Bikes4Life and The Best Sandwich Ever

When I returned from Vietnam I called the Perth Art Gallery Cafe to check my work hours. I was excited to be productive after some rest and relaxation. Unfortunately, I was informed that the weekend work had slowed considerably because the main exhibit at the Art Gallery had ended and  the hot weather had driven a lot of people to the beach. So the more permanent staff were being given preference on the limited hours. Back to looking for a job...

My weekdays are typically my weekends and vice versa. With no work available, I felt like I should do something productive. Coincidentally, one of my co-workers, Damon, was looking for volunteers for a charity called Bikes4Life. I could try to explain the organization to you in my own words, but the folks who created the website probably thought a lot harder about it: Bikes4Life is a global community initiative that is dedicated to providing bicycles to people, particularly youth, who are underprivileged, aimed at helping the most vulnerable, isolated, and neglected groups within society. Volunteering would be a perfect opportunity to be productive while doing some good in the world.

Damon had done the hard work: PR for the paper and local news, talking to interested donors, getting their details, mapping out where bikes were located, finding volunteers, organizing transport and bicycle repair gurus, and finding the massive amount of storage needed to refurbish the bikes before being shipped out. My job would be to help collect the bikes from people who've already pledged a bicycle donation. Too easy.

On Saturday morning, I met up with Damon (Dame-O) and the other volunteers, Johnathan (John-O), Tim, and Tina. There was a short little planning period and then we hit the road. John and Damon would collect bikes in the northwest of the city using the black pick-up truck (i.e. a ute). Tim, Tina and I would team up in the moving truck and collect bikes in the northeastern part of the city.

Once in the truck, we all naturally fell into our roles. I didn't know the city well enough to navigate and I couldn't drive since I lost my wallet and drivers license while travelling. That meant I was the caller -- I garnered my slightly higher-pitched chatty voice and started scheduling pick-ups. Tina was the navigator because she knew the area best -- plus, have you ever seen a woman operate a truck? (That's a bad joke, obviously. Sorry). She used a map book, um, like a paper one instead of a digital version that talks to you. How strange! But let me say this: navigating with a real map feels way more adventurous than using a GPS device. Finally, that meant that friendly Tim, with his "friendly mutton chop" style beard (yes, that is the technical name), would be the driver or else we were going to have a very long day.

The morning started slowly, but once we figured out a routine and got a realistic idea of how long each pick-up would take, it was easy. Probably 90% of the people donating bikes were elderly who could no longer ride a bicycle or whose grandchildren had grown-up. That meant a lot of the bikes were quite old, perhaps 40 or 50 years old, or out-of-style kids' bikes. Anyway, I'm sure they'll find a good home and make a child happy.

Around noon, we had a pick-up near Tina's house. Her house was a convenient place to stock up on water on such a hot day. I didn't expect that food would be offered, but when Tina put containers of homemade Indian curry chicken, hearty wheat bread, Greek yogurt, and something akin to pico de gallo on the counter, I couldn't help myself. Best sandwich I've had in Australia. The spiciness of the curry, the cooling effect of the yogurt, the herb flavors from the pico. Thinking of it makes me salivate. If charity organizations offered sandwiches like that all the time to their volunteers, there'd be a surplus of volunteers and the world would be a better place.

We only picked up seven bikes in the morning, but the afternoon was much more productive. We had a good rhythm and worked quickly so we could escape from the heat to go back inside the air-conditioned truck cabin. By the end of the day we had picked up 30 bikes but two were salvaged from a trash collection we passed while looking for another house.

The truck filled with 30 bikes. 

The largest single donation was five bikes and a tricycle, but the bikes were so old and rusted out that I'd probably revise that figure to 2.5 bikes. The sweetest bike was the purple low-rider pictured below. The nicest bike was a legit mountain bike worth $500 or $600 dollars -- the donor also offered us freshly made mango sorbet.

The purple low-rider with a velvet banana seat. This bike will instantaneously make a kid in Africa the coolest in his entourage. 

