Sweet Dispostion

This should be the last blog under this address; after all, how can I be Vietnam Chiropractor when I leave the country?  It was good and necessary to take six weeks in Thailand to recover from the whole Vietnam experience.  I did a lot of writing that I never shared, and maybe someday it will all be a book.  I met countless travelers who shared their life experiences and inspired me.  I stood at a fork in the road between Oslo, Norway, and Singapore, Singapore, and spent countless hours imagining a life as a chiropractor in each.  Being one who never likes to miss out on every life experience, I must mourn spending my late twenties in Scandinavia, and focus my attention towards sunnier pastures . . . errr; or at least sunnier concrete.  So, I'm happy to announce that I will be joining an ol pal, Dr. Kelvin Ng, in his Singapore practice at the end of the month. 

The ads on this blog made me twenty five dollars and twelve cents.  It's been the most rewarding money I've ever made.  Stay tuned for the new blog!

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.

New Ends, New Beginnings

It’s been a long time.  It tends to get a little harder to write about the job when things are going downhill.  I’ve now reached level ground, and I’m coasting.  I have a smile on my face.  Sometimes it’s not about where you end up, but about how much you enjoyed the ride.  I’ve just spent four months working in the most surreal job environment that I wouldn’t ever be able to dream up this story.  Most businesses are built on premises of making money or maximizing efficiency.  As I’ve come to find out, I came to Vietnam to help a very rich woman feel wafts of grandeur in her attempt to self entertain by opening a very expensive chiropractic clinic.  But I also found love, friendship, loyalty, and camaraderie across cultural boundaries, and there is no greater reward.

I’ve left the job in Hanoi, and am taking some time to sit in my bungalow on the beach for a few weeks/months in some other country in Asia.  I will be writing my story, which I fear may end up being part comedy . . . and that’s fantastic!  It may not be over for me in Vietnam, but if it is, it still may not be over for me working in Asia.  I will choose my next opportunity with great care.  I will post stories to my blog as I go if they are appropriate to my safety in going back to Vietnam.  If the time ever comes when I decide that I’m never going back to Vietnam, I will either post all stories, or just write a book.  As I said in blog number 1, I was excited as anyone to see how it all turned out, and I know I’ve got a page turner brewing.  Stay tuned!

Minced Pies for Eyes

This morning I had two tickets to Bangkok.  This is a sign of poor planning, but for once in my life I don’t really care.  For the past five days, I’ve been marooned on Koh Tao, the furthest island you can get out to by regular passenger ferry off the east coast of Thailand.  

Here are the feelings about traveling that I’ve gathered up on this trip.  It’s not about the places you go; it’s about the people you meet.  Traveling has become such a cliche that it seems most people tick off destinations just for their social resume.  Let’s see how many countries we can squeeze into three weeks.  Every time I go somewhere new, I wonder how I’m going to be absorbed by the place.  I have the understanding that, sure, there’s a good show to be seen as represented by the paragraphs in the travel guidebooks, and for many people that’s all that gets premiered.  No behind the scenes.  No figuring it out on their own.  That’s pretty sad.

Koh Tao is one of the premiere diving destinations in the world.  It’s a quiet, peaceful little island, with only a handful of streets to walk.  I stayed in a seedy little motel on the fourth floor, dorm style, with shared bathroom facilities.  Us fourth floor kids formed a bit of a club, and spent a fair amount of time shooting the shit sitting in the open breezeway outside our rooms.  I learned cockney from Gary . . . fridge freezer for geezer, apples and pears for stairs, having a bubble bath for laugh.  Jantzen taught me about youthful abandon.  Cat reminded us to live from the heart.  Traveling is about giving something up to make room for “the new.”  There’s only so much room in each of us, so please don’t forget to do your spring cleaning.

As I’ve come to find out, it’s a pretty big chore to get “off” these islands.  I knew I was leaving on the fifth of February, but I didn’t exactly check my departure time from the airport.  It takes three hours to get to the Surat Thani Airport from Koh Samui by ferry and bus.  You can imagine how my heart sank when I realized I was supposed to fly out at 8:45 am and I was absolutely set on spending one last night on Koh Samui.  I self convinced that there was some magical high speed ferry that left at 5 am.  Then I grabbed Kaz and hauled him over for his first trip to Koh Samui after living on Koh Tao for five months.

