In Naga City we call it trisikel. However we call it, in whatever spelling, in however heavy northern or southern pronunciation, we know that this is a major Pinoy transport vehicle in our beautiful provinces.

From where I am coming from, the trisikel is a motorcycle with a sidecar. Wait! No, sometimes the sidecar is missing. They call this variation in TRAP (traditional-politician)-forsaken areas as habal-habal.

A colleague from Davao told me that habal-habal is a sexual position. Oh, is that right? Wow! Maybe I’ll get the same sensation the next time I ride my habal-habal.

Perhaps to avoid arguments, particularly from conservative parents, instead of habal-habal, they just call it Skylab. They say that it looks like the Skylab, that U.S. space junk that fell from our sky decades ago. The habal-habal looks like the Skylab if it’s repurposed with a two-meter wooden slab on the rear of the motorcycle so it can seat 4, 5, 6.., errr, or a few more passengers. Someone once told me that about 10 Pinoys could travel in that thing. One has to be a risk-taker to ride the precarious Pinoy Skylab.

In Davao they call the trisikel as “pedicab.” Can you guess what they call their pedicab drivers? Sirit? Pedicabers. Hah! In Bukidnon and Cagayan de Oro City they call the trisikel as motorela or rela. I wonder how they call their drivers.

My assumption is that they call trisikel a trisikel because there are three (tri) wheels attached to it: two on the motorcycle and the other on the sidecar. But the motorela (a hybrid of the vehicle someone once described as “strike anywhere” because they fill the spaces and go where cars and jeepneys can’t) has four wheels: two on the motorcycle and two on the sidecar. That is why, strictly speaking, we cannot call a motorela a trisikel. If you look at a motorela, it looks like a mini jeep because the “sidecar” is not at the side but of the motorcycle but in the back.

The habal-habal is another variation of the trisikel – but only by intent. Unlike the Naga City or Manila definition of a trisikel as that of a motorcycle with a sidecar, the habal-habal on the other hand has absolutely no sidecar. So should we just call it a public utility motorcycle?

If habal-habal has a missing sidecar, a trisikad has a missing motor. The motor is the driver itself. I saw the very first of this variation during the ‘70s in Tabaco, Albay. There, they use big bikes as compared to the junior-sized types seen in Metro Manila. My Tabaco experience with the trisikad was also my first “eyeball” with pure Pinoy manual labor in this semi-feudal economy. At first, I didn’t get it. It was in conflict with some western books from my commercialized western-education saying that Pinoy are lazy people, the Juan Tamad type. Well, they can say that to the trisikad operators in Tabaco.

Ang tipo kong sidecar

Speaking of sidecars, there are also many types. There is the all passenger-facing-front type. This one can accommodate about three adults. The space on the back is for the baggage. This is seen in Naga City.

In Koronadal City and Sogod, Leyte, the side car is baliktarin. Passengers can ride facing the front and there can be two passengers facing the back. There is also the Manila-jeep-type sidecar like the motorela of Bukidnon. Passengers ride facing each other.

When I saw the sidecar of a trisikel in Calapan, Mindoro pier almost touching the ground, I was guessing that the design might have something to do with how they use their trisikel in their flat environment. They imitate the design of sports cars that almost kiss mother earth. I think they want speed with their machine. My estimate is that the center of gravity of that Calapan, Mindoro type is very low. The sidecar of a trisikel in San Jose, Nueva Ecija, on the other hand, is set very high from the ground—owing perhaps to the flooded Central Luzon ricelands. Certainly, traveling from Luzon to Mindanao, I see how the trisikel has many variations according to the culture, environment, and perhaps to local rules and regulation. There trisikels are red and white in Echague, Isabela; in Tacloban in Leyte, they’re all red. San Jose, Antique has mandated all-white trisikels, while it’s all yellow in Gapan, Nueva Ecija.

In the past, I thought that the jeep was supposed to be the king of the road until I saw a trisikel in Masbate with a horse inside it. The driver was transporting the horse to a market, perhaps to a slaughterhouse, to make some money.

With that image, I had to put the trisikel in a pedestal. It took a lot of science, geometry and imagination to do that (and inspired me to begin my hobby of taking pictures of trisikels – as well as other Pinoy-na-Pinoy quirks wherever I travel). The ingenuity convinced me that we will survive every environmental, economic, and political crisis we encounter.