Everyday Adventures: A Flat Tyre

Footpaths in Ho Chi Minh City are usually crowded chaotic places. They are the domain of little coffee stands, motorbike parking, games of Chinese checkers and temporary stalls selling everything from shoes to ornamental fish in plastic bags.

And motorbike repair guys.

On just about every second street corner, there’s a tyre fixer-man. (It’s just about always a man. Often managed by his wife. But it’s the man who does the actual fixing.)

I’ve had a few flat tyres in the four-or-so years I’ve lived in Vietnam. So I can recognise the flat tyre feeling. Although yesterday it took a few seconds to realise that it was not the road that was bumpy, it was my bike.

Usually a flat tyre just means a 10 minute delay. But my flat tyre happened on the highway, just through the new tunnel under the Saigon River.

And in front of me was a very unfamiliar sight.

An empty footpath.

Not a fixer-man to been seen between my flat tyre-ed bike and the horizon.

I did what I usually do when something goes wrong in Vietnam. I called Darling Man.

He told me there was a tyre fixer man along the highway somewhere. He said there was a green shed on the side of the road that housed an official government flat tyre fixer-man.

I asked him if he was on drugs.

He told me to just keep pushing the bike til I got to the green shed and then everything would be OK.

I started pushing. And pushing. And pushing … as the blazing sun beat down on my neck and the sweat rolled down my face.

I spotted someone in the distance. It looked like a man. I got closer and I saw he was sitting next to a big orange box. My spirits fell. A big orange box is not a tyre fixer sign.

A tyre fixer guy usually advertises his business with an inner tube propped up against a post or a cone of paper or sometimes just the dish of water he he uses to find the holes in an inner tube.

The guy I had just found was actually sitting in the shade of a tree offering soft drinks for sale.

I used my best Vietnamese to ask him where a fixer man was.

“Motorbike broken,” I yelled out and waved my hand near my ear, using the Vietnamese sign that means anything from “I don’t know” to “no” to “maybe”. In this case, it meant “where?”

Softdrink man flapped his hand, indicating I should keep pushing.

So I did.

I passed another 12 softdrink men and a couple of softdrink ladies but no tyre fixer man.

Oh my, this flat tyre was going to kill me.

Finally, in the distance I saw the green shed. Yay!

I got closer and I saw the “sign” for a fixer man.

But the shed was deserted. I swore and pulled an unladylike face. Just how much farther could I push this damn bike in this incredible heat? All the way home? Should I just ride the damn thing and ruin the rims?

Then someone drove up next to me and shouted something I couldn’t catch. I saw some movement inside the shed as someone leapt out of a hammock. One second later a dude was staring at me in surprise. I stared back at him. This official government tyre fixer man looked 12 years old!

I used the Vietnamese word for “broken” and pointed to my bike.

Tyre fixer boy nodded in a business-like manner and went back inside to gather his little repair kit.

An even younger boy appeared from I-don’t-know-where and ordered me to sit. I sat.

Another young boy appeared from I-don’t-know-where and assumed the role of project manager.

And the repair was under way.

I chatted as best I could to the tyre fixing team and discovered that none of them go to school.

“He’s very naughty, that one,” said the official tyre fixer, pointing to the youngest kid. “He doesn’t go to school.”

I told them they should ALL go to school. They were all so young.

When the official fixer dude was finished fixing my bike he told me the bill would be VND20,000, about US$1. I gave him VND20,000 and the project manager and his assistant another VND20,000.

And as I drove off I suddenly felt terrible. I didn’t tip the guy who did all the work but I did tip two little dudes who should have been at school. Had I just encouraged them to hang out on the side of the highway rather than go to school?

When I got home I asked Darling Man to translate the parts of the sign on the official government fixer-man shed that I didn’t understand.

The sign says: No drinking wine, beer when driving.

And for some reason, this official government directive totally cracked me up. Especially when Darling Man explained the sigh further by saying “if you walk, you can drink wine”.

This crazy country.

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By: Barbara

A career girl who dropped out, traveled, found love, and never got around to going home again. Now wrangling a cross-cultural relationship and two third culture kids.