The Way Home

Jason and I have just walked out the gates after a trying day.  I peer down to the end of our one way street and bounce on my toes.

“C’mon c’mon c’com,” I mutter.  Almost immediately, three taxis round the corner.  Jason and I both stretch a hand out into the air.  The first once flashes his brights and continues.  The second one shakes his head at us and keeps driving.  

“Why not?!” I yell at his open window.  

“Maybe you should hide behind a post or something,” I say to Jason.  “Sometimes they just don’t want to pick up white people.”

He laughs, and continues to hang his arm out into the air.  

“What are you doing?  There are no taxis coming.  Who are you even trying to hail right now?”

He fist pumps a few times and drops his arm.

“I’m sorry,” I say.  “I’m cranky right now.  I just want to get home and have a beer.”

“Oh there’s one,” he says in that special voice one uses only to talk to dogs or babies.  I talk to inanimate objects all the time in this voice in front of him, so I guess it’s rubbing off.

“But it’s a sedan!” I complain.  There are four ways to get taxied in Hanoi: motorbike, hatchback, sedan, or van, and they are priced from lowest to highest in that order.  A hatchback starts at about forty cents.  A sedan starts at sixty cents.  “What the hell, lets get it!”  

I feel a flutter in my chest the moment the car starts to veer toward the curb.  Success!  He doesn’t quite pull up to the curb, so the endless stream of motorbikes behind him continue to flow around him in both directions.  A family on a bike goes past, and I dart into the backseat.  Horns honk to let us know they’re there.  Jason is right behind me.  I tell the driver my home address in Vietnamese.  We proceed into the slow going traffic.  

I can feel the drivers eyes on me in the rearview mirror.  I get stared at a lot over here, so I fix my gaze on the mirror and stare right back.

“Where you come from?” he asks.

“Where do you think?” I say.

“I think you come from France,” he replies.

“Canada,” I say.  Sometimes I like to lie.

“Oh Canada number one,” he says as he smiles and nods.  “I think you come from France because many French people in Hanoi are speaking good Vietnamese.”

“Oh, thank you very much,” I reply.  Out of the corner of my peripheral vision, I see movement.  I flip around in my seat.  In the space behind the backseat, there is an entire scene of horses set to pasture.  The horses bob with the movement of the car, just the same as bobble head dolls.  This is fantastic.  I immediately dig into my purse for my iPhone and start snapping pictures.  My battery is in the red, and I am grateful to have it’s use.

“That is totally crazy,” Jason says.

“Wiiiiild Horses,” I start singing.

We come around a corner, and traffic is at a standstill.  Ten minutes go by, and we have crept about a block.

“You want to go home, I think maybe faster you walk,” the taxi driver says.

“Uuuugh,” I whine.  If I wanted to walk home from work I would have walked home from work.  It’s a twenty minute jaunt through the thick exhaust fumes of five o’clock traffic.

“He’s probably right,” Jason says.  “We can walk home faster than traffic.”

I take a second to enjoy a few last moments of not moving my body.  I have my laptop in my backpack, as well as a bagful of vegetables my dear translator brought for me from her countryside home.  We pay the man.  I take a deep breath and open my door.

In the next moment I hear what seems like an explosion.  I literally don’t know what just happened.  In the seconds it takes for reality to set in, I can only ponder the sound of metal on metal, but I have no understanding of why or where.  Then my taxi driver is screaming at a woman laying on the sidewalk with her motorbike on top of her.

“Oh shit.”  I don’t know if I say it or I think it, but I have just clothes-lined a woman with the right rear door of the horse taxi.  She is not happy.  She is screaming at the taxi man.  At this point, I take a moment.  I take a moment longer than I should, because I don’t really know what to do.  The human thing to do is to jump out and make sure she is all right.  But they are already screaming at each other.  I’ve just contributed to an accident in Vietnam.  I have no idea as to the protocols.  I don’t know if I am going to get my ass beat down if I get out of this car.  But I get out of the car.  It might be twenty seconds past appropriate, but we are out, and the taxi speeds off as well as anyone can speed off in bumper to bumper traffic.  The horses in the back window bob, “goodbye.”

Here’s the thing: the taxi man let me out two feet from the curb.  We had been sitting at a standstill for at least four minutes.  Never once had a bike passed us on the right.  I would have noticed it and therefore been more aware.  But he literally let us out curbside.  The ability for the Vietnamese to fit through tiny spaces in traffic borders on ninja skills.

