My Bicycle

Standing in between my bed and my desk in my room is my bicycle for the duration of my stay in Thanh Hoa. The epitome of a “leisure bike” with and navy blue colored frame, medium-width tires, a low seat, high handlebars, and, of course, a big basket, my bike is perfect for short trips around the town and for carrying items purchased from stores located a few kilometers away. The day after I arrived in Thanh Hoa, I was taken by motorbike (a very scary experience at the time) to purchase my bike, which the university had promised to provide me. Their budget only allowed them to purchase a used bike, so when we arrived at the store, owned by a friend of my boss, we walked to the back room to look at the selection of older bikes. Like practically all stores here in Thanh Hoa, the bicycle shop also served as the family home, with the downstairs devoted to selling bikes, but also containing the kitchen and living area with a couch and small TV. I smiled at members of the family as I walked to the back area that had been converted to a repair area and holding location for the older bikes. My boss, Dr. Hai, seriously tried to convince me to choose an incredible hot pink leisure/mountain bike hybrid but just as I was getting used to (and actually rather excited about) the idea of riding around on such a contraption for a year, he told me that “actually, it will fall apart soon… not good.” I quickly began to look elsewhere and was soon directed to the bike that would become the one sitting next to me right now.
I have had to get used to my knees practically hitting my elbows while riding and to the extremely hard seat that makes long trips really quite uncomfortable, but all in all, it has been really great having a way to get myself into the city center without walking or relying on someone to take me on a motorbike. Those trips into the city center are always eventful, usually harrowing, and definitely enjoyable as I tend to cause a scene wherever I go around here as the only Western female in the entire province and the only person who wears a helmet to ride a bicycle around here. Helmets have recently become mandatory for all adult motorbike drivers and passengers (children do not wear helmets, which is absolutely gut-wrenching) but are not required of bicycle riders, despite the fact that they share the road with the motorbikes, cars, and (in provinces like Thanh Hoa) horses pulling trailers of wood, steel poles, and other various cargo. I have a very strong attachment to bicycle helmets, however, so I wear my motorbike helmet whenever I go for a ride, which tends to provoke a lot of laughter (though I’m not sure that would go away were I to stop wearing the helmet.) I set out on my rides pedaling hard and weaving into the unpredictable mess of vehicles, people, and animals that I described earlier, making sure to keep eye contact with as many people around me as possible and to not make any sudden stops or shifts in direction. Once I make it onto the main road of traffic, I continue to pedal hard, smiling at the people that I pass and waving at the various shopkeepers along the road while keeping my eye on the drivers and riders around me.
The streets of Vietnam really provide a great portrait of the country’s entire development story—bicycles carrying produce, plastic toys, or flowers, cars laden with people, motorbikes crammed with 3-4 riders or toting live pigs, chickens, or a television, and animal-drawn trailers (with the occasional roaming cow or water buffalo thrown in the mix) weave around each other in an increasingly uncomfortable equilibrium and dance. No vehicle wants to tell the other that they don’t belong on the roads, nor are they certain of their own “place” on the road. Perhaps my metaphor is a bit confusing, but I have also talked to some Vietnamese individuals who have told me that in their opinion, in order for Vietnam to achieve many of its development goals, it will have to address corruption, the education system, and the traffic situation… all that is to say that I have plenty of thoughts to keep me busy as I pedal around here.
While most of my trips have been to the shops in the city center (primarily in search of the soft cheese I told you about earlier that appears on the shelves only every couple of weeks) a few weekends ago, Elliot and I decided to take a day trip to Sam Son Beach, located about 12km away from Thanh Hoa. While our students thought that the idea of biking such a distance down the road to Sam Son was completely ludicrous, Elliot and I were excited to get some fresh air after a week of being trapped inside either our rooms or our classrooms due to the rain and winds of the latest tropical storm to hit the area (I will be glad when this storm season is over, which I hear will happen in about a month.) We each took a bottle of water and our cameras and hit the road sometime before lunch on a relatively sunny Sunday. We weren’t in a hurry and our bikes wouldn’t have let us ride quickly even if we had wanted to, so it took us about 40 minutes of weaving around other bikes, cows, and motorbikes along a road surrounded on both sides with endless rice fields ready for the harvest to make it to Sam Son. Sam Son is a resort town that caters itself to Vietnamese, rather than Western, tourists and visitors, so while there are plenty of tall hotels in the small town, it is not a “resort” area in the way that you might typically imagine one to be. Elliot and I were there on a particularly interesting day, because there was literally no one around; the storms had made the