Jinxed!

On a four day, 500km mini motorcycle ride across the picturesque Ha Giang region of northern Vietnam, I encountered many beautiful vistas and many kinds of road conditions.

Some roads were well paved, had clearly marked lanes, medians and road markings following international standards like the one pictured above near Lung Ca, next to China border.

Some roads were made of tar and were in great condition.

Many roads also had guardrails on one or both sides. Sometimes the mountains on the side of the road had rock slides and half the road was blocked. It seemed liked some blocked roads were not repaired for a while given that trees had started growing on the fallen rock.

Some roads hugged the mountains and snaked around for miles and miles. The constant wet weather made these roads slippery.

Some roads were completely gravel roads but relatively flat and easy to drive on.

Some roads had pebbles in and around them and paddy fields next to them.

Some roads were partly gravel, partly big uneven rocks and party dirt.

There were big trucks sharing the same narrow roads making it quite risky.

The roads suddenly curved uphill or downhill. Sometimes there was construction work going on for miles and miles.

Some roads had fresh rock slides.

Some roads were spectacular such as the one below named the Tham Ma pass, a UNESCO world heritage site.

These roads were all fine enough to ride and drive. However, at least 200km of the 500km was connected by roads that were in extremely bad condition. There were potholes, puddles, water crossings, sharp rocks, broken roads exposing uneven rocks, large water logged areas that looked very deep, and some very slick and muddy paths.

Having driven three days on these roads, I was getting over confident and thought to myself that it was amazing I had not fallen or slipped.

Just minutes after thinking this, I came across a road which was completely muddy and had deep truck wheel ruts.

It seems like I was crossing the middle part between the deep truck wheel indentations when I fell. My knee was pressed between the gravely dirt and the side of the motorbike. I had jinxed myself!

It was a slow speed fall. However, the area was rocky and a sharp fragment of rock pierced under my knee and lodged itself deep inside. After the deep pain subsided, I slowly got up and removed the rock. It had broken inside the flesh and only half of it came out. Then I tried hard to pull out the second half and eventually it came out too.

It exposed a big hole right below the kneecap. As I moved my leg up and down, the hole kept spurting blood and air bubbles, making slurping noises. It was disconcerting.

After a while, I righted the bike, started riding it, went through all the muck and twenty kilometers later came to a small town. On Google Maps, I located the hospital and it had a doctor present. She cleaned the area with alcohol and iodine, injected at the site with something that could be an antibiotic or a painkiller and used her tweezers to check if there was any debris still inside the knee cavity.

Then she bandaged the wound, gave me prescription for antibiotics and paracetamol pain killer. The bill for all of this was a mere $2.

Now I feel lucky that over the many road conditions along the long, scenic route, I was able to get by with a small injury, as it could have been way worse.