Memories of Vietnam: Part Four

Bicycles in Vietnam

I was at KennySia.com two days ago and he had some entries about his recent visit to Vietnam. That brought back a lot of memories. What better time for me to continue with my Memories of Vietnam series? The last time I wrote about Vietnam was more than one year ago.

In Vietnam the usual mode of transportation for most people is either a bicycle or a motorcycle. A few days after I arrived in Vietnam I bought myself a Chinese made bicycle. One thing about those Chinese made bicycles sold in Vietnam was that the air in the tires need to be filled up every few days! So having a bicycle tire pump was handy but I always had such difficulty with the pump that came with the bicycle. I just didn't seem to be able to fill enough air into the tires! So what I did was fill enough air to get me to the bicycle repair shop in the campus and then pay a few Vietnamese đồng (Vietnamese currency) to have them fill the air in the tires for me.

One thing about owning a bicycle in Vietnam is that you have to keep a close eye on your bicycle. Just locking and chaining your bike to something is not good enough. You can easily lose your bicycle in the twinkle of an eye! A couple of French students that I befriended there lost the bicycles that they had hired for the day while they were sitting down at a road side stall for a drink.

I didn't ride my bicycle very far. Most of the time I rode around the campus, and the farthest I took my bicycle was to a villages outside the campus. That must have been about 3 miles each way. I didn't dare ride my bicycle on the highway even though half the highway was filled with people on bicycles and motorcycles at any given time. I was afraid of the truck drivers who looked like they didn't really care about running down anyone!

One day one of my Vietnamese students, Phuong, invited me to visit her uncle who lived in the famous snake village called Le Mat. I think it was like 5 miles or so away from the campus, and I didn't want to ride my bicycle that far. She told me, I didn't have to ride my bike. I could sit pillon on her bicycle! And that was exactly what I did!

This was how Phuong's uncle's home looked like in Le Mat.

Phuong's uncle owned a restaurant that served the specialty for which the village was famous. Snake meat. No, I did not try any snake dish even though I was offered. I have been told that snake meat tastes a lot like chicken meat. I'm sorry, that is not going to persuade me to try it any time soon! Not then, not now.

That's my bicycle to the right of the picture.

One person that made my stay in Vietnam fun was a Frenchman named Stephen who was a fellow long term guest at the Guest House at the university. He loved to ride around the villages near the campus, and who else was there to check out these places with besides me? So he and I would ride our bicycles to the villages, and a lot of times we would stop at a little coffee shop for ice cream or frozen yogurt.

When I left Vietnam, I sold my bicycle to the care taker of the Guest House - my home the whole time I was at the Hanoi Agricultural University.

Reminiscing Part 1

Have you ever had one of those days when out of the blue you thought about your childhood friends, or that primary school classmate and wondered what became of them?

I was in the shower this morning thinking about blogging, and out of the blue I thought about my primary school classmates!

Well, of course I am always reminded of one classmate in particular because my daughter is named after her. The classmate my daughter is named after was Denice Katherine Hepburn. She was Australian and was my classmate during most of my primary school years until her family returned to Australia. Her father was the manager at SESCO back in the days when SESCO had a little building right in downtown Miri, near where Park Hotel is right now.

I remember how mean some of us were to Denice. She had curly red hair, with lots of freckles on her face. Some of us called her "white bum". The thing about her was that she dished out what she got, and her favourite phrase was "Sticks and stones will hurt me, but words won't".

I liked Denice and she even invited me to stay with her one weekend, because that weekend was her birthday and there was going to be a birthday party for her. It was a big deal for me because at 11 years old, I had never spent any time away from home before that, and I remember feeling homesick the whole time I was at her place. Also it was the first time I had stayed with a white family. The thing that struck me was that they didn't eat dinner! We had tea, and that was it.

Denice loved to watch Hindi movies and listen to Hindi songs. I remember her calling the cinema because we wanted to go watch a Hindi movie, but she got the day and the time all wrong and so we never went to see any.

I couldn't wait to get home after the birthday party, and Denice's mother was kind enough to take the time to drive me home right after the party.

Another primary school classmate that I often think about is Yvonne Davidson. Yvonne's mother was Indonesian, and her father was English, I think. She was my classmate until I was in Primary 3, because her family moved to Kuching after that. She was the smartest girl in my class and was more advanced than any of us, and when we were in Primary Two there was talk about promoting her to Primary Four. She played the piano, and it was from her that I developed an interest in playing the piano. I begged my mother to send me to piano lessons but my mother said the classes were too far away, and we couldn't afford it anyway. That was that.

I don't know if I'll ever meet either of them again, or if they'll even remember me, but who knows eh.