Motorbike repair shop, at an alley near you!

During the recent storm 3 nights ago, Mike's motorbike died when he tried to ride it through a flooded alleyway. He had underestimated the depth of the flood. The alleyway we usually take to enter our neighbourhood gradually slopes down over a long distance, so it became the perfect trap pocket of water during the storm. It is common to ride through layers of rainwater during the rainy season in Vietnam, as long as the water level is not higher than the opening of your exhaust pipe. But when Mike's motorbike engine snuffed out, he found himself manually pushing his bike forward in rainwater that reached up to his mid-thighs.

The following few days were met with failed attempts of restarting his bike. The bike had become too inundated with water. We walked his bike down our alleyway to a local motorbike repair shop.

There, a technician aptly got to work. He started to dismantle the motorbike in what he made seem like obvious breezy diagnostic mechanical steps. The diagnostic grew progressively severe as he discovered parts that weren't working and kept unearthing cabins or compartments that were completely flooded with water. By the end of his deconstruction (both diagnostically and physically), the bike's insides lay open on the ground. At one part when he removed a part of the engine, water came gushing out like a mini-tsunami. We all laughed with incredulity at how much water the poor bike had ingested.

The whole repair took about an hour in total. The main technician was extremely competent and really knew his mechanics. He worked away relentlessly, including driving away somewhere else quickly to go pick up a part. Other young lads helped take care of the peripheral work. There were about 5 of them in total that were running the shop, each of them evidently really young.

As I tried to conversate with them, I found out that they were all brothers, except for the main technician guy. The brothers lived at the house attached right behind the garage. The youngest looked about 14 years old. The one I spoke to told me that they were 6 brothers in total, although I don't know how much of that was true as he was very sparing with his conversing and when I expressed revel at how many brothers there were and asked him if that was really so, he responded "all brothers, but different grandfathers," and then later said he was just joking, at my prompting. And I had to dig it out from the main technician myself that he was not really their brother, as I had initially presumed because he looked so different from them. So I do not know where the extent of his joke was and how many brothers there really were.

The main technician is 20 years old. I asked him where he learned his skills and he said he studied in a Yamaha motorbike school. He seems to be the technical powerhouse of the garage, and I'm presuming the brothers have all learned the tricks of the trade on their own and through him. Mike and I were anguished at a few occasions where a brother smoked a cigarette uncomfortably close to a puddle of oil and the oil-basked parts which the technician was cleaning one by one. He had taken out the gasoline from the bike's tank and washed the parts with it. I asked the brother if it was not dangerous to smoke so close, and he said it was fine. I nodded and accepted his cool reply as a somewhat reassurance, and I took a (big) step back. I mean, they must know what they're doing right? These are kids that grew up with this trade.

The cost of the repair was 110,000 VND (about $5.50) and the oil change was another 85,000 VND (about $4.25). Mike's bike now not only is running, but it is running much better than before, as his bike was problematic to begin with.