Just got home from work, it's 8 pm and I need to have a drink and sit with my feet up. Today I had 2 classes, each 2 hours long. My first class was at a place called Van Thanh, about a 20 minute bike ride, depending on traffic. The school provide a motorbike taxi for me. Actually, it is the guy across the street from the school who also runs a motorbike repair shop from his front room.
Picture this, me, OK I'm not little, on the back of a motor bike that I reckon saw the American invasion. Between my legs, a tiny, greasy, Vietnamese man who speaks no English but has a brilliant smile. Thank God he knows the way. It is raining, has been for about half an hour. I walked to the school complete with rain coat, I wasn't allowed to walk across to the motor bike repair shop because it was raining, he had to come across the road to me, mind you, he stopped in a puddle. I thought, what difference does it make, it's only water and I'm probably going to get wet anyway. OK, hitched up my skirt and on the back, rearranging his rain coat and making sure that as much of me is cover as possible. We are off, through another puddle, around the corner and off, in the rain, toward Van Thanh. My teacher assistant is following behind on her bike. I usually love this ride, I get to sit there and watch the world go by, see some funny sights and think "must remember to tell everyone about that". But today it is raining and the roads are slippery, but I remember that I am probably better off than the majority of other road users because I have a helmet. They all laughed at me at school when I said I had to have one...Ha, I might have the last laugh. But there was still that nagging little fear...what if? We don't have health cover yet. I have this little mantra which I repeat to myself "It's OK I have a helmet, it's OK I have a helmet, it's OK...." I feel good with this, it's a comfort and helps to pass the time as I watch the roadside stalls flash past. OK until I see the Viet version of Tilletts, slabs of granite awaiting some poor sole on the back of a motor bike meeting fate and needing a headstone. "It's OK I have a helmet".
We keep on our way, the rain washing off any makeup I had cared to put on. My second class today was going to be videotaped, why did I bother with makeup let alone the hair, remember....the helmet. You see so much from the back of a bike. There are throngs of people all going in the same direction, some on their own, others with a passenger or three, or a load that should be transported by truck. There don't seem to be too many rules on the road. If a light turns red but you think that you can still make it through before the guys going the other way notice, go for it. One rule I have noticed is that buses have right of way. Do you know what a bus wheel looks like close up, so close you can see the lack of tread. Then there is the guy who is half way down the bus and is hanging his arm out the window waving at you to let the bus go first. (I think he is the conductor) My philosophy....why argue. Or do you know how much space is needed between a bus and a truck, if you need to get through. In all of this my driver seems quite confident. Just stay away from the white lines, they are slippery in the wet.
We surge on, not far now. Through a puddle. Past the big pink house with the statue of the Virgin Mary out the front. Is this a sign? "It's OK I have a helmet".
Along the road, tooting at the car coming on our side of the road....Move over you silly bugger, tooting at the two girls trying to dodge raindrops as they run across the road in front of us, silly girls, they don't have helmets.
Around the corner, watch out the road is slippery, past the shop displaying its wares, big stands of circular arrangements of flowers, orchids, roses....funeral flowers....not another sigh? "It's Ok I have a helmet, it's OK I have a helmet....."
Nearly there, just OH !! another puddle, past the local bar, a few shot plastic stools at an equally low plastic table protected from the rain by a big blue tarp. I'm thinking to myself, there is no way I would do this in Australia. Apart from the fact that it's raining, the last time I was on a bike, nobody called me mum. And the rain, who would be out in rain like this if they didn't have to. But then, that is why I'm here, to do all this stuff, to experience things that might otherwise pass me by. To be able to laugh at the guy riding his bike while talking on a mobile and smoking a cigarette...in the rain. To be able to feel, see, hear and do all the things that I've been doing. Then I think how lucky I am that this isn't passing me by.
One last little corner and I can hear the children chanting something in Vietnamese. We stop, I pat the driver on the back and say thank you, not that he understands me. I climb off, not all that elegantly, aware that my wet shoes will slip on the tiled floor of the school playground if I don't take them off at the gate, as is the custom and now I know why. As I wave goodbye to the driver, I have the chilling realisation that in 2 hours, I have to go back, through peakhour traffic. But that's OK "I have a helmet"
