Pushing someone’s motorbike with your foot while riding your own is a very common activity in Vietnam. Although it’s scary when you wobble toward and then away from each other, when you turn that corner in unison, it feels like you’ve achieved some kind of amazing circus talent!

Generally, you know each other, but I’ve also seen folks stop to give others a helping hand when they’ve run out of gas or something mechanical has gone wrong. Strange that in a country that has thousands of gas stations and a million households selling petrol by the roadside, so many people forget to fill the bike before whizzing to the market!

Over my eight (soon to be nine) years in Vietnam, I’m still grateful for those little acts of kindness the Vietnamese do, for their own people as well as us foreigners. I can’t remember how many times a local has stopped to pick me up off the ground after some evil taxi Nazi or a kamikaze shuttle bus driver has run me off the road.

My best friend in Vietnam, Hong Le, a brilliant, funny and glamorous housewife, along with her husband, Kien, have dragged me out of more bad spots than I can remember. I remember how she reacted with horror when the local hospital charged me 600,000 dong for headache pills and bandages when I crushed my foot under my motorbike four years ago.

Another time they took me to Hoan My Hospital in Da Nang in their own car when I became debilitatingly ill. Hong has also taken it upon herself to help me find teaching work sometimes and like all good friends, she sometimes had to ‘tell me off’ when I was doing the wrong thing or about to do something stupid.

I remember a young fellow in Da Nang who spent an entire afternoon guiding me around the city, with no English, on his motorbike, as I tried to find bookshops, tool shops and furniture places. It was a cold day and this kid didn’t accept any money, and wouldn’t let me buy him a hot coffee – he just smiled and zoomed off into the traffic.

One cold, wet night I blew a tire near Marble Mountain, a local tourist spot half way between Da Nang and Hoi An. It was very late and the roads were deserted except for the lights of the locked up marble showrooms. One security guy – albeit with no uniform or attitude about him – waved me under the wide roof of the showroom driveway. Inside five minutes he’d got a friend to drop by and fix my wheel with his personal repair kit – again no money was accepted.

There have also been many times my students or local neighbors have ‘pitched in’ to help too. During Typhoons Ketsana and Haiyan, my neighbors banged on my doors after midnight to check that I was OK. The wind at that time was so strong that I couldn’t open my door despite putting my whole weight on it! We all worked together afterward clearing the street, me in my expensive shoes and my neighbors in soaked old sandals!

I often remember these kind acts when I stop to help the ladies on their old bikes, collecting rubbish and cardboard when their delicately balanced piles of paper and plastic bottles tumble over when the traffic is rough or they lose their balance trying to get moving again. Frequently I give them some rubber straps I keep in my bike storage and stand holding the pile of cardboard upright as she wraps the stuff in seven dimensions. I’ve met dozens of university students who do charity drives or raise money for local people too.  It’s not a bad way to socialize and help others out at the same time.

We’re lucky as foreigners to meet these people. I can’t tell you anymore how charitable or kind people are back in my home country of Australia, if I was to judge from the media there. In our Western world, people are separated by the lifestyles they lead and the inherent fear of strangers. The willingness to stop and help seems lost sometimes or backfires on the helper.

I hope that you have some good Vietnamese memories like I do. It’s nice to know that even though I live amongst strangers, I can depend on people not acting like strangers when the need is there.