The Motorbike Accident

According to the CDC, Vietnam has the highest rate of traffic accidents in the world. If you stay here more than a few days, it’s truly not a matter of if, but a matter of when you will be in an accident. In Saigon alone, projections are there are somewhere around 30 injuries and deaths from traffic accidents per day.

I stood momentarily in disbelief. It was our second day riding motorbikes and Matt had been hit by the taxi weaving in traffic.

The taxi had pulled over and the passengers were getting out. There was a little street food restaurant by the intersection, and a few people rushed over to help.

By the time I got my own bike turned around, Matt had pushed the bike off his leg and stood up. With the help of the people around him, he started dragging the bike out of traffic. Traffic had resumed at full speed. It was flowing fast enough that I couldn’t get my own bike across the four lanes that were zooming by.

I saw Matt talking to the women who’d gotten out of the taxi. He shook his hands and his head and they got back in the car. I was getting frustrated not being able to cross the street.

Screw this! I thought and turned right instead. If there was one thing I’d practiced all day yesterday in the alley, it was a U turn. If I couldn’t get across, I’d turn around and get there.

It’s amazing how adrenaline helps you focus. Not sure entirely what I was doing or how I was doing it, I found an area close to the bus depot and swung the bike around, accelerating back towards Matt.

When I got there, he was sitting at the food stand in a plastic chair. The people who’d helped him pulled up a chair for me. His bike was parked on the curb by the street. Matt looked at me as I sat down, a cigarette in one hand.

“They gave it to me to calm me down,” he said. “Felt like I couldn’t say no.”

I was surprised by his calm demeanor. “So what happened?” I asked.

“The taxi hit me,” he said.

“Are you serious?”

“Yup,” he said. “I was turning left and he hit the back of the bike. It got knocked sideways and out from under me.”

“Are you okay?” I asked. Looking at him, I could tell he wasn’t. His left elbow was dripping blood and he had a trickle running down his left leg from a large patch of road rash on his knee.

“Nothing really hurts,” he said. “Just stings.”

“Mind if I play doctor?” I asked.

“Go ahead.”

I didn’t have much on me but a few band-aids. I went back to my bike and got my two liter bottle of water from the storage under the seat. When I came back, I untied his left shoe and took it off. His leg was trembling, as were his hands when he leaned forward to pull off his sock. I poured the clean drinking water over his knee. It wasn’t particularly deep, but it had a good pool of blood forming. Next we worked on his elbow. It wasn’t as bad, but had a dozen or so dime-sized patches of road rash on it. I had to hold his arm still to pour the water on it.

As I did, he grimaced and said “ahhh.”

“Does it hurt?” I asked.

“Not that,” he said. He stood up. There was a blood stain on the side of his pants. He pulled down the elastic on his boxers to reveal a nasty patch just under his hip bone.

“That one has a lot of gravel in it Matt.”

“Does it?” He asked, unable to get an unobstructed view. “It tore my boxers.” Indeed it had.

“We need more water,” I said. “I think we should park your bike over there, you can ride home with me, and I have antiseptic stuff in my bag we can clean you up with.”

“I can ride,” he said. “I’ll just go slow.”

Dude, you can’t stand up without shaking, I thought to myself, but I didn’t say it.

“Matt, you’re shaking. It’s adrenaline. I can bring someone back with me to get your bike later. Let’s worry about getting this stuff bandaged first.”

“How far is it to back?”

“Probably 2 or 3 miles,” I guessed.

“I’ll just walk,” he said.

“Okay, we can walk.”

“We?”

“You’re arm and leg are bleeding, and you’re in shock. I’m not leaving you alone.”

He pulled out his phone and opened google. “Okay, we can ride,” he conceded. “It’s like a 45 minute walk and I want to get this over with.”

The people from the food stand helped us store his bike away from the road under a tree. Matt walked across the intersection to the median, and I pushed my bike out into traffic to meet him. (It’s amazing how traffic yields to you when you are walking a motorbike.)

He hopped on the back and we accelerated into traffic.

“I want you to squeeze my shoulders,” I said. “If you’re going to pass out I want to know about it.” He held on tight.

It took us about 10 minutes to get home. When we did, Matt went upstairs to the room. I grabbed the napkins off the table, the soap from the bathroom, and my alcohol solution and Neosporin from my bag.

“I taught first aid at summer camp for 5 years,” I told him. “I know what I’m doing.”

“I trust you,” he said.

Matt took off his shirt and shorts, and we got him cleaned up. We washed everything with another bottle of water, and wiped down with the antibacterial hand soap.

“What hurts the most?” I asked, as I dabbed his knee with a soapy napkin.

“My pride,” he said.

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “How many people can say they were hit by a taxi in Southeast Asia and walked away from it? It’s going to be a great story.”

