Bikelihood (Vietnam Zoom Series) - Hardcover

BIKELIHOOD

In Vietnam, motorbikes are means to make a living by poor laborers. The motorbike is one of the most common sights in the Vietnamese life. The country has over 50 million bikes, which present themselves together with their owners – poor laborers, small traders – everywhere, from the most rural corner to the largest cities, from the coast to the remote mountain roads. No other means of transportation has proven more flexible, suitable for the livelihood journey than the motorbike.

Thus, not only a means of travel, the motorbike bears in its cradle a heavy responsibility: “making a living” for so many. As the wheels turn through the sun and the rain, the dust and the hustle of life, dodging every treacherous corner of hardship, they bring with them tears of determination in the everlasting search for smiles of joy and hope, however rare they may be.

The bike carries on its back a small world. People burden it with everything and anything they can, and try to ride it as fast as they can. The bike’s technical limitations don’t matter. Neither do traffic laws. Driven by a natural and irreversible mission, people “bike” their living, knowing that their loved ones are waiting for the bacon to come home.

And the bike-load has become the bike-lihood…

Using a motorbike in Vietnam has become an art - the art of loading, driving, and how to map the safest and quickest way to the destination -- without breaking the traffic rules, of course…

Photoraphy
Lê Ngọc Huy
Vũ Việt Dũng
Lonely Planet Images

Text
Nguyễn Việt Hùng
Trần Hà Nguyên

Book description
Format: 26mm by 18 mm, landscape
Pages: 144 pages with 130 full color photographs of bikes
Paper: 200gsm couche matte
Binding: hardcover, casebound using 3mm board with separate jacket.

Published by
SahaBook Corporation in partnership with Ethnic and Cultural Publishing House (2010)

ISBN: 978-6047000319

Bikelihood Hardcover