#motorcylediaries

[taruna40]

#holistic #holi #festival of #colours #coloursplash #northeast #mekhla #weavesofindia #womenbikers #motorcylediaries #sareesofinstagram

[eastclairewest-blog-blog]

Motorcycle Diaries Part II

Fun Fact of the Week:

I saw my first snake on Wednesday!

I’m honestly quite surprised it has taken me almost 9 months to cross paths with a snake, and more surprised of where this took place.. After finishing a class with my Mattayom 4/6 students, I started walking towards my next class and was interrupted by screams of excitement, “TEACHA, SA-NAKKEEEE!”. I couldn’t find the words to inquire on whether or not the snake was poisonous (the only thing important to me at that moment), but the snake seemed pretty happy where it was, half inside the classroom and half outside – it came in through a large hole in the wall where the pipes to the sink were fitted. With its super chill demeanor we observed the snake (while waiting for another teacher to come remove it with a big stick) and wrote name ideas on the board for our new class pet. The consensus was, “Kitty”. Still no idea whether it was poisonous or not, but it was about 4 ft long and brown with a bit of a pattern. Who knows, just hope I don’t see it again! Especially not while I’m teaching.. D:

  On to Part II of my motorbike trip! Where did I leave off..? OH YEAH.

Recap:

~4:00pm – Fast forward past lots of slow, boring driving through little towns. We are passing through another town during what seems to be after-school rush hour. Keep in mind that there are no actual lanes and that people drive willy nilly here. I am driving behind another motorbike on  her left. We’re both going about 30-40km an hour. I am gearing up to pass her because she has started slowing down a bit when suddenly, without any indication, she veers left to turn off. I was already on her left so I couldn’t get around her on the right, so I started breaking and honking and trying to get around her on the left, assuming she would finally look where she was going and stop or at least slow down. NOPE! She keeps going and CRUNCH go our two motorbikes as they collide. 

That sickening crunch of plastic gives me goosebumps whenever it reaches my ears (minor motorbike collisions are common in SEA so yeah I’ve heard the sound a few times since then..!).

Honestly I don’t remember exactly how we hit, I just remember a really bad noise coming from my engine after the crunch and the sound of metal jamming across the tarmac. I sort of flung forward off the bike and landed on my head before rolling off to the side and standing up to see what happened. I was a little beat up, but mostly just in shock and preoccupied with the potentially dire situation at hand. All of the sudden there was a swarm of people around me, half concerned, half amused. I first ran over to my bike to pick it up (along with the scattered pieces of plastic) and pull it off the road. Immediately, I remember thinking, “shit, Houston is probably freaking out, asking himself why he went along with this crazy girl he might now have to deal with in a bad situation”. But there he was seconds later, totally un-phased, helping me pull the bike off the road and making sure I was alright. I finally mustered up the courage to look over to see how the other person in the accident was doing, and if the police had arrived yet. The woman’s bike looked okay except for a few scrapes, as did the woman except for the look of horror and disgust frozen on her face (uh oh). She stared at me and then down at the hole in her pants where she scraped her leg.

~~I’m going to talk a lot about this incident now, not because I want to impress people with my (actually embarrassing) crash, but because I found the whole situation and how the Vietnamese people dealt with it, super interesting. The few Hanoi residents that I spoke to after the fact told me that I was extremely lucky and that this is usually not how this scenario plays out. Now, I do not have a Vietnamese driving license, nor do I hold a motorcycle license in any other country. I knew the accident wasn’t my fault, but I also knew that usually the way things work here (especially out in a small town where you don’t speak Vietnamese and no one there speaks English) is that the person with more money pays for any damage (this person, regardless of the reality, is always the foreigner). Also, without a proper license, I knew I might be in trouble with the police, and at least have to pay them off to let me go. It’s really not a big deal if you do have a lot of money to spare actually, but I definitely didn’t. ~~

A bunch of Vietnamese men all started assessing the damage to my bike like curious engineers tinkering with a new product. I truly thought my bike was done for until they managed to get it started, only the problem thereafter was that the engine was going full-throttle on neutral. Somehow though, because everyone in Vietnam seems to be a mechanic, they were able to get it started properly and assured me it was safe to drive. In that moment, regardless of how scared I was and little I understood about the actual safely of my bike, I trusted them completely, and wouldn’t you have? I tried to give them money for getting it working again, but they refused to take it.

Somewhere out of the crowd came a young schoolgirl with a sweet smile and twinkling eyes. This girl saved the day! She spoke a little English and seemed to understand me really well. She helped me communicate with everyone about who I was and what happened. A man on a super-snazzy looking bike drove up and told me to follow him to his shop where he said they would repair my motorbike for free. This was too good to be true and I nervously shook my head, “no”. Apparently though, between a mixture of witness accounts and the girl helpfully translating for me, they had gotten the right idea about what happened and I’m sure thought I was much more hurt than I was, so they took this like a community responsibility to help me. I also mentioned that I was a teacher and this may have helped! Oh and I told the schoolgirl that I loved her in Vietnamese (a handy phrase that also got me good deals in a Hanoi market). Eventually they convinced me that everything was okay, so Houston took my bike half a km down to the shop and I set out to follow on his bike, but was stopped immediately by some women on the side of the road. They translated to me through the little girl that the situation had changed because the other woman in the accident was very angry and insisted that I pay for her bike. They told me that we should call the police, which I was thinking was the LAST thing I wanted to do. They kept saying, “trust me, it okay, it okay”, so I said what the hell and let them call the police.