After walking down the gangplank, a taxi driver asked us, “Where to?”  “No idea!” We examined the map and picked the closest town.  It was still a twenty minute drive, and I felt my escape plan slipping away.  We got dropped off on your typical crap tourist beach street, no different from Phuket or Myrtle Beach.  Gross.  Take me back to Koh Tao.  I found the most lovely Israeli travel agent and explained my predicament.    She’s been living on the island for 8 years, just reading books, watching the ocean, and perfecting her seven languages.  She feared for my safety in carrying out the Surat Thani trip, because it would mean leaving Koh Samui that night and finding accommodations in the middle of nowhere with not a white person in sight.  And that is how I ended up spending a small fortune to fly from Koh Samui to Bangkok this morning to make my connection to Hanoi.  It was one last night to carve my name in the sand and watch the ocean cleanse the palette for the next barrage of FOBs (fresh off the boat).  I wish I could have seen it 30 years ago before it became another Any Town tourist destination.  As my taxi to the airport pulled off the main drag at 5 am, I saw my fair share of young white men stumbling out of clubs with the music still booming, pretty little thai girls shortly in tow.

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!  

My Holly Jolly

I woke up on Christmas morning and smiled.  I took one of those deep breaths where you feel the winds of relaxation rush from the happy pit of your belly.  One simple reason: a much needed day off to be spent with friends.  The staff at work pooled their money and bought me a gift the day before.  I was questioned intently about what I wanted.  I really didn’t want anything, and I especially did not want to break their banks.  “A scarf?” my friend pleaded with me.  “Ok, yes, a scarf would be fantastic.”  So the next day a group of excited kids with sparkling eyes shuffled like little robots into my adjusting room.  “Merry Christmas!” they shouted, and presented me with a gift wrapped in paper covered in christmas trees and santas.  They all looked so proud.  My boss followed them in.  “I am so surprised!” she said.  “I didn’t tell them to do this, they did it by themselves.  You know they are very poor.”  My little angels.  I opened my scarf, which turned out to be a beautiful flowing red knitted poncho.  Ouch.  My heart.  I was speechless.  I can’t wait to come up with something really great to get them all for their New Year next month.  My boss got me the best mattress in Vietnam.  I’ve been sleeping on thin squishy foam.  Last night was a dream.  There were nights in Vietnam when my mom and I slept on box springs where every position comes with a jab.  I am in deep appreciation.  

So I get out of bed on Christmas morning, and I get ready to go.  I have to be at my friends’ house in 20 minutes.  Then the doorbell rings.  Ka chunk, ka chunk, I turn the lock in the door and anticipate a possible bill collector (they just show up, I’m not in any financial trouble).  So there’s Kaz, fresh off the airplane from Thailand.  I met Kaz in my parent’s kitchen.  His aunt worked with my dad on the Starbound in the Bering Sea of Alaska.  At the time he walked in the front door, said, “Hey.  Kaz.”  I said, “No, I’m Cass.”  “He said, “No, I’m Kaz.”   Ahhh.  Kaz has to renew his Thai visa.  I was expecting him the day before, but then he didn’t have a visa to enter this country, and told me he would have to sit in Bangkok for two days.  Kaz just turned 21.  He’s got on those moon boot skater shoes, fluorescent swim trunks, a tank top covered by a flannel, and a shark tooth necklace.    He can’t believe how cold it is here.  He made it all the way to my door by himself; a true christmas miracle in this country of backward streets and labyrinths.  “Just in time for Christmas brunch.  Come on.”

So we did brunch at a high end restaurant with seven americans, one auzzie, and one brit-auzzie.  We were quite a group.  The vietnamese santa came and gave us candy, and we stayed for four hours and finished off the night bar hopping.  Now I’ve got a little brother to watch out for for two weeks while he’s here in Vietnam.  That’s what I like about encounters across the world.  You see your friend from kindergarten in your home town, and it’s all, “Hey, great to see you.”  Someone you met for the smallest moment in time becomes like family when you are far away.

