Vietnamese Motorbikes Carry As Many Groceries As Your Station Wagon

Woven baskets, goldfish, hula hoops, cooking utensils—nothing for the Vietnamese is too difficult or weird to be crammed into bags or crates and, with a few nylon straps, fastened to a two-wheeler. Photographer Hans Kemp chronicled the near-ridiculously massive loads these people carry on their motorbikes in his book Bikes of Burden. To get the shots, Kemp would “catch up with the bike” on his own Honda Super Cub “and I would try to photograph it while driving parallel at high speed,” he told Slate.

Both impressive feats.

Recently, Kemp returned to Vietnam to take photos for a revised edition of the book, out June 15. A few of our favorites are below. Read more about it—and see more of his new shots—over at Slate.


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Photo credit: Hans Kemp, Bikes of Burden


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Photo credit: Hans Kemp, Bikes of Burden


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Photo credit: Hans Kemp, Bikes of Burden