(no subject)
This morning I awoke to find that my eye had more or less exploded in the night. I spent the night being awoken every two hours to make sure I wasn't dead from my concussion, and this morning I went to look in the mirror and saw this:
http://photos-c.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sctm/v104/143/44/7400745/n7400745_32045946_2113.jpg
I promptly made an appointment with the optometrist at SOS, the international hospital, and I'll be going in at 4:30 to see if I'm going to die.
At 9 the owner of my bike, Thuyen, came and got me and we went to the impound lot. The way this works in Vietnam is simple: you go, if there's a disagreement the police hold the bikes until they can determine fault, but if the involved parties have worked things out on their own, the bikes are released after, obviously, the collection of a "small fee."
Yet, mysteriously, the police were unwilling to release our bikes. They kept us there for hours, made us buy them cigarettes, and asked us lots of irrelevant questions. Although the guy I hit and I had already worked things out, the police kept asking questions and told us they were going to hold the bikes for 90 days. This is not normal, something was up. They took us back to the station and had us fill out the same report we had already filled out, at which point the reason for the stalling became clear: Thuyen rents bikes to foreigners, and they wanted not only me, but also her to bribe them. The head of the department outright said that we needed to bribe them if we didn't want problems. Ha ha!!
If it had just been me they wanted a bribe from it would have happened right away and we would have been out in no time. However, they needed to make things difficult for us so that asking Thuyen for a bribe would seem more reasonable.
This is a first for me; after almost two years total spent in Asia, I've never bribed an official. My time has come, though. I'll keep you updated after I go back at 2 to bribe them and after my optometrist appointment.
http://photos-c.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sctm/v104/143/44/7400745/n7400745_32045946_2113.jpg
I promptly made an appointment with the optometrist at SOS, the international hospital, and I'll be going in at 4:30 to see if I'm going to die.
At 9 the owner of my bike, Thuyen, came and got me and we went to the impound lot. The way this works in Vietnam is simple: you go, if there's a disagreement the police hold the bikes until they can determine fault, but if the involved parties have worked things out on their own, the bikes are released after, obviously, the collection of a "small fee."
Yet, mysteriously, the police were unwilling to release our bikes. They kept us there for hours, made us buy them cigarettes, and asked us lots of irrelevant questions. Although the guy I hit and I had already worked things out, the police kept asking questions and told us they were going to hold the bikes for 90 days. This is not normal, something was up. They took us back to the station and had us fill out the same report we had already filled out, at which point the reason for the stalling became clear: Thuyen rents bikes to foreigners, and they wanted not only me, but also her to bribe them. The head of the department outright said that we needed to bribe them if we didn't want problems. Ha ha!!
If it had just been me they wanted a bribe from it would have happened right away and we would have been out in no time. However, they needed to make things difficult for us so that asking Thuyen for a bribe would seem more reasonable.
This is a first for me; after almost two years total spent in Asia, I've never bribed an official. My time has come, though. I'll keep you updated after I go back at 2 to bribe them and after my optometrist appointment.