Hanoi and Clinic Update...

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An interesting nights dinner at 'Easy Cafe' on Tuesday night left Ali and Claire feeling less than 100% on Wednesday mornining....whilst I had decided to stick with the vego option for a few days, Ali and Claire went all out with the seafood, and I think have regretted the decision since! On a brighter note, the cafe had $3 cocktails that looked pretty impressive on the menu, that is until they arrived at the table! Another case of 'Engrish' was the title of my cocktail - a 'Screawing Orgasw' - obviously the Vietnamese translate our 'm's' into w's! Unfortunately when it arrived it was lacking both vodka and malibu, and had a shot of kahlua with mango juice - probably not the best $3 I've spent whilst here!
Clinic in the morning entailed more group activities for the CP kids - the introduction of hoops that the kids had to crawl through made for an interesting session! This group session seems to be the most interactive for the children, however they have very different methods of forcing obedience - including tying the hands of one of the children together 😞 . The more time we seem to spend with the physios it becomes more and more obvious that their techniques are not dissimilar to those we may use, however due to their limited English it is hard to seek their explanations. It will certainly give us something to think about next year on our Paeds placement!
With Claire and Ali making the move back to the hotel after lunch, Ange Cath and I proceeded to make our way to the Hope Centre - stopping at at least 3 cafes on the way for a drink - none of which had English translations! We did however find a bakery with some amazing cakes worth about $8 each - but opted for the caramel slice instead - $1 for a sickningly sweet chunk that made us vow not to eat chocolate for the next week!
After clinic we all met in the local Supermarket for some supplies for the train to Sapa on Thursday night - who ever thought that a supermarket could supply the entertainment that followed for the next hour...'Crusty Creams' cereal, $2.50 bottles of Vietnamese Vodka (saving that up for the trip to Halong Bay!), Crackling Pawnies, Grape sandwich (raisen bread) and Oreos cereal, just as a start!
Today was just another day of clinic...nothing to write home about - but we are all excited about heading off to Sapa in the mountains (about 380km north of Hanoi) tonight - on the overnight sleeper train. Will no doubt be writing in a few days time with our adventures! Take care for now xoxo

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