We had coffee, beer, wine, and spiced red wine TO CHOOSE FROM (endless glass)  So we just got one of each, most of us : )

Shhhhh

I don't expect this blog to be particularly interesting, but because I've made a personal commitment to keep writing, I hope something decent will come out.  Sometimes you get so tired, you don't care one way or the other . . . . and that's how I'm feeling right now.  I'm at the point where I just want to make bullets of my daily activities, just to feed those who have an interest.  So here's what's going on:  I've hired three men DC's to come over, and they should all be over in January.  I feel like they will only make a good thing better.  It's one thing to chat with the staff in broken english all day, and it's another to share the experience with people who are right there with you with the same goals and background.  The clinic opened to the general public yesterday, and I am the only doctor.  At first I was feeling a bit bombarded . . . maybe we should have talked about how to schedule to not make me feel like I constantly had five people waiting for me?  Today was much better.  The goal is SLOW and STRONG.   I can only give so many new patients my best efforts every day to spark the good word about chiropractic . . .  That point is now understood amongst management, and I don't actually mind that I have to work everyday until another chiropractor hops the pacific pond.

How are the attitudes of the general public?  I am doing my best to spread the word that chiropractic is for everyone, not just aches and pains.  I had a woman yesterday come in to ask about her husbands back pain, and I learned they were trying to have a baby.  Well!  Don't mind if I tell you how chiropractic might help with that!  It would be a very exciting feat!  One of my docs from Canada wrote me today to tell me that he met a vietnamese family in Edmonton who had heard about our clinic.  Well well well.  Awesome.  The funny thing about the culture which is so different, is that they will not feel happy with you as a doctor if you do not give them a pill to take.  The clinic currently has an empty pharmacy, to be stocked with pain meds, water pillows, vitamins & supplements, and various other supplies.  I can't in good conscious tell them to take anything.  So in usual form, I tell them, if you feel like you have to, then I'm not stopping you.  I clearly have to conform to an expectation, and then draw them in another direction.  It will be a task.  I usually answer questions with, "No one wants to take pain pills, so . . . "  Then they just look at me.  My translator takes an extra step without my consent, explaining that in America, the general attitude is to avoid pain pills, but that's not how we feel in VN.   They chuckle at me.  Education is key, and once I have some muscle behind me (other docs) I'll have more time to get the big idea across.

When I left America, I wondered how little ole me would fare with my chiropractor co-workers who would most likely have more than my two years of experience in the field.  Now I'm here, running the whole shebang, and I got to choose who I wanted to work with.  I've set up the entire protocol of this huge place (a fifteen million dollar building), with three body guards, two cleaning ladies, two x ray techs, a night watchman, 8 receptionists, and 20 physiotherapy/massage grads.  I didn't hatch the idea, but I've had a big part in bringing it together.  In a way, it's what I had planned from the second I saw the ad.  But how it happened can only be part of the secret.

Rulers

There are ways to measure the passing of days gone by with units not found on calendars or cell phone clocks.  I've been known to measure time in how long it takes to grow out my toenail polish.  For instance, I might remind myself that by the week ONLY my big toe still has color, it might be time to forget about the boy or the vacation or the special event that may have prompted the pedicure in the first place.  There is just something comforting about holding onto a great experience and knowing it was just a toenail in time away.  But when my best friend has heckled me enough, I sadly sigh into the bathroom cupboard, pull out the acetone, and say goodbye to THAT life experience.

Over here I've started working 6 days a week, soon to be 7.  The opening ceremony for the clinic is next week, and apparently I am the star.  The biggest news station in Vietnam will be there.  I'm not really sure how to handle the responsibility or the spotlight, but when unsure, fake it til you make it.  I certainly don't feel like anything I'm doing is all that difficult; it's just a lot of hard work, plugging along day after day.  Especially for a princess like me who has, in the past, convinced herself that she NEEDS (a lot of) downtime.

