One of my holiday traditions each year when I lived in Hawaii was going to the local Xmas tree lot to pick up my 10-12′ noble fir in my 911. Just watching the salesperson’s face when he carried the tree out to my car was worth the over-inflated price you pay for a touch of the mainland during the winter holiday season in Hawaii. My Porsche was a Targa, so with the top off there was plenty of room for the tree. And the shade it cast on the ride home was a nice bonus too. On those few times when I needed to haul something more substantial, finding someone with a truck to borrow was never a problem. There are benefits to having lots of lesbians in your circle of friends.

In SE Asia, that car may have drawn some attention, that it was being used as a beast of burden, not so much. In the U.S. the roads are filled with soccer moms driving SUVs that will never be taken off the road and will never tote a larger haul of cargo than their 2.5 precious little darlings. In SE Asia, that’s what a moped is for. And there’s room for Dad too. In the U.S. we have horses that can’t do their job without wearing a nose strip to help them breathe. In SE Asia a lot of the horsepower being used for transporting goods is still of the human variety. In America we have those who refuse to eat beef because they are proud of their Vegan life-style. In SE Asia families don’t eat beef because there just ain’t that much meat on the family’s cow and if there was . . . well then who would haul the cart into town?

In most municipalities in the U.S. it is against the law to ride a bicycle without wearing a safety helmet (that cost $100). In SE Asia it’s a crime against humanity to ride a bicycle that isn’t laden with several cases of beer, a gross of fresh eggs, or the day’s laundry for those weird farang who bicycle around town wearing crash helmets. In the U.S., long-haul buses have baggage limits. In SE Asia the only limit to what you can take with you on a bus is the amount of room left up top. Provided your bags don’t smother the chickens.

During football season in Northern California whenever the Raiders are playing at home, there is a traffic jam of gleaming, American made trucks all headed for the game and tailgate parties. If there is anything in their beds, it’s a cooler, or possibly a barbeque grill. I can’t remember ever seeing a truck in SE Asia that wasn’t loaded with merchandise, farm goods, or people. And loaded in SE Asia means over-loaded in a way the defies gravity. Those Raider Nation trucks do tend to have a load in back on the way home: a fan or two who drank too much and passed out. End of the day loads in SE Asia are usually human cargo too. ‘Cuz nothing is more comfortable than catching 40 winks in a bed of a truck filled with a dozen of your closest strangers.

I’m not American bashing. ‘Cuz I too was raised to believe you are what you drive. And whatever you choose to drive will never end up on your family’s dinner table in the U.S. And since we have real gas stations and not someone selling 1 liter bottles of petrol alongside the road there’s no good reason to not drive a gas guzzler either. We just have a different perspective on what transpo means. So if a vendor in the U.S. can’t afford a truck to take his goods to market, he hires a taxi for the ride.

That makes it easy when traveling in a country where they consider transpo a more basic function of daily life – instead of the status symbol that it is – to delight in the odd sight of a farmer with three dead pigs stretched across the back of his motocy caroming down the road, or three generations of a family all perched on top of a rickety bicycle that would have been considered ancient in the 1950s back home. Because they too tell you a lot about that person. But then it’s not about what they can afford, or can afford to act like they can afford, but what they value in life.

Admittedly, part of the value in my holiday tradition was the photo in the local paper of the haole in his little car driving his big Xmas tree home that ran every November. But then I never considered my 911 to be a beast of burden, nor a viable form for transporting goods. ‘Cuz if that had been my purpose, I would have just chartered a plane to have a fresh tree flown in every year.

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