beach muddy, the water cold, and had therefore driven away any visitors from the area. We rode onto the main street and soon found a place to lock our bikes near the beach, happy to get off of the painful bike seats. We walked around on the beach for a short time, sticking our feet in the Gulf of Tonkin and taking a few pictures before deciding quickly that since the water was so cold, it was time for lunch. We walked back to the road and picked a restaurant out at random (all of the owners were calling for us to eat at their places as it looked as though we might be the only customers in the town for the day), sat down, and asked for a menu. The menu we received was only in Vietnamese and had no prices on it, so Elliot and I put our very limited Vietnamese skills together and managed to order a fried shrimp dish, two steamed and marinated crabs, some stir fried water spinach, and two beers. The man taking our order then smiled, grabbed his helmet and took off down our motorbike. Elliot wondered out loud what in the world was going on, and I (half-jokingly) replied “Well, he probably went to go get our lunch.” Sure enough, 5 minutes later, our friend returned and had two live crabs with him on his motorbike that promptly went into a boiling pot of water… they came out with a thick brown sauce on them, and were absolutely delicious… talk about fresh seafood. The somewhat breaded and pan fried shrimp were also quite good, and the beer was quite refreshing after the bike ride. We devoured our meal and then sat and talked for a bit before walking back to our bikes and taking off down the road for a bit more sightseeing. We found a side road that ran parallel to the road we rode in on from Thanh Hoa and decided to take it as far as we could before getting back onto the busier road. Soon we were biking through a quiet countryside village, waving hello to the children who ran next to our bikes as we rode along, and attempting to take pictures with one hand while controlling the bike with the other. Soon, however, we ran into some flooding from the storm and our bike wheels were soon halfway underwater. We pedaled our way out of the acute flooded areas and found a perpendicular road to take us back to the main drag. With about 6km remaining in the ride, we were both extremely thirsty so we stopped at a roadside shop and bought a couple of bottles of water. The family who ran the shop quickly pulled up plastic chairs for us to sit down on and we began conversing with them in our very best bad Vietnamese (Elliot is actually much better than I am, having grown up in Japan and therefore having the advantage of being bilingual and thus better able to pick up languages naturally… or at least that’s what I tell myself). They kept remarking at how tall we both were, and wanted to compare their heights with ours. We happily obliged, exchanged a few more conversational sentences, and then continued on our way. With about 1km left to go, however, my bike began to show its age and I noticed that my pedal was loosening from the frame of the bike. I tried to pedal more carefully, but it kept getting more wobbly until finally the outside bolt flew off and into the road, never to be seen again, and I yelled out “Elliot, I’m going down!” Luckily, I didn’t actually end up on the ground, but managed to pull off to the side of the road and quickly stand up before any more of the bike flew into the wind. I shoved the metal bar onto the frame as best as I could and Elliot and I rode very slowly back to campus. It was no fun being unable to ride my bike for a week or so, but finally on Saturday, two of my students and friends, Kien and Đong, met me at my room at 8:00am (late in the morning by Vietnamese standards… they were surprised when I told them that I would still be asleep at 7:30) and they carried my bike down the stairs and over to a nearby shop. They told me that the bike would take a matter of minutes to fix, but in the meantime we should go sit somewhere else out of the way. We walked over to a coffee shop on the street and ended up sitting and talking for about 2 hours about life in Vietnam, our families, American and Vietnamese traditions, and lots of other subjects- it was a great opportunity for them to practice their English, and I loved being able to learn more about Vietnam and share different elements of my culture and background with them. Like all of my students and friends around here, Kien and Đong are absolutely wonderful, unbelievably kind and giving, and so much fun to be around. Around 10:30 or so we paid for our coffee and went back over to check on my bike. It was so nice to see it back in working order (I took it for a test drive into the city center today, and it was great!) and I was shocked when I found out that my repairs cost 5,000VND… the exchange rate here is 17,800VND to the USD, so the big fix cost me about $0.28, which actually makes me feel kind of guilty. The boys assured me that I should not pay any more, though, and we went on our way.
Like I said, my bike is back in good shape now and I’m ready to hit the road for more biking adventures. My blood pressure still spikes whenever I think about the crazy traffic I have to navigate (and I live in a rural province… this is nothing compared to Hanoi!) but I’m sure that I will continue to feel more comfortable (while still being ever-watchful and careful!) in the madness as my time here continues.
I hope that you are enjoying the beginning of fall over there- continue to stay well and stay in touch. You are all in my thoughts and prayers.

Love,

Hayley