Friday, December 20, 2013

Roadside assistance anywhere, anytime!

You have a flat tire on your motorbike in the middle of the street? No problem! Just push your bike down a busy street and you're likely to find motorbike repair street service within meters of where you are! The incredible part is how skilled these self-made mechanics are- after all, have you seen how busy traffic in Saigon is? Motorbike mechanics will never be at a shortage of customers with bike problems!

In these photos, our bike's tire was flat, and we walked the bike down about 50 meters to a little shop. The mechanic was finishing up work on another bike. When he got to ours, it was 5:56pm, and when our bike was ready to go, it was 6pm. That is, it took him a mere 4 minutes to fix the flat tire, from beginning to end! And fixing a motorbike tire is no simple feat, nor is it clean! Have a look at the photos below to see this handyman at work!

The whole service cost 20,000 VND (about a dollar), which is actually considered expensive; perhaps this was because the shop was on a big important street. In other places, the average price is 10,000 VND (about 50 cents) for a flat tire. Not a bad price for motorbike roadside assistance, right?


Thursday, December 19, 2013

Cycling around my neighborhood!

This morning, I got to experience a Saigon bicycle ride for the first time! I had always been impressed by the flexible kids who cycled with a friend dangling on the back, or sometimes even two! Or the ladies in the conical hats pedaling their way around the crazy traffic of town very nonchalantly. Although nowadays motorbikes greatly overshadow bicycles on the streets in Saigon, it is still nice to see people using bicycles to get around the city. It gives a nice window to the past, where bicycles constituted an important aspect of Vietnamese culture.

I went around 8 o'clock in the morning with my friend, sitting on the back seat (not really a seat; it's a metal rack), and we had a small ride around the neighborhood, down to the canal near my place. Recently revamped, the canal has become an attractive park area for locals. Very early in the morning, seniors, dog-walkers, and active people of all sorts are drawn to the canal to do exercise when the air is cool and the sun is not yet blaring; throughout the day, men can be found fishing, hoping to catch fish (which I would not dare eat, considering how polluted this canal used to be just a couple of years ago); at night-time, the young couples come out and canoodle on their parked motorbikes all down the rail.

Feeling like a kid again, I was very excited and delighted the whole ride. Although sitting on the hard metal rack in the back got a bit of getting used to in the beginning, before I knew it, I left my legs dangling on the sides as I got to enjoy the local sights, sounds, and scenes around me. Saigon's streets themselves are such an invigorating thing to see, and I can't think of a better way to immerse in it all then from the back seat of a serene bicycle ride.

Come join me on this bicycle ride, followed by breakfast on the way home!