As a part of the International Field Seminar, I travelled Ho Chi Minh with a group of ESMT MBAs in July. Interestingly, the one thing I remember most about the city was its traffic.

The traffic in Ho Chi Minh seemed to me beautifully chaotic, perfectly orchestated. I had to literally train myself to cross the street without provoking an accident. At first, I tried to run from one side to the other. Seeing that my strategy was far from sucessfull, one of my colleagues told me: “You just have to cross and go with the flow. Trust them, go with the flow”. And it worked.

Ho Chi Minh traffic is far from chaotic, you just have to trust the rules. Even if you do not see them, they exist and they work. It was a few days later when we got to learn a bit more about how the whole thing worked. A local told us: “Culture here is like driving in the city, you need to take care of yourself while trusting others. It’s all about trust.”

This idea reminded me about how many times in life we feel that we are not in control. It is not certain whether things will go okay or not because they simply do not depend on us. I think in these situations I could imagine myself in the middle of Ho Chi Minh traffic. One should learn in these cases more than ever how to trust and “go with the flow”.