journeys (see Figure 9).

34Among co-present strangers social distancing is a form of interaction involving more than reciprocal visibility, such as avoiding eye contact or concentrating one’s gaze on a non-human subject. On Saigon Bus, the crowd of women highlights three other dimensions that reflect complexities of the publicness of public space. Firstly, social distancing is practice-oriented. For example, wearing a mask is a normative mobility practice in HCMC. Whether going by motorbike, car or public bus, Vietnamese city commuters wear a face mask, a preserve Goffman (1972) calls a “sheath”. Mask wearing is a self-regulating behaviour that shows respectfulness to others at the same time as camaraderie among fellow commuters. While a mask may muffle verbal communication and hide facial expressions, face coverings provoke more reliance on bodily gestures and other forms of paralinguistic communication which are important in Vietnamese normative politeness among non-kin (including strangers). Secondly, social distancing is place-dependent across the Saigon Bus network when some public bus spaces, such as rush hour services, do not enable social distancing where there are too many co-riding while other spaces, such as quiet late morning services or out of the way bus stops, are characterised by the relative solitude of so few co-riding or co-waiting. Thirdly, social distancing among co-riders on Saigon Bus is socio-historically situated in the context of the pre-pandemic global environmental pressures to expand mass transit in the particular mega-urbanising region of HCMC and post-pandemic concerns about limiting crowded spaces that encourages people, where possible and practical, to spread out or avoid each other. Public space exists when it is enacted through experiences of being-in-the-world and performances of deeds or utterances of words, and it disappears with the dispersal of people and when their activities cease. The example shows that public space of Saigon Bus is not fixed but comes into being when it is used and transforms while-in-use.

Conclusion

35Novel forms of public space are emerging in Ho Chi Minh City with the expansion of mass transit at the current time with public bus and in the future with the development of the MRT (subway). Like other public spaces, bus spaces are where co-present strangers are visible to one another and their behaviours and interactions can be witnessed and monitored by others. Mass transit spaces are more than this; public spaces of Saigon Bus are also multi-sensory spaces in which unwanted and unavoidable sensations, such as offensive odours or startling loud noises, shape desires for and avoidance of social encounters and interactions between co-present strangers. The paper started with an acceptance that public space is malleable and explored examples illustrating that it is continually interpreted as citizens enact it. Saigon Bus shows that public space is made through its use and, in this way, it is characterised by ongoing spatial and temporal transformations.

36Stranger encounters in the public spaces are not simply oriented on everyday practices and the self-regulation of behaviours in public. More precisely, public spaces of Saigon Bus involve more than practice-oriented interactions and are characterised by abstrusity. Like other Vietnamese public spaces, private and personal activities, such as the snoring of an unconscious drunk man, take place under the gaze of others, the majority of whom remain strangers even when sharing the experience of a crowded public space. The wide accessibility of public bus space highlights that stranger-relationality is shaped by verbal and, importantly, paralinguistic expressions of camaraderie blended with deference where expected. Co-riding on different bus routes illustrates these variations. Social situations shape public space and transform it from an anonymous locale of public space shared among strangers to the warm space of the parochial realm in which co-present people share something personal and intimate. This malleability blurs distinctions between public, parochial and private spaces.

37In Vietnam, there is no clear consensus on what public space is, but there are diverse attempts to control it through formal and informal rules, regulations, policing and norms. These are routinely contested in public space while-in-use and, as the examples show, not simply accepted if they do not seem reasonable or appropriate in a particular context. Following regulations may be surprising or unexpected in some situations. While patterned, predictable and common-sense behaviours are familiar and may be comforting, unpredictable or surprising behaviours do not typically generate hostility or uncertainty. Frequently the public spaces of Saigon Bus appear to be self-regulating, for example through respectfulness and other behaviours of normative politeness among strangers. In post-pandemic co-riding, there are more rules and some are closely followed and enforced such as mask wearing (which was normative before the pandemic) but others are sometimes overlooked, such as social distancing on crowded rush-hour services. In these ways public space can be understood as self-regulating space even when there are rules and regulations to govern it.

38Saigon Bus shows that HCMC’s public spaces are place-dependent, enacted through the citizens experiencing being-in-the-world in that place and perhaps no other place quite like it. The spaces of the bus are mobile, they include inside and outside spaces, and commercial activities may take place there, such as informal traders selling snacks at bus stops or traditional motorbike taxis negotiating a fare. These activities are common in other East Asian socialist contexts and beyond in other places. Additionally, public spaces are also recognised as socio-historically situated, occurring in a context at a defined time in history, including in post-reform socialist places as well as in pre-pandemic and post-pandemic times. The examples of public space of Saigon Bus explored in this paper highlight three dimensions of abstrusity that contribute to understanding public space through the feel of HCMC and its particular wonderfulness.