My days in Laos-car accident

As soon as I arrived in Rambora, the old capital of Laos, I found that the traffic in this country was extremely inconvenient. The national government collected taxes from the people and foreign businessmen, but did not even provide public transport facilities. Not only that, from Xishuangbanna, the border of China, to Rambora, the old capital of Laos, many roads along this road are dirt roads so far, with traffic and sandstorms all over the sky.

The most common means of transportation in this country is called "TXS", which means "taxi". But he's not a real taxi. To be exact, it should be called a taxi bus. These "taxi buses" are all imported from China, and their names are Chang 'an. They usually pick up some tourists at the station or pick up some vendors at the market. In Laos, the so-called bus should be tractor. China used this kind of car in the early days, that is, a walking tractor. The tractor in Laos has a simple structure, a diesel engine, several mahogany strips, some red boards and four wheels. This is how tractors are baked. This tractor generally acts as a bus, carrying some Lao farmers to the village every day and then driving to the provincial capital market 70 or 80 miles away.

Because of the inconvenient transportation, there are opportunities for businessmen to invest. In the early years, people from Shaodong County, China sneaked into Laos to do business and do some motorcycle business. Now these businesses are either rich or expensive, with a net worth of over 100 million or more, and there are countless motorcycle companies and sales stores. Therefore, motorcycles play an important role in Laos, where traffic is backward.

Nowadays in Laos, the most common means of transportation is motorcycle, which is called "mule's hoof" in Lao language. There are many motorcycles in Laos, and there are basically one or even two or three at home. Moreover, the skills of riding motorcycles are all made of steel, which is not worse than Ke Shouliang's eldest brother. Even a child of seven or eight years old will ride away as long as he climbs on the motorcycle.

It is well known that motorcycles are unsafe, but in Laos, where traffic is backward, people use motorcycles instead of walking, which undoubtedly fills the gap in government public transportation. In their eyes, life is like a child's play, because there are too many children in each family, and there is no family planning in Laos. Therefore, even if you are the poorest family, the whole family will live on grass for half a year, but pregnancy and childbirth have not stopped. I have seen many Lao families, mothers and daughters giving birth in hospitals; I've met many families, too. After the children are born, they have no clothes to cover their bodies. So people in this country have a wide view of life, like a grasshopper. That's why they dare to fight pythons and tigers in the mountains. Similarly, they dare to fly 65,438+000 yards on the road to compete with death.

Lao people go to bed early and get up early. At three or four o'clock every day in Ling Zhan, "taxis" and motorcycles on Laos roads and trails honk constantly. Of course, many of them are vegetable sellers. They went to Gigi Lai (the countryside) to buy vegetables and game, and then put them in the provincial market in Laos early in the morning. In Ling Zhan, at 4: 30, the front door of the market opened. At this time, those shopkeepers (second-hand dealers) rushed in on Couto's motorcycle and stopped as soon as they got to the door. At that time, a young man in charge of parking would push the motorcycle to the market and give you a small ticket, just like storing things in a supermarket. Vendors and hawkers entering the market are like devils entering the village. They can only sell pangolin and crocodile meat on a first-come-first-served basis. After buying their own goods, they took the parking worker's ticket to pick up the car and then went home full of goods. According to incomplete statistics, parking workers in this market issue more than 2,000 small tickets every day, and the area of that market is not as big as the cultural square in rural China.

