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Extorting victims, machete wielding bystanders, crooked cops - All in all, it was a nice ride!
My two friends and I had been touring the coastline of Vietnam, first starting in the north (Hanoi) and traversing our way down the coast, all the way down to Ho Chi Minh City. We were taking the “tourist” bus, which gave us the pleasurable option of getting off and staying in whatever city they stopped in. We had read about this beautiful little town called Hoi An, and decided to stop there.
After staying in this town for one day, and sampling their great seafood, we decided to take a trip to a local beach. Now this local beach is known across the world as “China Beach”, yes, the one that is infamously known from the Vietnam War. It was just about an hour or two outside of town, and we could take scooters to get there.
“Wait a minute”, I said to my friends. “I have never driven a scooter before, and you expect me to drive one for two hours on my first day?” They nodded and we proceeded to go to the local hostel and ask about their day rental prices. The closer we got to renting the “bikes”, the more nervous I became. “Are you sure that I’ll be ok?” I asked the owner. “Yeah, just practice a little” he replied in his broken English.
So I proceeded to get on the scooter and listened to his instructions before I tried anything. “Front brake here, vroom-vroom here, shift here,” he explained while pointing to different parts of the bike. “Now you try,” he ordered.
I cautiously sat on the scooter for a few seconds, and gently twisted the accelerator with my right hand. The bike jerked forward and I fell to the ground. My friends and the locals all laughed for a bit and my face turned bright red. The owner came over and explained that I needed to be gentler with the controls. So I tried a few times on the narrow street, and started to slowly get the hang of maneuvering it.
My friends asked if I was ready, and I sheepishly replied, “Yeah, let’s go.” So we all got on the bikes, with one local guy on each of my friends bikes, and me riding solo. We were going to China Beach. It was my first day on a scooter, and I was attempting to drive for two hours on a bumpy, crowded road in rural Vietnam. “What could go wrong?” I thought.
It’s about thirty minutes into my journey, and I start to realize that I’m going really slow. I can barely see my friends in the distance ahead of me, and start to think that I might lose them. So I do what any level headed person would do, and try to catch up to my friends. But I must figure out how to make it through the maze of traffic ahead of me. There’s a truck coming towards me, and an overloaded scooter, full with a couple and lots of wares, including eggs and other food items, right in front of me. I decide that the best way of passing the scooter ahead is by squeezing in between it and the oncoming truck.
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