If you are big, you do what you want.
If you are small, you do what you can.
Everybody honks, but only once.
I waited for the bus for about half an hour today, watching the people and watching the traffic. I find both fascinating.
Our guide told us yesterday that there are 3,000,000 motorbikes in Saigon. There are 8,000,000 people, and half of them are children, so this adds up to a lot of motorbikes.
Our guide, Huang, said his grandmother walked from the Mekong Delta (about 40 miles away) to sell her wares at market. His father road a bicycle and he has a motorbike. He hopes that his children will one day drive cars.
"No, no!" we said. "Fight for public transportation!" Saigon has no subways or light rail and not much of a bus system. You see a surprisingly small number of bicycles, and they are almost always transporting senior citizens. Most of the cars are taxis, transporting Western tourists. More than 95% of the vehicles on the road are motorbikes.
It's hard to get a picture, because they are darting in and out of traffic. Here are some verbal snapshots.
Helmets are required, but there does not seem to be any standard for helmets. I saw ones that looked like batting helmets for baseball, and others where the helmet was covered up by another kind of hat. As with other laws, there are plenty of people who simply ignore the helmet law.
Since motorbikes serve as the family car, it is common to see young children on them. Children stand in front of the driver, sit between their parents, and are held in their parents' arms. Today, I saw several motorbikes tricked out with actual chairs for little ones. They are real chairs, however, not seats designed for motorbikes. Those are nonexistent.
Both men and women commonly wear masks. You see a lot of masks on motorbike passengers, but far fewer on pedestrians, unlike Japan and China, where as much as 25% of the population is wearing surgical-style masks. Women also commonly wear hoodies or a kind of scarf/hat combination that covers their face and front. I have seen several children with mosquito netting (though I have not seen nor been bitten by a single mosquito, despite my refusal to use DEET). Very young children are often completely wrapped up in blankets.
Motorbikes are used for transporting goods home, and for operating mobile businesses. They might have a big cardboard box strapped to the back, but I didn't see motorbikes with storage built into the design. And none pulling trailers of any kind.
On the way back to the port, the bus driver came to an intersection, gave a blast of his horn, and turned left on a red light, blending smoothly into cross traffic. Honking, in addition to expressing your opinion, can signal intent.
Helmets covered up by other types of headgear, well that's a new one. In San Andrés it wasn't necessary, because it never occurred to anyone to obey the helmet law.
ReplyDeleteDon't underestimate the storage capacity of a backwards-facing passenger's arms. I once saw a washing machine transported that way.
I also found impressive passengers' capacity for sitting motionless without holding on, given the jerkiness and speed of most of the motos.
It turns out that up to age 7, helmets are optional. You see lots of them, but also bare headed children. And, this being Asia, adorably tricked out helmets, like the ladybug one with a little ladybug head on the front. The strangest (and largest) thing I saw being transported was huge propane tanks, at least 6 feet long, strapped sideways so they doubled the width of the bike. Three different guys, in uniform, on Sunday morning. Not a uniform I'd seen on the streets, so I can't say whose. In Singapore, no bikes. Whole new blogpost.
ReplyDelete