I must do a little piece on the Xe Om (pronounced: say ohm) or motorbikes in Hanoi. Everywhere I go in Hanoi I am constantly harassed with, "Madam, motorbike?" "Motorbike? Motorbike?" and usually a simple "No", a shake of the head or a flip of the wrist generally gets them to stop asking. The thing is that since I am a foreigner I MUST not have any clue what so ever about where I am going... so every single time I pass a xe om driver (which is at least once every block) I am asked if I want a ride. These guys work like taxi drivers, so they're not just some random people asking me if I want a ride.
Since my last post about my first experience on the xe om with Dung, I have needed to ride one of these at least once a day to get to work. On Monday Steve came over to introduce me to my own private driver who I can use to take to Language Link. On Tuesday evening I called Thien, my driver, to ask if he could come pick me up at the school. I couldn't quite understand anything he was saying except, "Sorry, sorry, sorry", and then he hung up. I went back into the school to ask one of the teachers what I should do because my driver seemed to be MIA. He came downstairs with me and asked his own private driver to find someone. Usually there are plenty of xe om drivers around the school because they know the foreigners might need one eventually, but for some reason there weren't any to be found. The other driver found another one about a block away and brought him over to me. There was the distinct smell alcohol on his breath. I don't know why I didn't just go look for one myself. I guess I figured it was late and I didn't want to go out searching for another guy...so I hopped on and off we went. Because there weren't so many people out on the road this guy took the liberty to drive as fast as he could. I was really afraid he was going to crash into another bike, a pedestrian or a car. As soon as I got my bearings about where we were I asked him to stop, I paid the man, and I trudged back to my hotel kinda pissed.
I have learned to be a little more discerning when it comes to picking a driver. If I don't get a good vibe from him then I move onto the next.
It is common to see 3, 4, even 5 people riding on a motorbike. It's quite the scene. I always thought...oh ha ha ha I will never do that. Well, I never thought I'd be riding on the back of a motorbike either. So much for "nevers". Last night I went out to dinner with some of the teachers from the school. Amalia, one of the teachers who I really like, and I were heading in the same direction afterwards, so she was like, "Oh, we'll just share a xe om". Uhhh, ok. On the one motorbike it was the xe om driver, me, and then Amalia. We're both little people so we fit quite well, but it was very silly! We just chatted the whole 15 minute ride from one part of Hanoi to the other as if we were sitting next to each other in a car. Dung later informed me that it's actually illegal to have more than two adults on a xe om and if we were caught by the police then we would have to pay a ticket. I think this weekend I'm going to buy myself a helmet. The xe om drivers always carry an extra for the passenger, but I don't like wearing it because so many other people have also worn it.
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