“It’s probably my fault though,” he said. “For all we know, I cut him off with my left turn and totally caused this.”

“But we don’t know that,” I said. “Taxis are crazy and there is a good chance he was zigzagging on the wrong side of the road and hit you.”

The wound on his hip was trickier. The water bottle and wet cloth wasn’t cleaning the grit out.

“Let’s try the hose in the shower.”

The bathroom was a small tiled room, where the whole room served as the shower. I sat on the toilet, and tried to use the water pressure from the spout to flush the debris out of the skin. It took a few seconds, and a lot of pressure, but it worked.

I tried making small talk to calm him down. “So was that your first cigarette?”

He chuckled. “Yup.”

“And How was it?”

“I didn’t inhale.”

“Right,” I said with an exaggerated tone. “That’s what everyone says.”

By the time we were done, the blood and gravel were gone and it looked more like a web of pink scratches than a war wound.

I stepped out of the bathroom to let him undress and shower properly. After he put on fresh, untorn underwear, we dabbed alcohol solution on the wounds. He flinched violently at the pain.

“None of the bandaids I have are big enough,” I said. “We’ll have to grab some when we are out. Do you want to lie down for a bit?”

“I’m actually pretty hungry,” he said. After he got dressed, we googled a restaurant and walked up the hill to eat.

“I told everyone back in Saigon that I’d get in a motorbike accident for sure if I tried it,” he said with a laugh. “What can I say? I know myself.”

“It’s important to know your limitations,” I joked.

“I wanted a clean track record. It’s such a shitty story to get hit on your first day.”

“Technically, it was our second day. And no one has to know,” I told him. “I won’t even blog about it.”

“You better blog about it,” he said. “It’s the most dramatic thing that’s happened to us.”

Crossing the street clearly made him uncomfortable. “I’ve totally lost all my confidence,” he said as horn-honking motorbikes zoomed around us.

“You wouldn’t be human if you hadn’t,” I reminded him. “It’ll come back.”

Lunch was really good, but we weren’t as hungry as we thought.

“I like riding a lot,” Matt said as we ate. “When I’m going fast I feel stable. It’s just left hand turns that suck.”

“That intersection sucked,” I added. “That’s the same intersection I came to stop to turn at yesterday.”

“I don’t think I can do Saigon traffic,” Matt said.

“Me neither,” I said.

“I don’t know,” he said. “You’re pretty good.”

“We found the one coordinated thing I’m able to do.” We laughed.

His arm was starting to clot, but still dripping a little. “We should cover those,” I told him. He agreed, adding that the polluted air alone has to be bad for it.

We found a pharmacy and bought gauze and tape. The pharmacist also gave us iodine which we figured couldn’t hurt when we don’t have access to clean tap water. After we bandaged it up, he took a nap and I went with Hannah’s brother to get Matt’s bike.

We didn’t take the most direct route to get to the bike or to get it home. I followed the brother and he took us right through rush hour traffic in the center of town. It was chaotic, but it also built a lot of confidence. Hannah told me that he was very complimentary of my driving.

I’m still not sure I want to mess with the disaster that is Saigon traffic.

Hannah made dinner for us tonight, and the crowd at the hostel has grown to 8 people. When Matt came downstairs, all bandaged up, everyone made quite a fuss for him.

“So you got hit by car? How’d that happen?” someone asked.

Matt blushed.

“There was a group of orphans crossing the street,” I interjected. “This taxi was out of control and Matt just turned his bike and zoomed right in to absorb the blow and save the children.”

Everyone laughed.

“Basically,” Matt agreed. “They’re going to name a school after me.”

We had a great night. Matt and I joined Simon, Hannah, and the Canadian couple for karaoke. Our duets of “How Far I’ll Go,” “How to Save a Life,” and “Closer” were all definite crowd pleasers. Simon and I rocked Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” and Matt crushed “Sweet Caroline.”

The two of us went for old fashions when everyone else went to bed.

“To another day of not dying,” we toasted.

I took a drink.

“Thanks,” Matt said. “For helping me today.”

“Anytime,” I said. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Do you remember when you had hives in Bosnia and made me rub cortisone on your back for a week?” He asked.

Now I blushed. “I do,” I said, curious about the connection.

“I think we’re even,” he joked.

Back at the hostel, we added a layer of gauze to the bandages to keep the blood from leaking in the night. Matt went to bed and I also consulted my doctor uncle on the best way to keep in a wound clean in a country without drinkable water.

You never think about how fast everything can change. In a life filled with memorable experiences everyday, it’s hard to remember that it is fleeting. For me, it’s a reminder to tell the people you love that you love them, to take risks and expand your horizons, and live each and everyday as the adventure you want your life to be!