You don't have the luxury to be picky over here.  If a local friend drags you to a street stand serving only one dish, you eat it.  You pick up those dirty chopsticks washed haphazardly in cold water sans soap, sitting there on that table two feet off the ground.  You squat down on a plastic blue stool one foot off the ground.  And you even feel like you went the extra mile to squeeze some lime juice on the utensils and wipe them off vigorously with a napkin.  I laugh every time I sit at these mini kiddie tables.  This is the most natural form of dining out, but I still always think of a movie called "Land of the Little People" which my mom taped for me on the VCR straight off the TV without pushing pause at the commercials, somewhere around 1988.  Seriously, just imagine the table four year olds have to sit at on Thanksgiving, only a lot dirtier.  You get used to these things.  You take what you get, sometimes because it is the only Vietnamese word you can remember.  I'm proud enough just to be able to say pho ga (chicken pho) when I can't read a word on the menu.  As I'm writing this, my neighbor is blasting some awful Vietnamese music like it's House Party 2, and what am I gonna do, knock on his door and complain?  That option just isn't logical.

My very first blog had something to do with having too many choices, and I have to say I feel a sense of serenity at not having to decide all the time.  There is freedom in captivity!  But it's also fun to slowly push out; to learn the word you need to get what you want next time; to recognize streets and call out cab drivers.

I've almost gone through a tube of toothpaste.  I only have four tubes of Crest left.  My Aveda shampoo is almost gone.  I gage my supplies on a daily basis and contemplate mixing it up with some Vietnamese brands, because I'm not ready to be left alone in this country without my home comforts.  I will lose those parts of me in stages, and I will suffer when I squeeze out the last drops.  Another chapter over.

Getting Back to Brass Tacks: Chiropractic in VN

The first time I laid eyes on my chiropractic staff, I didn’t realize that this would be our first meeting.  The boss lady had called me at 2 pm and told me to meet her at the clinic at 3 pm.  I was sitting in a coffee shop overlooking Hoan Kiem Lake, eating a sandwich.  I was wearing flip flops, shorts, and a t-shirt.  I think my legs were pretty hairy too, and all scabbed up from mosquito bites.  I finished my sammy and jumped in a cab.

I sauntered through the clinic gate at 2:55 and was met by the clinic 24 hour security guard.  I asked for the boss with her name and a shrug, and he led me back to the courtyard.  As I rounded the corner, I was met with applause from a U shaped group of twenty-something year olds.  Whoa.  “The doctor!” my boss proudly exclaimed, and the clapping continued.  The day before had been my first effort to learn a vietnamese sentence.  I started out strong: “I don’t . . . .I . . . . don’t . . . . .”  Hmmm.  I looked down at my fingers.  Must be stage fright.  “Ummmmmmm. I don’t . . . . speak . . . . . . Vietnamese” I managed to get out in their language.  As I think I’ve said before, if you don’t get it perfect, they still won’t understand you, even after all the effort.  “Who here speaks English?” I asked in English.  I was met with stares.  The girl next to me turned to me and said, “We are very happy to meet you and very excited to work with you.”  My boss turned to the crowd.  “Can you understand her English!?” she barked in English.  She was met with unsure nods.  She dismissed the class and led me away.  I wondered what they could possibly think of me, a fellow asian of about the same age, looking like any traveling backpacker coming off of the street.  

I have been training “the kids” for about five days now.  I went through my prepared material in the first two days, and wondered how I was ever going to be able to keep them busy for ten days.  I was actually pretty nervous about not having enough material by the end of the second day.  I basically gave my standard chiropractic health talk that I would give to any patient, but in this case left a lot of time to make sure nothing was lost in translation.  They need to know what I am doing and why I am doing it so that the clinic can run as smooth as possible and so they can explain chiropractic themselves.  They eagerly ate up their anatomy lesson and memorized which organs and systems are being affected by the nerves exiting each vertebra.  If they didn’t know the function of an organ, it turned into a lesson on organ function.  If they couldn’t grasp the sympathetic nervous system, I took the time and patience to explain it to them until a light bulb would go off and then the Vietnamese would be flying across the room and other faces would light up too.  I started to feel really proud of my little students.

