Laundry Run

You have to clean your clothes. You don't have a washing machine. So it's time to pick up clothes from the laundry. Now the clothes come out nice and pressed, and smelling of soap. But transportation - that's a tricky procedure when you're driving a motorbike. Oh, you could take a taxi and pay an extra 20,000 VNĐ...

Now it helps if you've got someone with you to hold the clothes. But when you're got a big load, the only thing you can do is fold it between your legs, hug them with your knees, and at the same time manipulate the gears and the brake pads. It can be done. But if you have to come to a complete stop, you drop one of your feet to the ground. The pressure is off the bag - and on you. Because you don't want the bag to fall on the dirty road and spill all your clean laundry everywhere...

Fortunately, stops are fairly rare on the way home. There are points where you slow down, but there's enough gyroscopic stability from the wheels to keep you going forward. The only place where stopping becomes really necessary is when it's time to cross a little bridge across a canal. It's about two metres and a bit wide - enough for two single crowded files of motorcycles to pass each other in opposite directions. You follow the motorbike before you, and try to overtake any glacially-moving bicycles or trolleys you encounter. The base is basically wooden slats with steel for structural support. They've become disjointed and seperated with age - giving the trip a bumpy ride. And the sides - just a metal grid. The spaces aren't wide enough for my motorbike to go though, but they would allow my laundry to pass with ease. This is not what I want to happen. Because my clean laundry would then fall into a noxious creek of sewerage, excrement and polluted water that they call here a canal. And I concentrate on keeping that laundry between my legs.

Fortunately, the big fall hasn't happened yet.