Jason picks up the bike.  I pull the woman to her feet.  “I’m very sorry,” I say to her in Vietnamese.  “Do you feel pain?”  How lucky for me that I am able to use the most common phrase I hear all day at work.  She shakes her head.  I can see that she understands that we are foreigners, and won’t be able to communicate.

“Can you get it started?” I ask Jason.  He brings it back to neutral from fourth gear.  FOURTH GEAR.  I clothes-lined her in fourth gear.  She is a trooper!  He kicks it with everything he’s got.

“It’s flooded,” he says.  “And the front brake is broken.”

I look at her, and tell her in the only way I can in her language, “Too much petrol.  Fifteen minutes.”

She stares down at her high heeled shoes.  One has a pretty bow; the other does not.  I look down at the cement and scoop up her other bow.  “Nothing a little glue can’t fix!” I say in English as I hand it to her.  I don’t really know what to do.  I pull out my purse and start fingering my dong.  I pull out four hundred thousand, about twenty bucks, just to have in my hand.  I dig deeper for my iPhone.  It is going to die at any second.  I call my translator.

“Hwa, I just made an accident in the street,” I say.  I explain the situation to her, and as she is questioning me as to whether or not I’m alright, I hand the phone to the girl.  She looks to be about 25.  They get into it.  After four minutes, I’m thinking my phone is definitely going to die.  And then where will I be?  I try to gently reach for the phone, but this chick is not having it.   When she is satisfied, she hands the phone back to me.

“What’s up?” I ask.  

Hwa says, “You caused a lot of damage, and she wants to ask you for a million dong.  But I say that you are very new in Hanoi, and maybe you do not know the way of traffic.”

“But it wasn’t all my fault!” I exclaim.

“I know this, and I ask her to be fair.  So please give her five hundred thousand and she will be alright with it.”

“Okay Hwa.  Thanks,” I say.

I dig into my bag for another hundred.  I then hand her the twenty five bucks, and tell her again that I am very sorry.  I pat her on the back, tell her to wait ten minutes more, and Jason and I make our escape down the sidewalk.  

“Five hundred thousand, huh?” he says.  “I’m not really sure it was worth that much.”

“I don’t care,” I say.  I don’t know why she decided to pass on the right with no room, and I know it’s really not all my fault, but I gotta pay.  It’s for the karma.”

I am walking as fast as my legs can carry me, and Jason is trailing behind.  Who knows what the police would have done had they been involved.

“C’mon Jason; lets run,” I say, sprinting ahead into the madness of Hanoi.

Exercise Routines

So now I am slowly putting together a book, writing every day.  It won't be chronological, but I am writing to get the information down.  I said I would post the safe information as I went, so here is what I wrote today:

Hoan Kiem Lake is considered the heart of Hanoi.  Wide lanes of traffic circle around in a counterclockwise direction, with smaller streets, lanes, and alleys branching off in haphazard directions like arteries, arterioles, and capillaries.  This is the gathering spot for the city for any important event, whether it be the recent one thousandth year anniversary of the city, or the annual Tet (new year’s) celebration in the beginning of February.  On any given day you may see gaggles of brides seductively poised upon concrete ledges, groups of people perched in a tight bundle staring off into the distance, or you might just happen upon one of my favorite activities in the world: watching Vietnamese people exercise.  For this activity, all you really need is a strategically placed bench.  Voila!  Sit back and enjoy.

The greatest thing about it is that I always completely forget about this activity until it smacks me in the face, so it is always a delightful surprise!  Usually I am on a focused errand, with my mind shut off to the goings-on around me.  I’ll be clipping along at my “gotta get there” pace, and suddenly I’ll see movement in the bushes to my left.  My tunnel vision clears and the realization spreads a happy warmth across my insides.  I forget where I am going, and like a zombie to brains, I scramble to find the best available bench for my show.

A stocky short woman slowly walks a straight line with a pointedly determined look on her face.  With each step she pauses slightly and rotates an invisible ball to one side, matching her head turn to the side of the ball.  She repeats on the other side.  I don’t see her making any effort to contract her abs, so I have no idea as to the point of this exercise unless she is working on her robot skills.

A thin man stands stoically at the edge of the lake.  Without warning, his arms fly above his head, and he thrusts his whole upper body toward his knees with all the might he can muster.  He recovers slowly back to standing position.  I watch intently to see it again, but he is a statue.

