‘Cyclos’ Can’t Keep Up in Vietnam

Dang Van Day, like thousands of other “cyclo” drivers, is on the streets by 6 a.m., cruising for passengers or cargo to fill his pedal-powered taxi and hoping that by day’s end he’ll have pocketed a dollar or two.

The cyclo--a small two-wheeled carriage pushed by a bicycle--is one of the enduring symbols of Vietnam’s cities, a descendant of the trishaws that flourished during the French colonial era. Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City have as many as 40,000 cyclos, officials estimate.

“We provide an important service, moving people and freight at very, very cheap rates,” says Day, 56, “so I don’t understand why the police and the government make it so difficult for us. I don’t think this job has much of a future at all anymore.”

Day is probably right. The dependable cyclo is on the urban endangered list and may soon disappear--the victim of Vietnam’s move into a free-market economy.

Opening up the economy has made Vietnam’s major cities relatively prosperous. Many residents can now afford to take taxis rather than the slower, cheaper cyclos. Tens of thousands of people who once relied on cyclos now ride motor scooters. The number of cars on the streets is also increasing, and the age of the bicycle, in the cities at least, is slowly passing.

Urban prosperity has also led to a huge migration of rural dwellers. For many newly arrived men in the city, the only available job is driving a cyclo, which they can rent for about 50 cents a day or buy for $70. Many of the cyclo drivers in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, are former South Vietnamese soldiers. The bottom line is that more cyclos are competing for fewer customers.

Three years ago, officials in Ho Chi Minh City banned cyclos from 36 of the busiest streets in the hope of speeding up the flow of traffic. Hanoi issued a similar ban two years ago and forbade cyclo drivers from stopping in the middle of a block to pick up passengers. Hanoi also prohibits the drivers to carry more than two passengers--though it isn’t unusual to see four or five people, or several hundred pounds of concrete or whatever, squeezed into a cyclo.

“It won’t be long before tourists and old ladies are just about the only people who will want to get into a cyclo,” says Nguyen Dan, 42, a former cyclo driver who now cruises the streets on a motor scooter in search of passengers.

Cyclo driver Day, who figures that he’s had a good day if he earns the equivalent of a dollar, started pedaling a cyclo eight years ago as a result of Vietnam’s transition to the free-market system. When the state-owned company where he worked as an accountant proved unprofitable, the Communist government closed it.

Day says that he harbors no resentment and that despite the hard work--he once pedaled 400 pounds of concrete 12 miles for $2--he believes that his life is better today than it was a decade ago.

He owns his small home, a 30-minute cyclo ride from downtown Hanoi, and gets by nicely, he says, on the $20-a-month pension his retired wife receives from a textile factory. “We even have a television and a video, everything,” he says.

If Day and his cyclo represent the past, Bui Xuan Dau, 42, and his motor scooter are the future. Dau, a former government clerk, spent $1,700 two years ago to buy a Honda Dream II for use as a freelance taxi, known as a xe om, which inexplicably means “cuddly.”

Although a small army of xe oms is clustered at virtually every intersection, competing for passengers, Dau says he can earn $4 a day without too much difficulty, after setting aside 30 cents for gasoline. A two-mile trip on the back of his xe om costs about 50 cents, perhaps twice what a cyclo driver would get for the same trip.

“Ten years ago, there were hardly any motorized vehicles in Hanoi and the only taxis you could get were cyclos, but it didn’t matter because there was no rush to get anywhere,” Dau says. “Now everyone’s in a hurry and wants a xe om.”