Reyna crashed her motorbike on Wednesday. She's fine, but it was unfortunate that she picked the one day I needed to spend the night in Vung Tau to have her accident. I stood in the rain and felt helpless while she stood on the side of the road in our neighborhood and bled onto the pavement. The final diagnosis is a cracked bone in her foot, a fairly large cut/abrasion on that same foot, and various scrapes and bruises. We agreed when I got home that it could have been much much worse. She was lucky.
When I got home Thursday evening, the first order of business was to retrieve Reyna's motorbike, which she'd left at a cafe next to the site of the crash. I was under orders to get the motorbike and drive it to the supermarket to purchase various supplies needed to tend her wounds. I snapped a photo of Reyna looking pathetic on the couch in her cast to show to the proprietors of the cafe. This way they would know that I wasn't some random thief. Armed with my proof, I walked into the night.
When I arrived at the cafe it was clear I was interrupting a rousing card game between the cafe owners and a gaggle of taxi drivers. A plump older Vietnamese woman didn't need to see my photo of Reyna on the couch. She knew that I'd come for the motorbike. It was sitting at the entrance and she motioned for me to take it away. I thanked her as best I could, started the bike and began to back it out of the store.
I lifted the bike to get it off the stand when the handlebars broke.
When I say the handlebars broke, I don't mean they wouldn't work properly. I mean they snapped off, leaving the handlebars clinging to the bike by a mass of cables. The bars fell into my lap like a chicken with its neck wrung. I looked inside and saw the one inch steel pipe that constitutes the substructure of the bars had sheared off. The taxi drivers saw what happened and deserted their cards and bets to rush over and check on the problem. Each appeared to have his own flashlight. They felt around in the guts of the broken-necked bike, talked quickly to each other in Vietnamese and pointed here and there. I put the kick-stand down, looked at the shop-owner and gave her the universal sign for "one minute." I looked at my phone to check the time as I turned on my heel and walked toward the mechanic. It read 8:20.
Ten minutes later I found the mechanics also sitting and enjoying beers and a card game. We looked at each other and I said "Motorbike" and pointed down the street. They said nothing and went back to their cards. A few seconds later, one of the mechanics got up, gave me an annoyed look and started walking toward where the bike was parked. I was following a little behind him when he turned into an internet cafe, sat down and started playing a first person shooter game. I stood for a minute hoping he was just finishing up, decided he wasn't going to help me and walked back to the bike.
When I got back to the bike I called all my Vietnamese speaking friends. No one answered. Finally I called my boss. He answered and let his wife, who is Thai and speaks a little Vietnamese, talk to the shop owner. It was clear they wanted the un-steerable bike out of their cafe that night. My boss offered to come help me wheel the bike home as one of the other people in the cafe put down a tiny red plastic stool for me to sit and wait. I sat, sweated in the humidity and watched the shop-owner stir a giant pot of what I hoped was chicken six feet away. I hoped it was chicken because between the pot and me two tiny kittens greedily nursed from a reclining female. Bear in mind this is a restaurant.
Fifteen minutes later, my boss appeared. We managed to get the handlebars seated on the bike well enough that when he pushed down with all his weight, he could get the bars to turn. I sat and walked his bike behind him while he did his best stunt-driver impression. When we arrived at the mechanic, the metal roll door to the shop was half closed. I ducked under and called out. The mechanic poked his head out of his room above the shop, mouth covered in rice. He came down the ladder and surveyed the sad motorbike as he munched his dinner with his greasy hands. He then called a couple friends over from the cafe, who finally deigned to help us wheel the bike back across the street to the overnight storage unit.
The overnight storage unit is a corrugated tin shack (walls and roof) with no windows and is about 25 square feet in total. The man helping us opened the door. As we pushed the bike into the shack, I noticed a pale blue light emanating from underneath a veil of mosquito netting. My eyes adjusted to reveal a bed with a woman breast-feeding a baby. Soft Vietnamese cool jams ushered from a nearby radio. We put the kickstand down on the bike and got the hell out of there. I walked back in the door of the house at 10:00 and apologized to Reyna for not making it to the supermarket before it closed.
The next day I went to the mechanic to pick up the motorbike. They had replaced the entire front end, including the metal substructure for the handlebars, grips and the mirror that had been destroyed in the accident. Total cost? VND615,000 or $30. Total cost for Reyna's medical bills (Doctor's consulatation, X-rays and a plaster cast)? VND750,000 or $37.50. So come to Vietnam, where you can have a near-death experience and recover for under $75.00.
I'm starting a new thing here at The Tattooed Vegetarian. Since I feel so clever about using song titles for all the post titles, I've decided to include the actual songs for your listening (and viewing) enjoyment.
No comments:
Post a Comment