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So I proceed to edge closer to the scooter, inching ever so close to it’s rear bumper, when “Crash!”, I hit them. While trying to squeeze between the two vehicles, I ever so slightly nudged their scooter, and we both took a dive to the ground. They fell right over, because they were so top-heavy. But I slid on the hot pavement for about thirty feet or so.
At that exact moment, one of the locals on the back of my friends’ bike looked back, in horror, to see my accident. My friends whipped their bikes around and sped back to see what happened.
I got up, a little hazy from the mess I’d made, and looked around to see the damage. A few scrapes on me, including my hand, my knee and my foot. “Boy was that ground hot,” I thought to myself as I tried to figure out what to do next.
By the time that my friends got to the scene, there was quite a crowd that had gathered around the scene. The local man who was driving the other scooter had scratches all over his body, including one on the side of his face. His wife, on the other hand, was fine, because she was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, which protected her from the hot pavement.
The crowd had gathered around the scene, and the accident victim started to yell at me in Vietnamese. I had no idea what was happening, so I enlisted the help of my local friend, a young Vietnamese kid who spoke very good English. He explained to me that they were yelling quotes at me, giving me number amounts of payment that I could give them. I had a choice to make: Should I pay them an exorbitant amount of money (by their standards-5-7 million dong=$360-500 US dollars) or should I wait for the local police to come? I decided to wait for the police to come and help sort out the situation.
While waiting for the police to arrive, my buddy decided that I needed to clean off my wounds. So we wandered into the local village with our young interpreter and found some water. But just as my friend started to pour water to clean off my hand, he suddenly stopped. “Wait a sec, this water is probably not very clean. You should go back to Hoi An to get some clean water for your wounds,” the voice of reason said. I agreed with him and we quickly walked back to our scooters.
My friend decided to have our translator tell the victim that two of us were going back to Hoi Ann, to clean off my wounds, but that one of us would stay at the scene. This way they wouldn’t think that we were just going to leave the scene of the accident and not return. But just as I got on the back of my friends’ scooter, a local man with a menacing look pulled out a large machete and stood in front of us. “Yeah, why don’t we just stay here,” I told my friend. “Sounds good to me,” he wisely agreed.
Eventually the police and the owner of the scooter came, and we were able to sort things out. I was to pay the man 1 million dong (around $140) because he would not be able to work for one months time. I also had to sign a letter that stated what happened and why I was to pay this amount. Later that day I went to the local “clinic” to visit the man and give him these two things.
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