The morning of the third day, I looked on amazon.com hoping specifically for “Chicken Soup for the Chiropractic Soul” but willing to settle for any inspirational stories about chiropractic for the kindle.  There happened to be one, and I downloaded it just before I had to run out the door to catch my motorcycle ride to work.  I figured, worse come to worse, I can read in English and my translator can translate.  The boss stresses that learning english is just as important as any chiropractic information they get.  Only two translators understand me at 90%.  The other two understand at about 65-75%.  So this requires a lot of repeating and slowing down.  They enjoyed the chiropractic story so much.  As the published stories usually end in a miracle, there was much clapping and looks of surprise.  I decided I would try to tell them about a miracle every day.  Apparently, for most people, the first few days was just noise coming out of my mouth, but they are beginning to catch on.

For the last couple of days, I have just been winging it.  Since they did so well with learning where the nerves go, I spent a day teaching them about dermatomes (areas of skin innervated by a single nerve root) and how to test for problems.  After that, I figured I might as well teach them which muscles are supplied by the spinal nerves, and how to test muscle strength for each level of the spine.  This morning I said, tell me everything you know about Cervical vertebra number five.  Their reply: “It affects the throat and lower neck muscles, you test the dermatomes of the outer part of the arm, and you muscle test shoulder abduction and elbow flexion.”  My little angels!  Today they learned the process for taking a case history (OPQRST, PC).  Then I acted like the patient and made them ask me questions.  In this way, I have a code word for a series of questions I want them to ask, and I don’t have to waste the time on translation because they know what to ask.

The thing I stress the most is that chiropractic brings hope to life.  In the spirit of my great chiropractic mentors, I show inspirational youtube videos like my buddy Peter Kevorkian, and repeat some of the great Kevin Donka stories.  It brings tears to their eyes, as they have never imagined that they could be part of something that will have such a big impact on the world around them.  It brings tears to my eyes too.  

I spend a lot of time writing on the board, because they understand better when they can see it.  I draw pictures.  Yesterday I thought I had better learn their names.  They are named after actual “things” here.  We have two Victories, two Waters, a Mountain, a Cherry Blossom, a “such as or the same” (this one wrinkled her nose at her name’s meaning), a Flower, two Rivers, a Forest, a Happy, an Advantage, a Hero and a Sunny, just to name a few.  I learned 27 Vietnamese names in ten minutes, and they were so happy when I went through the list the first time with no mistakes.  Of course, musical chairs would tarnish me big time. 

And my pronunciation is never perfect.  They love to correct me.  I ask them to teach me new words every day.  I say it, and I get 27 answers back with an encouraging nod for me to try again.  They beam at me.  They tell me they love me and adore me.  One of them has volunteered to bring me back and forth to work every day.  They invite me home and bring me food and take me grocery shopping.  They asked where I live, and after telling them, they said, “Your street is named after Heroine.”  “No way!” I exclaimed, wondering if I lived in the ghetto.  I mimed sticking a needle in to my arm.  “Heroine?”  We all broke out into laughter.  “Heroine is girl Hero, and your street named after famous vietnamese heroine who is 16 year olds.”  Well laugh out loud.  Even though some are older than me, they are my kids, and I am happy to be around them every day.

I am working my butt off over here.  I told my boss I would be happy to be in charge of new doctor recruitment.  I know when I looked at the position, I had my doubts because the emails in English made me question if anyone would even be able to communicate with me.  The applications have been pouring in, and every question is important and must be answered.  It is, however, a lot of effort to put out for someone who might not come.  On my third day of training, I was called up to the bosses office to receive the news that the other doctor who was supposed to be back next week decided not to come.  This basically means that I am now solely in charge of the chiropractic direction of this three million dollar clinic.  I get to chose the protocols on everything.  I get to shape the impression of chiropractic in this town of six million in Vietnam.  The  cool thing is that when I ask my staff, what does chiropractic focus on?  They say, “The nervous system.”  What travels from the brain to the body by way of the nervous system?  “Signals.”  What do the signals carry?  “Information.”  What disrupts the flow of information?  “Subslushation.”  If you think Americans have a hard time with ‘subluxation,’ come over here.  I feel really glad that the philosophy that I learned at Sherman goes over with admiration, but most importantly, without argument.  In America, some patients find chiropractic to be absolutely amazing.  Here, they all do.  It is really really really cool.


