HCMC Street Scene

This week, our Travel pics series is H for Ho Chi Minh City.

I love to travel and today’s image – a typical street scene in HCMC – is a good example of why.

I’d hired a Xich Lo, or Cyclo, to get a ride around Ho Chi Minh City for a while – just to get a feel for the place.

Now, the ride experience was an interesting one (as I’ve already written about, here)

But it was also fascinating to see street life ‘up close and personal’ … and this is a typical scene.

Note the ‘uncle’, standing having a smoke on the left side of the picture … the one with his shirt untucked and hoisted above his sweaty belly, trying to get a little of whatever cooling breeze there is.

And the motorbikes and mopeds, going wherever they want .. on both sides of the street, and in whatever direction the rider determines.

For that matter, check out all the bikes parked on the footpaths … pedestrians everywhere in Vietnamese cities have to pick their way through a veritable forest of ‘xe may’

And then there’s the family group around the food stall .. mum running the stall, dad keeping an eye on the situation and providing ‘security’, two young boys playing in the street.

On the food cart, there are bananas (or possibly plantains), and yams, and potatoes .. and in the portable cooler there is herbal tea or soda (Nuoc Sam), bottled water (Nuoc Suoi) and Mu Trom … which appears to be a latex-based drink which is used to maintain regularity . Yum 🙂

All of this in a single frame – one random shot from literally hundreds of shots I took over the two hours of my xich lo ride.

It seemed like everywhere I looked, there was something interesting – a story unfolding before my eyes.

And THAT is why I love to travel!