Wear a helmet in Saigon—it’s the law!
In fall 2007, Saigon passed a law requiring helmets-helmets!-for all adults on motorbikes. (Children, for some insane reason, are exempt from this.) Overnight, the city was inundated with helmet hucksters charging twice what you'd pay in Bangkok for the same flimsy model. Paying heed to fashion, some glued cowboy hats or baseball caps to the tops of their helmets. But meanwhile, a nagging problem: where to stow your helmet when you're not on your bike? It's too expensive to leave dangling on your handlebars for anyone to steal. So, most people just walk around wearing them-which at least frees the hands up for carrying other things.