After six hours of collecting bikes, all we had to do was bring them to the storage location. We made quick work of that and then celebrated with a beer back at the meeting house. A pretty productive day and I had a lot of fun driving around with Tim and Tina. Oh, and the best sandwich ever.

From left to right, Tina, Tim, John-o and Dame-o posing in front of the storage garage after adding the days hull to the pile. 

'Nam, Man

(Huzzuh! I’ve finally created a palindrome blog title! This attempt is pretty weak at 6 letters but my runners-up were 1) 'Nam Blog Odd, O' dog, Ol' B, Man, 2) Party 'Nam's Man-y Trap and 3) Noël in ‘Nam, man, Niles On. If there is an obvious one I missed, let me know). 

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam is just like I remember: Humid, chaotic and unimpressive. I had set the bar low, but arriving by plane doesn't provide much in the way of acclimatization. Here are a list of things I found immediately annoying.

1. Taxi drivers must, MUST, hassle any Western-looking individual if they need a ride -- no matter how many other taxi drivers this person has refused or ignored in their presence.
2. The noticeable absence of trash cans and a culture of disposing of trash wherever seems most disagreeable.  Poor cultural habit or thrifty solution to rising ocean levels??
3. The 20 million Vietnamese on scooters in a sprawling city mostly devoid of traffic signs, traffic laws, and order. Riding on the sidewalk. Yup. Wrong side of the road. Indeed. 6-person family on a scooter. Check. Bamboo poles slung like a medieval jouster. Check. Ignoring red lights, stopping in the middle of the highway, shooting a pregnant woman in the face. Check, check, er, I made that last one up.
4. Open sewers. They are gross and smell bad. Weird stuff grows in them. Rodents play around in them. Trash migrates into them, and then eventually that trash flows into to a stream, river, sea, or ocean near you. At least grates are good at hiding the truth.
5. I understand why it happens, but I wish the staring wasn’t so blatant for the first few minutes, especially in non-tourist areas. 

Fortunately, after a few days, 1, 2, 4, and 5 aren’t as noticeable. For 3, as a passenger in a bus, it’s somewhat amazing to watch as long as you don't have a strong sense of self-preservation for you or others. The vehicular chaos is a wreathing mass of scooters and bodies all obeying unspoken and unwritten rules of the road. The only obvious rule is to yield to the thing that is bigger and moving faster than you are.

To me, a bus in Asia is a magical hellhole where I’m only vulnerable to the unpleasantness inside the bus: long periods of sitting and deep vein thrombosis (Thanks Karen N.), bad smells from food and the occasional motion sickness, air-con that would kill a polar bear, the rare tactless guy trying to practice his English, my agonizing inability to sleep on bus rides shorter than 18 hours, the exposed upholstery nail in the seat, unintelligible karaoke at ear bleeding decibels, and many other trials.

But all things exterior to the bus are out of my control and therefore, inconsequential. Sometimes I picture the blank stare I’d expect to receive from a bus driver if I told him in well-mannered English, “Kind sir, if I could so much as request – and I say this with the utmost respect – if you could be so kind to slow down just a tad and maybe tone down the reckless overtaking, we'd all just be so pleased. Thanks for all you do. Good day.” And so, I stare out the window with zen-like complacency, much different than the backseat driver I feel like when a Westerner drives.

But this chaos becomes much more tangible when crossing a road by foot in HCMC, which is sort of like a live-action version of Frogger. The strategy is to walk into the road at the right time, continue walking no matter how terrifying it is, and hope everyone sees you and can avoid you. If you are Vietnamese you can shorten this process by not looking at all, which always makes me cringe. For beginners, the key is picking when to start walking...

To be honest, a mildly busy street in China Town during midday, HCMC.

