Saigon from a Bus

In July 1970 I left Vietnam behind and flew to Tokyo, Japan on my first week-long R & R.  We flew out from Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon.  To get to Tan Son Nhut, I had to catch a plane from Firebase Buttons to Bien Hoa Air Base and then take a bus.  This picture of a street in Saigon was taken from the bus.  The street is wet and the sky is dreary looking because it was rainy season in Vietnam.

We had just got off the highway that connected Bien hoa with Saigon.  Along the way, the bus driver and the guard played a game of stealing hats from unsuspecting Vietnamese citizens.  The guard would lean out the door of the bus while the driver pulled up behind a slow moving motor scooter and grab the person's hat!  They obviously had no respect for the Vietnamese people to do such a thing  It is amazing they never killed anyone.  At least I never heard that they did.

On the right, you can see a three-wheeled taxi that was called a Lampro I just learned.  It could hold up to ten passengers.  There was two benches in the back and two seats next to the driver up front.  The Italian motor scooter company Lambretta made them.  I learned that they were finally banned from the streets in 2004 because they were considered unsafe.  Further up the street you can see the back of a three-wheeled bicycle taxi called a Cyclo.  Cyclos are still used in Vietnam.

The sad highlight of the bus ride was not the guard stealing hats.  It was an old women squatting down on the side of the road and relieving herself as we passed by .  I'm sure it was common back then to do that in Saigon but not in my eyes.