This is Nowhere

I am perched on a ledge on the fourth floor, watching the coconut trees sway in the breeze and marveling at how the ocean fades into clouds.  I arrived on Koh Tao (Turtle Island), Thailand, yesterday at 2:30 in the PM.  I left Vietnam with 30 minutes to spare on my Visa. What a long trip for such a short distance! I clocked three hours at the Hanoi airport, having been warned that traffic would be a mess (it wasn’t), and seven hours at the Bangkok airport.  Here I had my first Starbucks peppermint mocha in over 3 months.  It was disappointing, not because it didn’t taste like itself, but because I guess I’m over it.  


The boat ride from the coast to Koh Samui was uneventful, and I slept.  The high speed catamaran ferry ride to Koh Tao might have been one of the worst things that ever happened to me.  I was set up near the bow because I wanted to keep an eye on my backpack, or more importantly, my laptop within.  With about 200 people on board, I would say twenty percent of them threw up.  It was a circus with the attendants running around with plastic bags: “Pass this that way QUICK!”  I did okay until the last third of the trip.  My eyes made their way from my designated set focal points; pink stripe, green bag, and America’s Best Dance Crew on TV.  I took deep breaths.  I burped.  I made a plan to snatch my neighbor’s plastic bag.  Over and over, my mantra, ‘you’re a fisherman’s daughter, you’re a fisherman’s daughter, you’re a fisherman’s daughter, don’t you dare,’ rang in my head.  As the boat slammed down into the waves, I caught sight of mountainous green coastline rolling into the ocean, and then feared I’d imagined it.  And then I was here.  


I found Kaz smoking a cigarette outside his hotel, met his little brother Jantzen, and have since collected some Danes and a bloke from East London who sounds the same as the green street hooligans.  A nice crew of people.  As I sat having my coffee this morning, I imagined that all I need in this world is an Astrolite adjusting table, some index cards that say, “Chiropractor $10 xxx-xxx-xxxx I’ll come to you,” and an island paradise setting.

TEAM

Jason has arrived!  Tu-Tu and I took a car to the airport to pick him up last week.  Tu-Tu’s name is actually just Tu, but I drew a picture on the board of a ballerina with a tutu the first day, and pointed at him.  It suits him.  The big question of the day at work that morning had been whether or not the clinic girls were going to find Jason attractive.  The boss declared, “Jason will be competition for Tu.”  “Really?” I thought.  Tu is about 5’2”, he blinks a lot and wears glasses, and he is very very timid.  “Because Tu can speak Vietnamese and Jason can’t!” she cried.  Hmmm.  Yessssss, exactly.  No comment.

So we all pile into the taxi and get going, and Tu whips around from the front seat and says, “Jason!  You will be my rival!”   The funniest part about it is that Jason didn’t even hear him.  HA!

Having someone around to go through this experience with me has made all the difference in slugging through these slow first days.  We run out to the street for snacks, such as roadside shish-kebobs, bang mi samiches, or danishes and coffee.  We see a few patients.  Then maybe we go back to the massage section and have a couple of people work out the knots for 20 minutes.  Sometimes we can’t believe how much of a dream job this is.  But there is definitely a down side:

The concrete God’s honest truth that people hold here is that health comes in the form of a pill.  I can tell someone that it’s going to take at least 6-10 adjustments before they start to ‘feel’ results.  It never fails that on about the third visit for the tough cases, my translator looks at me with pained eyes and says, “Still no change.”  Educate all you want to, but it’s like talking to a brick wall.  They will nod at everything you say, but we’ve heard rumors that go a little like this:  “I went to that chiropractic clinic, and it’s no good.”  “Why?”  “They don’t even give you any pills.”

What does this lead to?  The boss does not want to lose prestige in the community, so we have to work with Vietnamese patient psychology.  We’ve got glucosamine and fish oil pills, so I feel okay about recommending that.  But now it’s looking like the ‘pain pills’ pharmacy is about to get stocked up.  These people do not care about innate intelligence and living at 100%.  They just want to get out of pain.  So here is what I’m dealing with:  

“Big problem.  Many patients dropped out of care.  We must make them believe.  They have no trust.”

“OK, then we need to educate them more.”

(We made a video with subtitles because it was taking too long to explain on an individual basis.)

“They are too lazy to read subtitles on the video, I think you better tell them.”

“OK, I will take the time to explain chiropractic to them then.”

“Vietnamese don’t like to be ‘told’ anything.  It makes them feel like you think they are stupid.”  

“So we need to educate them so that they will trust us, but they won’t absorb the video and I can’t tell them anything because it makes them feel like I’m talking down to them?”

“Yes.”

Luckily for me, the highest ranking official that we’ve seen has become quite taken with me.  On his first visit, he made it clear to my translator that he would much rather see a man.  He did not look at me when I talked to him, and just stared at the floor.  He said his problems were his discs at C3, C4, and C5, and I had better not try to tell him otherwise.  He demanded a discount, and said if his xray didn’t look any different in two weeks, he wanted his money back.  By the time I palpated his spine, I already could not stand this man.  

On the next visit, he came through the doors a different man.  He smiled brightly, and told me if I really got him better, he would buy me some Bun Cha (a noodle and beef dish).  He said he slept through the night without having to take a sleeping pill, and his appetite doubled.  He declared that he would come every day.  By the fifth visit, he offered me a floor of his house to live for free.  He now brings a new patient in every few days.

