My days in Laos - car accident

As soon as I arrived in Luang Prabang, the old capital of Laos, I found that the transportation in this country was extremely inconvenient. The national government collects taxes from the people and taxes from foreign businessmen, but it does not even provide public transportation facilities. Not only that, from Xishuangbanna on the Chinese border to Luang Prabang, the old capital of Laos, many of the roads are still dirt roads. When vehicles are approaching, wind and sand are flying all over the sky.

The most common means of transportation in this country is called "TXS", which means "taxi". But it cannot be considered a "taxi" in the true sense. To be precise, it should be called a "taxi bus." These "taxi buses" are all imported from China, and their name is Changan. They usually pick up tourists at the station or hawkers at the market. In Laos, the so-called bus should be a tractor. This type of vehicle existed in China in the early days, which was a walking tractor. The tractor in Laos has a simple structure, a diesel engine, a few redwood strips to make the body, and some redwood boards. Put on four wheels, and the tractor is "out of the oven". This type of tractor usually acts as a bus, carrying some Laotian farmers to the village every day, and then drives to the provincial market seventy or eighty miles away.

Because of the inconvenient transportation, there are opportunities for businesses to invest. In the early years, people from Shaodong County, China, smuggled themselves to Laos to do business and do some motorcycle business. Nowadays, these businessmen are either rich or expensive, with net worths of over 100 million or more, and they own countless motorcycle companies and sales stores. Therefore, in Laos, which has backward transportation, motorcycles play an important role.

In Laos today, the most common means of transportation is motorcycles, or "mule hoof" in Lao. There are many motorcycles in Laos. A family basically owns one or even two to three, and the whole family rides them. The motorcycle's skills are all as good as those of brother Ke Shouliang. Even a child of seven or eight years old can ride away as long as he climbs on the motorcycle.

It is well known that motorcycles are not safe, but in Laos, which has backward transportation, people use motorcycles to travel. It undoubtedly fills the gap in government public transportation. In their eyes, life is the same as It's child's play, because there are too many children in each household. There is no family planning in Laos, so even if you are the poorest family and the whole family relies on grass roots and leaves for half of the year, pregnancy and childbirth are still not possible. Never stopped. I have seen many Laotian families where the mother and daughter gave birth to their children in the hospital together; I have also seen many families where the children were not covered by clothes after they were born. Therefore, people in this country take life very lightly, as if they are careless. That's why they dare to go up the mountain to fight pythons and tigers. Similarly, they dare to speed 100 yards on the road and compete with death.

Lao people go to bed earlier and get up earlier. Every day at three or four o'clock in the morning, taxis and motorcycles honking their horns on the roads and trails in Laos, one after another. Of course, there are many people here who are vegetable vendors (first-hand traders). They go to Zili (rural areas) to buy vegetables and game, and then sell them in provincial markets in Laos early in the morning. At half past four in Lingzhan, the front gate of the market opens. At this time, those shop vendors (second-hand dealers) swarm in on Cotto. The motorcycles will stop as soon as they reach the door. There will be a dedicated parking lot. The young man will push the motorcycle into the market and give you a small ticket, just like depositing items in a supermarket. Vendors and hawkers entering the market are like devils entering a village. First come, first served. Only those who come first can sell pangolin and crocodile meat. They select and sell out their goods. After purchasing their own goods, they pick up the car from the parking attendant with their ticket, and then take the full load with them. Goods go home. According to incomplete statistics, the parking attendants in this market issue no less than 2,000 tickets every day, and the area of ????that market is not even as large as the cultural squares in rural areas in China.

When I was doing business in Laos, I also bought a motorcycle so that I could go to the village to sell bread. But my skills were poor and my speed was always slow, so I made many Laotians laugh at me. Riding a motorcycle on the road, sometimes I can't even compete with children. Once I went to Laduo (the name of a town in Laos) from a village and saw a child riding a motorcycle. The child was almost not as tall as the motorcycle, but The way he rides his motorcycle and the speed he walks are undoubtedly worse than mine. At that time, my driving speed was 30 yards, and when the little boy passed by me, I estimated that the speed was definitely not less than 70 yards. That's not all. A few days ago, I was selling bread in Lala (near the Mekong River) and met something even more amazing: there was a large group of Laotians fishing by the river. The fish were very big, and I didn't know the names of the species. The largest of those fish was as thick as a bucket and more than a meter long. The children of these fishmen are responsible for carrying the fish home, and they are all around seven to fifteen years old (the older they are, they either go down to the river to fish, or they work as trackers upstream to make money). So I often see this scene: a little boy riding a motorcycle, carrying two buckets of fish and adding ice cubes on a pole on the back seat of the motorcycle (the weather in Laos is hot, so the fish is kept fresh with ice cubes). This is Fortunately, if more fish are caught in one net, there will be another big fish bucket tied to the back seat of the car.

