Hi, Tell It Right. Yes, it’s very common for families to have 2 motorcycles. The landlord of our apartment was in her 50’s and got around town with it. Meanwhile her son was going to a Hanoi university and needed a motorcycle to get there.
Public transportation is at a bare minimum. Also there’s a lot of guys who will earn their living giving backseat rides on their motorcycles to people. Helmets not strictly required.
Even pets ride on the cycles and I saw a young boy riding in front of his Dad as the kid is eating a chicken wing. No helmet, very dangerous. The big cities are not friendly to pedestrians either. The sidewalks are not protected by curb stones, and damaged sidewalks, missing plates, and construction hazards are everywhere.
It was well worth living there for a couple months for the education. It makes you appreciate modern industrial societies.
Yes a few boulevards in Hanoi are splendid with wide lanes and traffic lights that are respected. Along those boulevards are the office buildings of embassies, big business who are invested in Vietnam. But the rest of the city streets are tight and often jammed with cycles.
Elon Musk can help countries like Vietnam greatly with his low-earth satellites. A lot of the messy, scattered labyrinth of communications infrastructure can be avoided by putting an antenna on the roof.
But satellite comms are an exception. The biggest infrastructure issues are at the ground level and those problems are massive.
Do they still take dumps along the side of the road? My brother wrote in one of his letters in 1966, how the people would just drop their drawers and go to the bathroom on the side of the road. Surely they’ve figured out what a toilet, and toilet paper are in the 21st Century.
The first public subway, is opening in Saigon in just months.
It is about 11 miles long, it will be joined with many others, but construction is SLOW by what we are used to.
They are learning though.