A father in Vietnam has converted an old van into a wooden tank after spending hundreds of hours spending thousands of dollars on his son.
According to the French news agency AFP, Trong Van Dow walks with his three-year-old son every weekend on a tank that was once a 16-seater minibus in his neighborhood east of the capital Hanoi.
The wooden car, modeled after the French model EBR 105, with a 2.8-meter-long replica gun, cost 11,000 to replace.
"My son and I enjoy riding on tanks, which has nothing to do with weapons or war," Dow told AFP.
"I thought it was just a normal car and turned it into a tank to make it more interesting," he said.
It took Dow and two colleagues three months to convert an unused van into a tank.
They retained the floor of the main engine and minibus but rearranged the inside to make room for gears.
"The hardest part was figuring out how to drive the four wheels," he said.
The maximum speed is 25 kilometers (16 miles) per hour. If the speed is higher then the cable connecting the wheels will be detached and they (the wheels) will get stuck.
In 1975, communist tanks destroyed the entrance to Saigon's "Freedom Palace", ending a bloody era for Vietnam, which was embroiled in conflicts with France, the United States and China.
Allies Russia and China provided tanks to Vietnam to fight the Americans, but now the tanks are in the form of children's toys and they play with plastic versions of these tanks every weekend in Hanoi.
"If all the tanks in the world were like mine, there would be no harm, just enjoyment," Dow said proudly.