Little old grandmas perform traditional tai chi in a group, gracefully moving energy with powerful intent.  Out of the corner of my eye, I see the statue drop again.  Dang.  He is a sneaky one.

Another middle aged man is on his knees, kneeling before a tree.  He appears to be worshipping it.  I would say that this exercise is back extensions.  Beginning in the fetal position, he pops to his knees and brings his arms up over his head, leaning back as far as he can.  Then back to fetal position.

A few joggers pause in my line of vision.  With hands on their hips, they violently twist at the waist from side to side about ten repetitions, before proceeding.  

What do most of these exercises have in common?  They are either really dangerous or pointlessly asinine and provide me with the highest value of entertainment.  With such poor exercise habits as a society, I have to wonder if there is any point giving proper exercises to my patients as homework.

Cut to the clinic:

I am working on a petite woman with a head full of wild permed curls.  She feels recovered about fifty percent.  

“Do you exercise?” I ask.  My translator Hwa makes the transaction of information, and reports back that she does indeed exercise every day.

“Show me what you do,” I say. 

The patient nods, tips her head back, and places her arms out to her sides.  Then she just starts spinning in circles.

“Oh brother,” I mutter.

Jason is trying to teach a man to do squat lunges to strengthen the quadriceps muscles.  “So basically, what you want to do is step forward and sink down, keeping the knee over the foot,” he explains while he demonstrates.  The man takes a tiny step forward and starts dipping as fast as he can.  “Whoa whoa whoa,” Jason exclaims.  “Slow down!” he says to the man.  To one of the five staffers in the room, he says, “Someone bring in two chairs for support!”  Then to himself he says, “Those are never going to fit in here.”  “Lets move out into the hall,” he announces.

We place the man between two sturdy chairs so that he may hold onto the arms.  He firmly grips them, and one leg slides back along the floor as if he is melting into the ground.

“Look, you have to plant yourself and bend the front knee!” I say, showing him again.  He puts all his weight into his arms and he is now cross country skiing back and forth.

“One side at a time!” I exclaim.  “Ten times on each side.”

I hear one of the lesser abled translators tell him in Vietnamese, “Do it for ten minutes.”  

“No no no!  Ngop!  I said ten times, not ten minutes!”  I am very frustrated.  How often does anything I say actually get through?  Working here is like a game of telephone, where a message is whispered from ear to ear down a line of people, and at the end it has become a completely different statement.

“Sorry, sorry!” Ngop says.

“Jas, maybe we should just start with some simple wall squats? This is ridiculous,” I say.

“Totally retarded,” he agrees.

The boss comes in and announces, “VIP patient!  She want to see Jason!  After first adjustment she feel EIGHTY PERCENT better, but now she is back to same as before.”

“Well, she hasn’t been following her plan of care . . .” Jason trails off.

“This woman very important!   She own eleven Bia Hoi shops, and if she get better, she will invite you to drink beer for free!” she exclaims.

The woman walks through the door.  She has just entered her fifties, and her face is caked in makeup.  She has on tight black leggings that disappear into chic black high heeled boots.  She removes her jacket to reveal a very fuzzy expensive looking tan sweater.

“So where is she feeling the pain the worst today?” Jason asks.  

“She say she feel most pain in her arms.”

Jason peers at her travel card.  “She’s never complained of arm pain before.”

The vietnamese confer.  “She go to make exercise because she feel very fat in her arms.”  The patient starts waving her triceps fat like a flag to demonstrate.

“What did you do to exercise your arms?” Jason asks.

The message is translated and the patient nods.  She seductively removes the fuzzy sweater to reveal a leopard print cardigan.  She slowly unbuttons it, batting her eyelashes in Jason’s direction.  Under the cardigan is a skin tight, off the shoulders, black shirt.  She walks slowly toward Jason, raises her arms above her head, and begins hip thrusting while propelling her undulating motion with her arms.  I have to remove my jaw from the floor.

“So what exactly is going on here?” Jason asks the boss.

“This how she works her arm fat,” she replies matter of factly.  It then dawns on my that she is trying to demonstrate a triceps curl from behind the head.  

“Let’s have her go face down on the table,” Jason says, and pats her on the back.  As the table goes down, he makes a face at me, and I laugh silently.  These people have got strength training so wrong!  I shake my head and watch Jason work.