Until this morning, I can recall only one other time in my life when I realized the probability that I could be dead within minutes was something close to fifty-fifty.  I was on a regional jet from Jackson, Mississippi to Dallas, Texas when the nineteen-seat plane suddenly and unexpectedly flew into a violent thunderstorm.  Unlike this morning, the recognition of danger was immediate, chaotic, and blessedly, short lived.  

Melissa and I met our guide and driver this morning for a two-hour ride to Ha Long Bay and a much anticipated two-day cruise on a 25-person boat.  We had the same driver we had used for the past two days.  From the moment we met him at the airport, I had an uneasy feeling about him.  I was not afraid, just unsettled.  I let it go. Not everyone on this trip could be or should be as gracious, lovely and kind as our previous drivers and guides. Maybe he had a bad day.

Our first full day in Hanoi, he drove us short distances through the city, letting us out to walk and sightsee with our guide.  The narrow roads are clogged with 6.5 million motorbikes all jockeying for position like swimmers at the start of the Ironman.  I sensed nothing unusual about his driving.  Everyone dodged and weaved through these narrow streets without traffic lights, coming within inches of one another.  Crossing the street is like finding yourself inside that old computer game called “Frogger.”  Once you start across the street, you do not stop.  You speed up or slow down to avoid being clipped or squashed.  You do not, however, get extra lives.

On our last day, we checked out of our hotel, wonderfully called the “La Siesta Trendy.”  Four beautifully dressed, young employees stood beside our car and waved until we meshed with the traffic.  It was not until we reached the expressway that I realized, not as suddenly, but no less forcefully, that the odds of Melissa, our guide and me dying or being seriously injured within the next few moments had become dangerously high.  Our driver had become extremely erratic, weaving across four empty lanes of the highway. One second we were less than two inches from the concrete barrier dividing the highway.  The next second we were on the shoulder. 

I touched our guide on the arm and asked if our driver was okay.  She mouthed silently, “I am worried.”  A moment later, at 140 kilometers per hour our driver tried to split the distance between a van and car missing the van by a whisker.  Melissa cried out and we both told the guide to tell the driver to pull over.  He protested for another harrowing 100 meters before stopping on the shoulder with part of the car still on the highway.  Our guide, Melissa and I leaped out of the car and I dashed to the rear to open the hatch before he could drive away.  We stacked ourselves and our luggage against the guardrail as our guide yelled in Vietnamese at the driver who, from body language, tried to pretend that he knew exactly what he was doing.  We managed to flag down another van that took us to a rest stop, and then secured a different van to take us to our boat.  

Buddhists believe in Karma. Christians believe in miracles and divine intervention.  Humanists believe, if that is the right word, in luck.  I believe there are moments in my life when confronted with a metaphorical fork in the road, I have managed to choose the option that led to safety. Was it luck, good Karma or my mother’s endless prayers for my safety?  Was it a loving God, a benign Zeus who reached down from on high and planted us safely in another van?  I do not have the answers to those questions.  I find myself on this trip surrounded by beliefs and people who see the world from a different angle than I.  Still, I find the differences illusory, a human-made distinction without substance, like the semantics of insisting on one name for God.  We are safe.  We are alive. We are grateful.  The rest, every single bit of it, is irrelevant. Amen.  Namaste.  Thank you.