“Vietnamese people are very friendly” 🛵

We had a fun little “adventure” the other evening. We were out on the motorbike, pretty far from our hotel, and must have ran over a nail or something and got a flat tire. Honestly, we expected something like this to happen at some point 🤷🏼‍♀️ The roads can be a bit ratchety, especially when you get off the beaten path. 

We googled services stations, but most were closed or too far away. We saw a group of 3 Grab Drivers, just waiting to be called out on jobs. We asked them where we could take the bike to get it fixed, and they offered to call someone to come repair the tire on the spot. We communicated entirely through Google Translate because not one of them knew any English. It’s fairly common for Vietnamese people who work in hospitality (hotels, restaurants) near tourist areas to know English, but once you get away from those areas English is more rare. So anyways, we made friends with these men and had a good long conversation while waiting.  We talked about differences between Vietnam and Canada, and their families. Once the repairman arrived, the Grab Driver named Minh told me “ I have turned off my Grab app and will stay with you to make sure you don’t get frauded”. Minh made sure the repairman plugged/patched the tire properly and charged us the agreed upon price of 70,000 VND (which is less than $4 CAD lol). Cheapest mechanic bill we’ve ever had! 😂

We tried a few times to give Minh some money (or buy him a drink/meal) in return for his help. He refused repeatedly saying “Vietnamese people are very friendly”

We got a selfie with Minh and his coworker, he gave us a big hug, and went on our way! The whole experience was so heartwarming and wholesome. It’s sometimes hard inserting yourself into another culture but experiences like this remind me there are good kind people all over the world 🙂