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Highway robbery

Highway robbery

Thursday, August 09, 2012, 15:21 GMT+7

Stopped at one of the many traffic lights on Hai Ba Trung Street, I rubbed my eyes and yawned, looking around at the crowd obscured by masks and sunglasses and helmets. The sun was especially hot on my bare skin. Women sat, waiting impatiently, fiddling with purses hung on motorbikes or tucked between their knees. Men rolled up their shirtsleeves on account of the heat. Nothing about the situation was extraordinary: traffic surged across the intersection as usual, lumbering trucks, bikes piled high with boxes, businesspeople on lunch break, and mothers doing their shopping. A familiar thickness hung in the air, that smoky combination of heat and exhaust fumes and dust, weighing heavily on my eyelids.

When I say that nothing about the situation was extraordinary: this was as normal a day in Ho Chi Minh City as any. If, in fact, there was something different, it likely had to do with me. For some reason, I had woken up with a headache. The elevator in my building refused to stop at my floor. The parking attendant who'd watched over my bike not ten minutes earlier felt his text messages were more important than returning my vehicle. Now, here I was, en route to work, running late and stopped at every traffic light on the way. It was one of those days where you've only just woken up, and already you want to try again tomorrow.

The light turned green and nobody moved. I punched my horn. For the entirety of Hai Ba Trung, I ranted to no one in particular about wrong-way drivers and that specific group of individuals who race down Phan Dinh Phung at breakneck speed, only to slow down and check out a storefront on the side of the road, inching along while texting, talking on the phone, chatting with a friend on another motorbike, or just generally not paying attention. By the time I reached work, I was glad to cut the engine and put away my keys.

Removing my helmet, I took a deep breath. My shoes click-clacked on the steps up to the lobby. I set my backpack down on the benches outside, attempting to search for my mobile phone. Then, impulsively, I felt for the bottom compartment of my backpack and found it empty. The space that had been reserved for my wallet was half-open, my keys dangling from the zipper. At once, my stomach dropped: my money was gone, along with my ATM card and a sizable collection of business cards. Hands on my head, I raced back to my bike, retracing the steps I had taken up to the lobby, knowing in my gut that it was not to be found. The questions began: Had I zipped up my bag before getting on my motorbike? Had I felt anything when I was driving to work? Could someone have opened the compartment of my backpack without my knowledge? I continued to rifle through the bag, clinging desperately to the hope that I had put my wallet somewhere else, just this once, and nothing was really missing and my day hadn't just been thrown out of order.

Since moving to HCMC, I have been in infinitely worse situations – take, for example, the night someone broke into my house and robbed me as I slept in my bed, not two feet away. Unfortunate as it may be, living in Vietnam as a foreigner paints a target on your back. It's one of the trade-offs we expats must accept living in a country where, in the grand scheme of things, the positives far outweigh the negatives. Ultimately, losing a wallet is an inconvenience and a bit of money, nothing more. But in that moment when you first realize you've been had, all you feel is foolish. I should have checked my backpack earlier, I told myself. I should have felt someone opening my bag; there must have been something I could have done to stop this from happening. And when it was all over, the only thing I had to look forward to was the additional hour or more of bureaucracy required to replace my missing bank card.

Already late, accepting the fate of my stolen wallet, I went upstairs to work, my mind still racing with possibilities. I hadn't even noticed. Part of me continued to wish that time could be reversed and I could go back and do that trip to work all over again. As I sat upstairs, replaying what little I could of the story to a Vietnamese friend, his initial reaction was disappointment. “I'm sorry,” he said, apologizing profusely for my bad luck, which certainly wasn't his fault. He suggested contacting the police. Reflecting on it now, I can see it was odd that that never occurred to me; in a Western country, it would have been the first thing I did. In Vietnam, however, it is common belief among many expats that the police are unlikely to be of much help. Thinking back to the night I was robbed in my own home – not one of my finer Vietnam memories – I recall the policeman arriving at the house, looking over the clutter the robbers had left behind, picking up an empty plastic bag, which he used as a glove, and 'inspecting' the thieves' point of entry for clues. It was little more than a performance and, of course, we never saw our things again.

That being said, I do not blame the police for my missing money. In the case of my wallet being stolen, there is probably little they could do to bring it back. One thing I love about this city is the ability to become anonymous – even as a ginger-haired, blue-eyed foreigner, there are still neighborhoods I can visit where I am a stranger and there is no chance of running into anyone I know. Unfortunately, this also means that wherever my wallet is now, it has disappeared into the maze of streets and alleys that is Saigon, and is unlikely to return to its rightful owner.

While I would certainly not want to repeat the experience of a stolen wallet, I can accept what happened. As an expat, at least, I was slightly more aware of this as a possibility; not aware enough, it appears, to be exempt from theft, but a little wiser to the dark side of Saigon than a tourist might be. There are strides to be made by local authorities in protecting tourists and foreign visitors from these types of situations, but another part of the solution, I believe, is also rethinking the notion that foreigners are fair game for robbery. My guess is that this won't happen any time soon, so until then, I'll continue to keep an eye on my things, and store my wallet in a safer place.

Dana Filek-Gibson

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