Scooters

Scooter parking outside the gym.

Everyone in HCMC, including most Westerners, male or female, travels by scooter. In fact, more than 90% of vehicles are scooters. People transport everything by scooter, including several family members, animals, boxes, goods - I recently saw a passenger on 1 scooter carrying a huge pane of glass! Parking is organized to accommodate scooters. Outside the mall in our neighbourhood (Phu My Hung), there is a large scooter parking lot, like any car lot you'd find in Ontario, but no cars allowed. There are parking attendants and entry/exit gates  and tickets on entry - only it is free to park. There are hundreds of scooters parked there on a busy weekend. Notice the parking area surface. These are lockstone pavers with open squares which allow the grass to grow through. I remember when I was studying Landscape Architecture and these pavers were a very popular choice for use in public spaces. But interest quickly died because they didn't really work in northern climates. The grass just had too hard a time growing. And the pavers couldn't hold up to the weight of an automobile. The climate in Vietnam, however, is perfect for allowing the grass to establish itself. These pavers are used everywhere with great effect.

The bicycle used to be the preferred mode of transport, but now you see very few bikes. It's too hot and bikes are too slow in such a big city. In a country where the average age is 28, scooters have given freedom to the people. There are not very many traffic lights in HCMC, and even when there are, the scooters tend to ignore them.

Paul along the river in Phu My Hung.

District 1 HCMC (downtown)

In Phu My Hung, where our apartment is, there have recently been segregated scooter lanes built, which makes navigating the roads a little less hectic. Drivers use their horns to indicate their presence and when you want to turn left, you must ease your way over to the left hand side of the road and then kind of weave your way through on-coming traffic and crossing pedestrians. The scooters are usually low horsepower, so no-one (with the exception of Paul) is going too fast and the chaos does seem to work. I, however, am not likely to be driving a scooter anytime soon. It is enough for me to take my life in my hands when I cross the street! I'm enjoying being a passenger on Paul's scooter.

You'll notice that I am wearing a mask in my picture. Most Vietnamese people, particularly women, wear masks. Not because of pollution necessarily, although there are fumes and dirt when you ride through the streets - that is why I where it. The women wear the masks, and, in fact usually completely cover their bodies, because they do not want to get a tan. That is because it is the peasants who work and/or live outside who are tanned, and most Vietnamese women do not want to look poor.