When I was doing business in Laos, I also bought motorcycles to sell bread in the stockade. But my skills are relatively poor and my speed has been relatively slow, so I was ridiculed by many old people. Riding a motorcycle on the road, sometimes even children can't compare. Once I went down to Rado (a town in Laos) and saw a child riding a motorcycle. The child is hardly as tall as a motorcycle, but his posture and walking speed on the motorcycle are undoubtedly better than mine. At that time, the number of yards I drove was 30, and the little boy passed me. I estimate that the speed is 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 I met a better one: at that time, there were a large group of Lao people fishing by the river, and the fish were so big that I didn't know their names. Among those fish, the big one is as thick as a bucket and more than one meter long. It is the children of these fishermen who are responsible for carrying the fish home, all of whom are about seven to fifteen years old (the older ones either go fishing in the river or go upstream to make money as trackers). So I often see the picture of a little boy riding a motorcycle, carrying two barrels of fish on a shoulder pole in the back seat of the car, and adding ice cubes (it's hot in Laos, so ice cubes are used to keep the fish fresh), which is not bad. There were many fish caught in the net, so I tied a big fish bucket in the back seat of the car. It may not be difficult for a little boy to ride a motorcycle with three barrels of fish and ice, but it is even more difficult if you know the area occupied by the whole person, the car and the goods together, know how high the technical requirements for the owner to drive, and ensure that the motorcycle does not discharge glue on the bumpy dirt road and that it can walk freely in the crowd without touching other people or motorcycles. In Laos, many children have this ability, especially in the vegetable market. Those children who deliver takeout often carry a laundry list of vegetables in their arms and two baskets of vegetables behind the car seat. Because the child is small, the chin can only be put in the vegetable basket. From a distance, it's very simple. An unmanned motorcycle is driving on a road full of vegetables. Later, when I got off the stockade, I tied two bean paste barrels on both sides of the back seat of the trailer to bring more goods to the stockade for sale. This did give it to me. In the meantime, I dare not touch that motorcycle again. At six o'clock in the evening, my wife and I got the goods ready and rode a motorcycle to Rada Xiazhai. I was on my way to Rada at 40 yards. On the way through a bar street, a five-or six-year-old child suddenly jumped out of the road and ran towards my motorcycle. At that time, there was a woman shouting at the child in the bar. I didn't catch what she was shouting. It seemed to mean "Be careful with the motorcycle", but the child was so happy that he turned to smile at the woman and ran to my side and didn't notice the motorcycle coming in front. The car accident is about to happen, and my wife and I are a little scared. You know, as an international friend, it is very troublesome for you to kill someone in someone's country. When the car accident was about to happen, I didn't know where I came from, so I tried to turn the motorcycle to the right. Because I turned around too fast, my wife and I both fell to the ground, and the child fell to the ground. After I fell to the ground, I quickly pulled out my bleeding right foot from under the motorcycle. Instead of helping my wife who was pinned down by a motorcycle and a bean paste bucket, I went directly to help the children. My idea at that time was very simple. My wife is hurt. I can carry her to the hospital. I can stop doing business and take good care of her until I get better. But if something happens to this child in Laos, I will not only lose money, be detained, but even be beaten by local people in Laos. In the worst case, we may never go back to China and see my children again in this life. God bless, the child was only scratched by the bean paste bucket in the back seat of the motorcycle, and my wife and I were both injured and bleeding, but this did not arouse the parents' understanding at all. Instead, he called a group of people around me and my wife. Fortunately, a traffic policeman witnessed the accident at that time, and my wife and I were able to clear the way with a bar attendant as circumstantial evidence. This accident caused my wife and I to rest at home for more than half a month, and our business was put on hold for another half a month. At the same time, the motorcycle named "HD" was also accepted, and it still is.

Sometimes I think that in this backward country, in front of this inaccessible government agency, motorcycles may fill the gap of inconvenient transportation between this country and the government, but at the same time, they also increase the frequency of car accidents. Motorcycles are as fast as thieves. They can cross any narrow path, swim in any street, enter any people's market and carry mountains of goods. At the same time, they also bear the greatest risk factor. They can be your accomplices in "manslaughter" or your tools for "suicide". In Laos, the annual motorcycle fatality rate is much higher than the biggest local diseases "nephropathy" and dysentery, but this does not affect the sense of ownership and control of motorcycles in Laos. Perhaps for Laos, life is easy, so they take it easy. But for people like me who cherish life and are afraid of death, I can abandon my family and children, leave my hometown and even go abroad to make a living, but I will go. You know, in that case, how fast, how ignorant and how worthless life will become.