Hanoi: Small Business and Mobile Markets

One question that follows from the incredible mode shift detailed in the previous post is, so what happened to all of the bicycles? The cause of the mode shift was the increasing role of the market economy. The market also found use for the bicycles as, well, markets. Hanoi has an incredible number of small businesses - nearly every building's first floor is a small shop of some kind, manned by the residents who live in the stories above or even, in many cases, in the back of the shop, laying mattresses out on the showroom floor to sleep at night. These people man their storefronts from 6 or 7 in the morning until 8 or 9 at night, allowing little time to leave to shop. As a result, informal vendors throughout the City use modified bicycles as a means to efficiently role their products from storefront to storefront selling clothing, housewares, electronics, flowers, food, and everything imaginable from these slim rolling carts.