The Clinic and Staff:

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

I sure am glad I waited three weeks for this apartment.  It’s hard to describe how it feels to come home to a place that I inhabit solo.  It feels good to be within these walls.  All the bars on the windows and doors, which I will refer to as “the fixins,” are so french quarter with the lavender walls that I think, “You are lovely against the white shutters” and I beam in their general direction.  What I was expecting to be a large porch has been transformed into a magical second bedroom, catching the morning light and encouraging stomach crunches, push-ups, and dumbbell curls.  The truly awesome thing about this place is that there are windows between every room.  The two bedrooms are separated by large sliding windows.  There are small pop out windows from the bathroom to the kitchen.  There are sliders from the second bedroom to the kitchen.  Who needs privacy?  Since I have no furniture, I also think this would make a good Marrakeshian “pillows everywhere” room.  My friends from Edmonds, WA have deemed it Carrot’s room.  They imagine that I will adopt Carrot and they can be co-owners from the next street over.  See Carrot’s ad here:

I have a Siberian husky dog. But unfortunately, my mom is allergic to its fur so I have to sell her, which is my last choice. Otherwise, my mom will throw her to the street :( This is so sad because she's very special to me.

Some information about her

- Her name is Carrot

- She's a Siberian husky

- She's 6 months old & weight ~20kg

- She's very nice & friendly, even with cats

- She loves to go jogging, play ball

- She prefers beef & pork & ribs than seafood or crab/fish/prawn

- She's well taken care by my uncle, who is a vet, so I don't have any paper but if she has any problem, just ring me, I'll tell my uncle to come over to your place :)

Siberian husky is easily bored if you leave them alone. So I want to find Carrot a loving, caring new parents. I don't want my baby to be left behind. Carrot will come with some of her favorite toys :)

I bought her for 12 mil dong. I will sell her for 10 mil dong. I can reduce the price a little bit if you are a really big dog-lover.

Email me at catherine5989@hotmail.com or text me if you are serious. Thanks

But I already have a CARmela and a ROTtweiler, and there is no room in my life for CARROT.  James and Megan do not cease to pursue the dream.  Off of Carrot’s room (the name will stick, I think) is a barred up window with an opening that swings shut.  My landlady speaks no english, so she flung open the cut-out and mimed jumping out of it.  I made a “birds flying” motion with my hands and an implied question mark.  Maybe this is where you release birds that accidently fly into the house.  She shook her head and was stumped.  Her daughter told me today that it’s the fire escape.  Hmmmm.  If I jumped outta there, I would get entangled in a mess of telephone cables which hover over a barbed wire fence.  Tough decision.

There are still a few things left to be done for the apartment to be completely ready.  Had to walk about a mile to the Vincom Towers, a shopping center, to get towels.  I went into the nicest bedding store I could find, grabbed two towels, two hand towels, and bathmat, and rang them up.  The total came out to one million five hundred thousand dong.  It's twenty thousand dong to a dollar.  I guess I grabbed the equivalent of The Hotel Collection.  Oh well.  Now I have really nice looking towels that don't really get you dry.  I have ok’d the fact that I might come home to workers all up in my house.  I just pack all the important/expensive stuff to work with me.  Tonight I came home and noticed that about a quarter of a new bottle of Aquafina was missing.  Wow, they totally just opened my shit.  I had also created a dish dry rack with a large bowl and all my clean dishes drying in it.  For some reason, it was half full of water.  It was sitting next to one of my formerly clean cups which was also half full of water.  I rewashed everything, and thought to myself, “Really!?”

And that was my first full day in my Vietnam apartment. Minus the bulk of the day training my chiropractic staff.  More to come on that later.

Front door area

Check out my sweet piano!

Workout Room

No Reason to Cook when Good Dinners Cost a Dollar

Bathroom Decor

Wash Machine

Dryer