[jackbl]

Scrapes
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HANOI—To really get a feel for Vietnam, I highly recommend traveling by motorbike.

But sometimes the ‘feel’ you get may be the road scraping against your flesh.

In a recent column, I recounted my extraordinary feat of flipping an old Russian motorcycle with a sidecar upside down in a matter of seconds. This humiliating episode kept me in taxis for a few months.

But finally I bought an old Yamaha Nuovo from a housekeeper for a few million dong. It has been a liberating purchase, unlocking a new Hanoi. Life has changed for the better, and the kids love to ride like Vietnamese—my slim daughter in front of me, my son in back.

But a few times I still have gotten that up-close-and-personal feel for Vietnam’s asphalt. Unlike the sidecar debacle, I don’t blame myself for these accidents. In fact, I think that once I saved a dog from serious injury, and perhaps some Vietnamese teenagers from a worse fate.

I’ve learned that, after a certain speed is reached (and not necessarily that fast), an abrupt, reflexive, two-fisted braking action will bring my Nuovo crashing to the pavement. Twice this happened to avoid collisions with other motorbikes: Once with a dog that darted into my path. And then there were the three giddy teenage boys who, without helmets, were weaving through traffic at high speed on the popular lake road of Tay Ho.

This is a much too common and scary sight in Hanoi—perhaps a reflection of the universal teenage assumption of immortality. Or is it just teenage stupidity? I remember those days: At age 16, driving alone on an open freeway, I pushed the family’s Dodge Dart to 106 miles per hour, just because I could. Worse, I remember riding with an inebriated friend along a mountain road with sheer drops and certain death if we weaved off the road. And I was drunker than he was.

Crazy traffic is the rule in Hanoi, but utterly reckless driving the exception. Teenagers, however, seem to be the exception in this way. Sometimes I see them weaving in and out of traffic at high speed on busy Au Co, the dike road. And reckless motorbiking abounds in our Tay Ho neighborhood, where the scenic, curving lakeside road does double duty as a lover’s lane and a speedway. Perhaps the boys racing motorcycles and popping wheelies are just trying to impress the girls with their daring. In another year or so, they will be channeling their testosterone in a different way.

I was approaching a turn at a reasonable speed when they nearly swerved into me, and if I hadn’t braked their unprotected skulls would have gone hurtling through the air. The injuries, I think, would have been serious, possibly even fatal.

And I doubt that they learned anything from the near-crash. So I’m glad when the cops enforce the helmet law. A thin, cheap helmet may not afford much protection, but I don’t think it encourages greater risk. Rather, I think it serves as a reminder to be a bit more careful out there.

I came out of that incident with nothing worse than a couple of scraped palms and a scratched leg—and the realization that I need to slow down even more at that particular turn, lest reckless teenagers reappear.

The encounter with the canine, meanwhile, tore my jeans and gave me a nasty, bloody scrape on my left knee and the dog that caused it all barked at me like it was my fault.

Sorry, Fido, but next time I’m not stopping. You need to learn a lesson: you could become thit cho.

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