My short visit to Vietnam

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(photography trip-April 2010)

Interesting Vietnam where plastic, 2 wheel-transportation, street-eating-houses, lack of waste management and rain are overwhelming!

The reign of plastic:

Everything seems to be in plastic: starting from basins, pans, colanders, water tanks for street eating houses, toys, shoes (from basic/flat shoes up to high-heel shoes) and even flowers! It surpassed aluminum, natural and local straw and bamboo. Heaps and piles of plastic are being used or ready to be used, in pastel colors (for kitchen tools) or flashy colors (for flowers and religious objects). Yep: the lotus flowers used to decorate table altars in all temples/pagoda are now in plastic with electrical lamps incorporated…

Moving around: All kinds of 2-wheel transportation exist: bicycles, motorcycles, moped-vespa, motobikes, cyclopousses… you can find ox-driven carts, and a few horses or cars as well. Of course on the water: sampans and boats…

As far as the 2 wheel transportation, everything can be seen: with or without helmet, alone or with your family (not unusual to see 4 people on a motorcycle: kids standing up in front or sleeping beside in someone’s arms); kids do not wear helmets but parents do (thank God!). Young girls chose their helmet with pride: all styles from Burberry’s to Chanel, one color, stripes etc…. you choose! They look like German helmets from the 40’s (covering only the top of the skull: they are far from integral helmets). To protect your nose/breathing from the pollution, masks/hoods are worn (how often are they washed/cleaned.....?); it covers from nose to chin and behind the ears and is relatively inelegant and dreadful despite various attempts to make it stylish with material and colorful dots, stripes, Provencal, Burberry’s again etc…)

Also in the city:

Or like in the old times:

Coming back from school in the rain:

Finally on water:

And in the rice-plantation:

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