My Vietnam Experience

On Fridays Laura and I usually go to the MCC office for lunch and spend the afternoon there, and so was the case on June 1st. At 11:15, we shut down our computers at The Gioi, hopped on our bikes, and were off.

First we stopped at a shop on the corner of Dien Bien Phu and Hang Bong Streets that sells what I will call “sun shirts.” A sun shirt is a long sleeved cotton garment that women in Vietnam wear outdoors as part of their multi-faceted battle against the dreaded tanning of skin. These shirts close with velcro. The collar extends all the way up over your nose and the sleeves down over the tops of your hands, with places inside the sleeves to hook your fingers so your hands stay covered. Elastic loops slide over your ears to hold the collar up, and a strap fastens over the top of your head as well. It’s quite a complicated blouse, but only $3.00.

Today, Laura and I had decided to each buy one. I wanted one 17% to prevent my skin from turning to beef jerky before its time, and 83% to enjoy an amusing novelty of Vietnam. I don’t know how often I’ll wear it, because I felt completely smothered in it, but I guess at this point I’ll be sweating profusely on my bike no matter what I wear, so who knows.

So there were Laura and me, riding along side-by-side, in our Vietnamese sun shirts. On Kim Ma Street, about halfway to the office, we passed a fruit vendor, though I didn’t really notice him.
“What was that fruit we just passed?” Laura asked.
I turned around to look, and Laura turned as well. Bad decision.

Just as I was saying “Guava” our bikes came together and locked, and before we had time to react we were flying in opposite directions, hurled to the ground in an instant road block of twisted bikes and Westerners. The first thing I noted when I hit the ground was the sound of motorbikes honking at us.

We pulled ourselves up and briefly assessed the situation, half wincing in pain, half laughing at our stupidity. Laura had landed on her elbow and didn’t know if she could proceed. I had landed on more bike than pavement (not sure which is the preferable target really), and my right thigh, which had fallen on the end of my handlebar, had the sensation of a gong resounding inside of it. It seemed difficult to know what to do next...I think because when you have so many instants in a day that blend together, and suddenly one like this occurs that feels so different from the previous instant, when bike and body were upright and healthy, a sort of shock-confusion sets in that debilitates your decision-making capacity.

“Let’s just go before things start to throb more,” I said, and we made it the remaining 10 minutes to the office on our mangled bikes.

Laura ended up having to go in for an x-ray of her elbow, and now she’s wearing a sling and has a fracture. Fortunately she only has to wear the sling for a week.

As for me, my whole right side is still a bit stiff after 4 days, but Co Ha has given me bear bile to treat the bruises. Unlike the Malaysian oil used to massage out nausea and other ailments, bear bile does NOT have a pleasant smell.

As for my bike, a little trip to the repair shop left it better off than it was even before the accident.

As for the fruit that I choose to blame for all of this, since it can’t defend itself and since I don’t feel like taking the blame myself, I realized a couple hours later that it wasn’t even guava after all. It was fruit that actually translates as “ugli fruit.” Ugly indeed!


Later that night, Thu Giang and I discussed the Trinity in a 20 minute taxi ride. She likes to mimic things she sees on TV, and the other night she had seen a movie with Mexican Catholics in it. So when we sat down in the taxi she assumed a stoic look on her face and crossed herself, then asked me if I do that.

“No”
“Why not? I think the people do that in church.”
“Yes...but that is a different church. I just go like this.” And I folded my hands and bowed my head.
“Well why do they do this? What does that mean?”
“Well do you know the word ‘God’?”
“No.”
“Well God is the one who we say made the world...the people, the trees, the animals, and that he lives in heaven and is the king.”
“Oh ok, like Jesu?”
“Well Jesu is his son. So when the people in church do this, it’s for God, who is the father, and Jesu, who is the son...and then there is the spirit. Do you know spirit?”
“No.”
“Oh my goodness, how to explain...well it’s not a person.”
“It’s an animal?”
“No...you can’t see it...maybe it’s kind of like a ghost?”
“A GHOST?!” (She is terrified of ghosts, so this was probably a bad word to use.)
“No, no, not really a ghost. It’s something that is alive inside people, in their hearts. Maybe...it helps you be a good person, nice to people and loving to people.”
(She still doesn’t get it. So I think about the fact that they believe their ancestors’ spirits live on, and can come back in other animal forms.)
“Well, you know how when a person dies, they still live in heaven? So you can’t see them, but somehow they’re still alive?”
(Now she thinks of her older sister, who died as a baby)
“Ohhh, like Phuong Anh? Sometimes my mother is praying [at their family altar] and then there is a butterfly and she is coming in the butterfly? Or when my father tried to turn on the air conditioner and it would not go, and then there was a spider and we know that Phuong Anh does not want air conditioner?”
“Yes, it’s kind of like that. But this spirit is God’s spirit.”
And the taxi pulled to a stop in front of our house.

The conversation was not nearly as smooth as it appears typed out...there were many more hesitations, and "hmmms" and startings over of sentences...It’s very difficult to explain complicated things in simple ways. I want to give a picture taken with a top-notch lens with unrivaled zoom potential, so that even the finest detail is clear, but in cases like these, I feel like the most I can offer is a product of Walmart’s cheapest throw-away. I guess that’s how it’ll feel when I’m at home answering the question “How was Vietnam?” for the first or fiftieth time.