One of the main ways of getting around HCMC is on a local green bus -- at least I assume that is the case, because I've never ridden one in HCMC. For the time being, I've gotten over seeking out that type of authentic "cultural" experience. I’ll save that sort of stuff for the crazy German backpackers that carry hand-carved walking-sticks, who come off as cultishly devout WWOOFers, and smell like the open sewers in # 4 above.  (Note: I’ve met only one of these types of Germans in the course of a year, on a local bus, which is one more such person than any other country).  Anyway, I was told that the green buses pay an annuity for life-lasting injuries, and pay a one-lump sum if someone is killed in an accident. Apparently the latter is the preferred option, which sounds really scary to a Westerner. My guess is that if you get hit by an equally reckless Vietnamese driver whose vehicle isn't government owned, the victim gets nothing, so getting hit by a green bus isn't as bad as it sounds in Vietnam. Regardless, unless you have a morbid fascination with pavement and ground meat, careful with that first step.

No roughing it in hostels on this trip. A placid pool waiting to be disturbed. 

Well, I didn't only cross roads in Vietnam for two and a half weeks. I was here for a true non-backpacker vacation and I was happily accompanied by a French traveler I met in Malaysia many months ago. We took an excursion to the Cao Dai Great Temple, Tay Ninh Holy See. Cao Dai is a monotheistic religion blending Western and Eastern religious themes and concepts, but also integrating some secular figures as well. How would you like to have Jesus, Buddha, Victor Hugo and Napoleon as saints in your religion? Welcome to the psychedelic religion of Cao Dai. By judging their tastes in interior decoration, psychedelic is the perfect word.

The Cao Dai during worship in the Great Temple.

The guy in the chapeau is Victor Hugo, one of the  prominent modern saints of the religion.

But most of our time was spent relaxing, primarily pool-side, or eating delicious food. The low-key holiday was mixed up with some trips to Ho Chi Minh City, celebrating Christmas and partying it up at the Hard Rock Cafe for New Years.

Between band acts on New Years Eve, there were stage contests for the audience. During the first three contests, I found myself watching the spectacle -- a speed contest to eat an apple hanging from a string, picking things out of a hat, taking a shot of alcohol without using your hands. Somewhere during that third act, I got intoxicated enough to think, "I'm more coordinated than those drunk idiots."

So I volunteered for the fourth. By volunteer I mean I walked up to the front of the stage, declared myself picked, and bowed to the audience. In retrospect, maybe I was a little drunker than I thought at the time. There was a formal selection process which ended up with three Vietnamese/Asian ladies and three foreign guys, one being me. I stood on stage, blinding stage lights shining in my face, waiting for the contest to be declared. I reflected on this and realized that masked by those stage lights are more than a hundred people watching in near silence. It was at this point that my fear of public speaking/performance started to drift to the surface. My pulse increased, little butterflies fluttered in my stomach, and I thought, "What the fuck am I doing up here?"

The contest was declared: A battle-of-the-sexes dance off, 30 seconds per person, points deducted for laughing while the opposing sex dances. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that. Okay, I feel awkward dancing in dark rooms, by myself, so this was especially distressing.

The ladies started first, I was to be second, and alternating through the remaining people. Not laughing was easy. I was terrified. I didn't have much time to think.  There were 10 seconds of blank panic. 10 seconds of wondering what kind of dance move is funny or embarrassing for a guy. And 10 seconds of "Holy shit, I'm gonna do a booty dance on stage." Then it was my turn.

I boogied the two paces closer to my opponent, playing it cool, about faced, bent over, put my hand on the floor and did my best impression of Beyoncé jiggling it. I can't say that I actually did a booty dance, and thankfully, no one I personally know captured any pictures of the act to shame me with. I truly hope no one else did either, but if so, I hope they never surface when I run for President. Ultimately the girls won, why?, I don't know, but I think it was rigged -- my dance was hilarious, good or bad. For second place each volunteer received a gift voucher equivalent to US$10. Not. Worth. It.

The rest of the night and the rest of the vacation was a lot of fun, and I've learned a valuable lesson. If I start the night with an extremely embarrassing dance move on stage, the normal awkwardness of my dancing doesn't feel that bad. A pretty good philosophy to apply to other uncomfortable things in life.