It was supposed to be a fun day trip to a local forest park. And it started out that way, though things would turn for the worst a short way into this ride into rural Vietnam.
This happened a few weeks ago, April 23rd to be exact, but I've been lazy and haven't updated this blog since my trip through Vietnam so I guess late is better than never. And besides, now that I am nearing the end of my healing process maybe I have a better perspective on what happened.
We (myself and my girlfriend Trinh) were driving to a nature reserve called the Tan Lap forest, roughly 2 hours northwest of Saigon. We were traveling in a large group that had been organized through a facebook group for expats. There were probably 25-30 people in our convoy. They were all very nice and friendly people, as you might expect. We met in a park at 6am to start our journey outward from the city, but for two people in the group, fate had decided that they wouldn't make it all the way there. (That's us).
An hour and a half into the trip, after rickety wooden bridges, countless times stopping to let stragglers catch up, and passing a dead body on the streets (more on that later), one of the riders in our group decided that his bike should be occupying the space that mine was. To preface this, there had been two times already on the trip that this same driver had swerved and nearly hit us from the side; each time I'd been able to move out of the way. No such luck the third time.
Something you should know about Vietnamese drivers, and don't take this as a message of racism, but they aren't very conscientious. When they turn, they turn. They don't look to see what's there. Many run red lights, drive the wrong way on one-way streets, you get the idea. The traffic laws are mere suggestions to a Viet in a hurry. I'm not sure what this young guy's hurry was as we were all going the same place, but he swerved to his left and his back tire hit my front tire, sending my bike and it's inhabitants (unfortunately my girlfriend and I) sprawling to the pavement at somewhere around 45mph.
Luckily, we were relatively OK. I had/have some pretty decent road rash on my knee, both elbows, and my foot. A hole was worn through my sturdy hiking boots, my pants were stripped to rags, and my shirt was torn up; the worst part was that they were my favorite boots, my favorite pants, and my favorite shirt. Well, no, that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that the trip was ruined for my girlfriend who had been looking forward to it.
Luckily for the guy who hit us, my girlfriend was mostly unharmed. She had/has some small rashes on her hand and wrist that needed caring for, but other than that her backpack pretty much saved her from damage. I'm not a violent guy at all, but had she been hurt I might have thrown him off the bridge we were on. The rest of the group was fantastic and helped us out a ton. Someone had a first aid kit and they applied some anti-bacterial liquid and gave us a quick bandage-up before looking up the nearest clinic and offering to drive us there. My girlfriend was able to drive though, so we just drove ourselves 10km to the clinic.
At the clinic we each got a more thorough cleaning and bandaging, and the nurse sent us on our way with some antobiotics and some VERY spare materials. The bike was damaged, it ran, but had some issues and we were both banged up, so we opted for a taxi ride back home rather than trying to drive the 1.5 hours ourselves. It was an expensive taxi ride.
A few days later my girlfriend and her friend went back out into the country to retrieve my bike from the police station where she'd left it, then brought it back to the city. That's a kindness I'll need to repay a few times over. I'd have gone, but after the shock wore off it became apparent just how bad I was hurting. My knee didn't want to bend or support weight, my ankle would but complained about it, and I couldn't really wear shoes because of where the rash on my foot is. So for about a week it was a lot of delivery for dinner.
We're coming up on 3 weeks since the crash and I'm mostly back to normal. Still can't wear shoes, my ankle has been swelling up (kinda afraid there might be a fracture there), and my scabs aren't gone yet, but I'm back riding my bike around (she's a damn tough bike) and more or less back to life as normal.
Supposedly the kid who hit us "felt really bad about it the rest of the trip", which is sort of strange because he never once said he was sorry, he never offered to help us get to the clinic or help with our wounds, or anything. He acknowledged that he had done it, but hadn't accepted the responsibility. Which, sadly, was very typical for a Vietnamese driver. Remember that dead body I'd mentioned? She was a young Viet girl heading back to the city to study. A driver of a bus that shuttels factory workers hit her while she was driving and drove off, leaving her to die. The police were looking for him but last I had heard hadn't found the bastard.
It hasn't scared me away from riding my motorbike. I definitely drive a little more cautiously now, which isn't a bad thing. As I drive I sometimes have mini-flashbacks to the image of being suddenly thrown sideways and slamming into the road, which definitely helps to curb my speed and make me keep my distance. From what I've heard everyone here eventually is involved in an accident, and statistically most motorcycle riders experience one in their lifetime. I wasn't expecting to have mine so soon, but hey what can you do? The locals seem to get a kick out of my scabs and bandages, they know what happened because they've been through the same.
All in all I still consider myself lucky; I didn't break any bones that I know of, my motorbike still runs, and my girlfriend was ok. It's a hard lesson that I'm not glad I learned it but I did anyway. A life devoid of speedbumps is too smooth a ride for me. I'm just bummed that I had to be a speedbump!
