Gas Station in Saigon

I was in a bus on my way to Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon when I snapped this picture of an Esso Gasoline Station. A bunch of us were heading out on an R&R trip to Tokyo, Japan.

One thing that caught my eye was all of the motor scooters that were there at the time.  Vietnam's transportation system back then was some version of a motor scooter.  Most were two-wheeled scooters like what you see in this gas station.  They also had trucks and buses that were built on a motor scooter base.  When I think about it, I really don't remember seeing many four-wheeled vehicles at all in Vietnam other than military vehicles.

Also, look at the arrangement of all of those gas pumps.  There are pumps out front that could serve larger vehicles but behind those pumps, close to the building are gas pumps that obviously were dedicated to motor scooters only.

In revisiting this picture, I realized that I haven't seen an Esso sign for a long time.  In New England anyway, they have been replaced with Exxon signs.  Finally, the "May May" sign on the building in the background translated into Vietnamese means "Sewing Machine".  Singer Sewing Machine, a French company, was big in Vietnam until the communist government swallowed them up in 1977.  Castro did a similar thing with private companies in Cuba.

And with that, I have run out of things to say about this gas station.