Going to school often takes time and effort in many disadvantaged parts of Vietnam. In a small village in the central region, schooling requires patience as students have to hitchhike every day.

Bai Xep is a coastal village in Quy Nhon City, the provincial capital of the central province of Binh Dinh, where many children manage to get free rides across Quy Hoa Pass to a middle school, twelve kilometers away, on a daily basis.

Not many families in Bai Xep can afford a motorbike to take their kids, who have finished elementary school, to Ghenh Rang Middle School at the foot of the pass so the little students can do nothing but improvise.

Each year, around fifty Bai Xep students hitch a ride from passers-by to Ghenh Rang. They often wait two hours before school time, which starts at 7:00 in the morning and 1:00 in the afternoon, for kind-hearted bikers who would give them a lift to school.

Some riders would be willing to take three kids at the same time to cross the pass, but many would not bother to respond to the children’s call for help.

So it is a common thing that many kids have to skip a class when indifferent motorists refuse to give them a ride.

They are also used to ‘being late’ while going to school in this manner: they quite often arrive at the school when class has already begun, and come home a few hours after more fortunate peers have been picked up by their families.

Many of the children have thus quit school because of such inconveniences, with some stopping schooling as early as grade six.

Middle school starts at grade six and finishes at grade nine in the Southeast Asian nation.