It may not be difficult for a little boy to ride a motorcycle carrying three buckets of fish and ice cubes, but if you know the area occupied by the whole person, car, and goods together, you will know how high the technical requirements for the owner of the car are. It is even more difficult to ensure that the motorcycle does not release rubber on the bumpy dirt road, and that it can move freely in the flow of people without bumping into other people or motorcycles. In Laos, many children have this problem. Especially in wet markets, many men and women are responsible for occupying stalls, and the ones responsible for delivering goods are naturally their children. The children who deliver the goods often hold baskets of vegetables in their arms, and there are two more baskets of vegetables behind the car seat. Due to the small size of the child, his chin can only rest on the basket of vegetables. Looking from a distance, it is simply A driverless motorcycle was driving on the road carrying a load of vegetables. Later, when I got off the village, I also tied two bean paste buckets to both sides of the back seat of the motorcycle to make it easier to carry more goods. I went down to the village to sell them, which indeed added some meager financial income to me. However, after a car accident, I changed my mind and removed the two bean paste buckets. At the same time, I didn’t dare to touch the motorcycle again. At six o'clock that evening, my wife and I prepared the goods and rode a motorcycle to Lata Village. At that time, I was running at a speed of 40 yards on the way to Lata. When we passed a bar street on the way, a 56-year-old man A 20-year-old Laotian kid suddenly burst out of the road and ran in the direction of my motorcycle. At that time, there was a woman shouting to the child in the bar. I couldn't hear what she was shouting. It seemed to mean "be careful about motorcycles" or something like that. But the child was so happy that he turned around and smiled at the woman while running towards me. , did not notice the motorcycle approaching in front. A car accident was about to happen, and my wife and I were a little scared. You know, as an international friend, it is very troublesome if you hit and kill someone on their own country. When the car accident was about to happen, I got the energy from nowhere and turned the motorcycle to the right. Because I turned too sharply, my wife and I both fell to the ground. The child also fell to the ground and I fell to the ground. , quickly pulled out his bleeding right foot from under the motorcycle, and instead of lifting up his wife who was pinned down by the motorcycle and the bean paste bucket, he ran straight to help up the child. My idea at the time was very simple. If my wife was injured, I could carry her to the hospital, stop doing business, and take good care of her until she recovers. But if something happens to this little child in Laos, I will not only have to pay for it, but I will also be detained. , we will even be beaten by the local Laotians. If we think about the worst, maybe we will never be able to return to the country or see my son in this life. God bless me, the child was only scratched on the face by the bean paste bucket on the back seat of the motorcycle, while my wife and I were both injured and bleeding profusely. However, this did not arouse the understanding of the child's parents at all. On the contrary, he even called a group of people to remove me Surrounded by his wife. Fortunately, a traffic policeman witnessed the car accident and a bartender testified, so my wife and I were able to rescue ourselves. This accident caused my wife and I to rest at home for more than half a month, and the business was also put on hold for a month and a half. At the same time, the motorcycle called "HD (Hongda)" was also owned. , still is today.

Sometimes I think that in this backward country and in front of this government agency with inconvenient transportation, motorcycles may fill the gap of inconvenient transportation in this country and government, but at the same time it also aggravates the risk of car accidents. frequency. Motorcycles are very fast. They can travel through any alley, travel in any alley, enter any crowded market, and carry mountains of goods. But at the same time, they also carry the greatest risk factor and can become a way for you to "accidentally kill" someone. Accomplices and tools for your "suicide". In Laos, the annual death rate due to motorcycles is much higher than the local most serious diseases "kidney disease" and dysentery, but this does not affect the Lao people's sense of ownership and control of motorcycles. Perhaps for the Lao people , life comes easily, so they take it calmly, but for people like me who cherish life and are afraid of death, in order to survive, I can abandon my family and children, leave my hometown, or even go abroad, but my walking cannot be Fatally, my life cannot depend on motorcycles because of the inconvenience of transportation in Laos. You know, if that were the case, how quickly, ignorant and worthless life would become.