For about fifteen minutes I sat with the women while they seemed to shield me from the road, refusing to let me stand up as they rubbed some herbal oil on my arms and my head. They seemed really alarmed when they saw that the inside of my helmet had cracked from the impact. That thing saved my life! Here’s a pic of them massaging my head:

And another of the sweet schoolgirl and friends.

In the meantime, Houston was down at the shop sorting things out with the crazy woman and the police. He relayed to me later that the crazy woman and her companion were grabbing at him and yelling (sorry Houston and thank you again for dealing with this madness! You’re the best!). Then the police came and he walked up to them and shook their hands. There were no words exchanged, just a handshake. They then walked off to discuss the matter and eventually he was given the thumbs up to continue on. When Houston came back to retrieve me, the women told me they had talked to the police over the phone and everything was okay but I had better get going..like, NOW.

5:00pm – Still 60km to go! My body is aching and my skeletal looking bike is still freaking me out every time I look down, but the road is decent and I’m determined to make it the full way to Ha Giang to meet our friends at a nice little resort.

In this Northern mountain weather, it started getting dark and foggy around 5:30, which didn’t make things any easier.. especially seeing as I had never driven a motorbike in the dark before and my glasses were tucked away in Houston’s backpack, which was in another bag that was secured by 5 bungee cords to Houston’s bike… it’s a weird feeling when you’re so determined to get somewhere that you can’t even be bothered to stop to take a pee or retrieve your much needed glasses for night driving. Clearly its not a rational feeling, but its what carried me all the way through to our next destination. I’m sure I was going a bit slow the whole way anyhow, because I was super paranoid about what the engine would do if I went too fast.. and I was convinced that the front wheel was crooked (it wasn’t), so every turn I took felt like I was on a rollercoaster about to tip over the side.

If I’m freaking any loved one’s out right now, I’m sorry. A lot of this sounds more dangerous and extreme than it really was, because it was from my inexperienced, petrified, point-of-view. I was actually painfully careful for the whole rest of the trip (except for one little joy ride around Meo Vac) and I’m sure many of what I experienced to be near-death close-calls, were, in reality, not even close to dangerous. I didn’t trust my bike anymore, when really it was capable of a lot more than I was giving it credit for. But this is something that takes experience to learn and become comfortable with!

6:00 – Finally, we made it to Ha Giang! Hooray Hoorah I’m alive and all is well.

We met our friends at a pretty little resort on a quiet river just outside town. Nice big rooms with porches and clean bathrooms and everything for only about $10. 

--Antoine doesn't look too happy here..I'm thinking it's either because he also had a rough drive that day oooor he was not happy with his pumpkin soup (I think it was both)--

I realized I had not eaten since breakfast and was immediately starving. We had a big celebratory dinner accompanied by drinks and surreal recaps of our day, followed by some much needed massages at the neighboring “massage house”, which was actually pretty sketchy…. but.. yeah.

Here is a pic of my poor bike after a looong long day.

Damage: plastic shell on right side gone, plastic on middle/front/left cracked, one cracked mirror, one jammed pedal.

--a piece of the plastic shell....-- 

There was a few people around working at the resort, but there was one guy who seemed to be everywhere we went. He welcomed us at the reception, showed us our rooms, served us dinner and breakfast, and managed our booking/permit arrangements for our next hotel (you can’t continue to Dong Van without a permit which means you need a booked place to stay to obtain said permit. This is because of the proximity to the Chinese border.) I asked him if there was anyone who could help me fix my bike up a bit before I left Ha Giang and he offered to drive it to the mechanic for me. He came back and said they didn’t have the right parts, but instead glued the loose bits of plastic himself and with the help of another man, straightened out one of the pedals for me. He also refused to take any money for the extra help. Repairing motorbikes is a big hobby here, I guess!

Anyways, he was really helpful and friendly and I was impressed by the kind and generous nature of yet another Vietnamese person. Much of South East Asia seems to function with mind boggling aptitude amongst the disarray of motorbike madness, bustling markets, and turbulent politics. Along my journey so far I have met many people who seem to be a part of this chaotic dynamic, and yet they surprise me every time with their patience and warmth. Vietnamese people were especially outgoing by nature, not hesitating to go out of their way for another person. This is obviously a grand generalization, but I think it can definitely be applied to their culture as a whole in the way they reach out to one another instinctively. A biased observation..sure, but I'd like to think it's an accurate one!

I'll end the post with some bootiful pics of the resort in Ha Giang:

Coming up: Part III - the incredible mountainous drive through Dong Van, Meo Vac, and down to Ba Be National Park.