VietNamNet Bridge - A traffic policeman in Cau Giay district spots a young woman on a motorbike wearing a wide-rimmed hat in the distance and steps out into the sea of traffic to flag her down with his baton for not wearing a helmet.

The young woman’s face turns to horror as she wonders what she’s done wrong, but soon it’s the traffic policeman who realises he’s made a mistake. She has a detachable canvas rim wrapped around her helmet, so from a distance it looks like a wide-rimmed hat, and therefore has broken no law.

The policeman tries to explain his error but with the shoe now on the other foot, the woman can’t resist having a pop before driving away: “You should look more carefully before stopping someone in the street!” The policeman admits that a few of his colleagues have made the same mistake in recent weeks.

“I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry,” he says with a sheepish smile. For years scores of women in the capital city resisted wearing helmets but wide rimmed canvas hats that protect their skin have always been popular in summertime. So with sun shining high in the sky, this clever accessory is proving highly popular.

At a shop on Thuy Khue street, when a customer haggles over the price for a detachable rim the shopkeeper Pham Thanh Van obliges her and sells one for half the initial asking price. Van is just happy to be back in business. When wearing helmets became compulsory for all motorcyclists at the end of last year, sales at her hat shop not surprisingly nosedived. “I changed my business and started selling helmets even though I have had to borrow a big sum of money to re-start the business,” says Van.

“Then these clip-on rims appeared on the market, so I decided to stock them and now I’m selling 20 a day for VND20,000 ($1.25) to VND80,000 ($5) each.” Business is sure to only get better as temperatures keep rising. Nguyen Minh Nguyet, a student from the University of Law, sells the clip-on rims on Nguyen Chi Thanh street to make a bit of extra cash. “I buy them from workshops in Hai Phong and sell them here.

Each day I earn VND100,000 ($6.25) to VND120,000 ($7.5),” says Nguyet, who points out that there’s an aesthetic as well as a practical purpose to the rims. “People buy them because helmets aren’t nice to look at.” “If I put this around the helmet I can protect my neck from the sun and I feel more confident when I’m driving,” says Pham Anh Thu, who drives to school. “I’m going to buy three rims so I can change from day to day.”

(Source: Timeout)