So these are just the tidbits about the early days at the clinic.  I only have one good translator, and she works the morning shift.  Tutu translates in the afternoon.  I don’t know how he came up with the word ‘fatigue,’ but he now uses it to tell me when patients feel tired in their neck, and it rhymes with spaghetti:  “She tell me she feel faggedy in hers nesk.”  Jason and I hope that he never figures out the proper pronunciation.

Sick Day

I took my first sick day today.  I’m not sure that I actually have “quote-on-quote” sick days, but I woke up this morning and decided it wasn’t going to happen.  The coughing at night is getting ridiculous.  Kaz left for a two day trip to Halong Bay this morning, so I figured it was a good time to visit the International Medical Clinic and clean the house.  First of all, I haven’t been adjusted in about 75 days, and that alone can run down a body.  I usually like to be adjusted at least once a week.  I am highly anticipating my adjustment next week when the dudes get here.  The thing about Winter in Vietnam is that it’s really not that cold; but there’s something very cold about it.  It doesn’t feel much different than September or October in Seattle.  So maybe I dress tougher than I can handle, especially when jumping on a motorcycle with wet hair at 8:45 am every day.  I bring my own helmet, which has a windshield visor, and this I love.  There is nothing like trying to blink something out of your eye for the last three miles of a motorcycle trip.  But I see that a lot of people are wearing their face masks.  This is something you never see in America, unless you happen to pass my mom mowing her yard on her John Deer.   The masks come in all sorts of prints and patterns, and now that I think about it, so do the helmets.  The ride to work is a moto fashion show.  I guess I just don’t really believe that they keep out the pollutants.  In rush hour, there is enough exhaust in the air to outdo garage suicide.   So maybe I’ll start wearing one. 

At the clinic they give me an intake form and I head to the only open seat.  The lady next to me immediately stops her conversation and faces me, looking from me to my form.  I pull the form in real close to my body, which over emphasizes my “upside down left hander” writing style.  She slowly leans back until she is even with me and cranes her eyes to see what I’m writing.  I set my pen down and I sarcastically turn my head to look at her.  She stares at me.  I stare at her.  Chicken.  I win.  She turns back to her friends, and I know what she is saying.  Left handers are like mutant life forms here.  I am used to every single patient exclaiming to my translator that I am writing with my left hand (in Vietnamese).  It’s really funny, because 80% of my “white” friends here are left handed.  My conclusion?  A.  Left handers are more adventurous.  B.  Vietnamese are not allowed to grip the pen with the left hand from an early age.  But who knows.

The doctor tells me that my throat is inflamed and he wants to test for strep and influenza.  The nurse comes at me with two very long q-tips, and apologizes in advance.  First she sticks it down my throat and swishes it around until I am gagging and tears are starting to pour out of my eyes.  Then she says she’s REALLY sorry, and basically sticks this q-tip up my nose until I’m sure it’s touching my brain.  As she’s telling me to relax, I’m struggling out of her reach like a squirming two year old.  I’m even squealing, “Nooooooo!”  That has got to be the most traumatic thing that’s ever happened to me.  Blood and guts stuff makes me really queazy.  So when she says, “Don’t blow your nose too hard, you might blow blood,” something happens to me.  I know this feeling; like I’m about to faint.  She tells me to go wait in the waiting room, and I barely make it to a chair.  I slump over the side of it, and I can feel my whole body starting to get really hot.  I’m struggling with my jacket with my head lolled to one side.  Breathe breathe breathe.  Things start to return to normal.  The doctor comes back.  The tests are negative.  I have a cold.  And it only cost me a hundred and fifty U.S. bucks.

I probably cleaned my apartment for a solid five hours today.  It gets dusty fast!  I rearranged all my furniture (what little I have), and did loads of laundry.  I hooked myself up with a heater to dry the things I need to use immediately.  Otherwise they could hang out for days and never make any progress to dryness.  I started to weigh the pros and cons of going out to eat at around 4:30 pm.  Pros: It’s fast, cheap, and delicious.  Cons: It’s pretty cold outside, and if I can’t find the eat spot five blocks away that my friends are always raving about, I will have to continue on to my favorite spot about a mile away.  After looking sheepishly into my tiny fridge, I put on a hoodie and a jacket and set off.  Instead of walking all the way around the very large block to the next main road, I decided to go through the heart of it.  There are narrow dark alleys with tall homes and shops which wind haphazardly into nooks, crannies, dips, and turns.  I run through here quite often on my way to see friends in the neighborhood, but it struck me tonight how freaked out I would have been to take this walk upon arriving in Hanoi.  I literally chuckled to myself as I came around a corner and saw a man standing next to his motorcycle wearing black gloves with his mask covering his face and his black hat pulled down to his eyes.  Tell me that wouldn’t freak you out in the states!  But again, masks are commonplace.   So I jauntily continued on and successfully found the Bun Cha place.  They serve me Bun Cha at work about once a week on my revolving street food menu.  The chopsticks don't taper and are not even the same length.  I expertly squeeze some lime juice on them and wipe them off with a napkin.  Here is what the view from my seat looked like:

Here’s the dish at work:

When I got home I watched one episode of Summer Heights High that I’ve been downloading today on iTunes.  I haven’t turned on the TV but once in my apartment, but I have spent a small fortune on iTunes.  Home shows keep me sane and remind me of the people I loved watching them with.

Lastly, in the events of the day, I had quite a few bill collectors come to the door.  They can tell if you’re home from how the lock hangs.  Here are my bills:

One huge water jug (like the old cascade clear deliveries): $1.75

Water bill (showers and laundry): Also $1.75

Internet and Cable Bill: $4.00

Electricity: $3.00

Can’t really complain about that!