There's some truth to the saying: "There's a first time for everything," but there are certain firsts I would rather avoid. Like today's.

Traffic accidents are fairly obvious when they happen; just like in America, people slow down to gawk and hypothesize the exact actions. The mass of motorbikes stopped along the road as we approached Tam Ky signaled another crash. We'd seen the remnants of one only 20 minutes before (with a policeman measuring the distance between the fallen bicycle and motorbike). Mr Hanh slowed to a crawl as we made our way through the crowd. Stuart noticed the heavily bent wheel first. "Ew, bad crash." Then we both noted the shoe left near the bike, then we saw the blood.

Until today I'd always managed to miss any traces of real injury, but the small puddles of blood left on the road, beside the twisted bike and the abandoned shoe were incontrovertible evidence to the severity of the crash. The horror of knowing that just minutes before someone had hit something (a car? another moto?), fallen and lain on the asphalt, bleeding hit hard.

Stuart and I were both left speechless, horrified by what we'd seen. I assume it was a head-injury, quite possibly (probably?) fatal. We'll never know. Unfortunately the image of that wreck will always be with me and with Stuart, despite his admonition: "Just try not to think about it." I can't seem to stop, the image replays again and again while I am left to wonder: what if the rider had been wearing a helmet? does his/her mother know yet? could it be me next time?
For some (too many) the start of the New Year is full of sadness. We've witnessed the aftermath of four accidents in the last five days. We went the first month without seeing any, then two over a couple of weeks (at the intersection of front of our house), then four more just this week.

Shouting "Chuc mung nam moi!" seems so inappropriate now.