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Published: November 28th 2006
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Ang's birthday
Me, Ang and Claire on Ang's 21st!! I'll start with Ang's 21st. Last monday, the 20th of november. Possibly the longest day ever. It began around 5:30am when we arrived back in Hanoi on the overnight train from Sapa. Not needing to be at clinic for another few hours we enjoyed a rather long brekky on the lake. We made it to clinic but were all falling asleep by lunchtime so decided to call it a day. After a much needed afternoon nap, we attempted to see the Water Puppets. Once again, only several of the scheduled shows were running so we agreed to come back after dinner. On our way to dinner, it started to rain. When it rains here, it rains properly. We were soaked in seriously a matter of seconds. So, we thought it would be a good idea to head back to the hotel, get changed and catch a taxi out to tea. Little did we know the streets in the old quarter dont have any drainage. After a quick change we jumped in a taxi. By this stage the streets had flooded and the taxi refused to take us anywhere. Not wanting to ditch Ang's 21st dinner, we walked to the restaurant through
water almost up to our hips. This doesn't sound too bad, except along with the lack of drainage in Vietnam comes a lack of rubbish bins. Yes thats right, rubbish had not been collected, so were were wading through water with rubbish floating around everywhere. Gross. In the end we had a great dinner, some nice champagne and by the time we went to the water puppets the water had cleared.
Moving on to clinic. As we near the end of our placement we have a greater understanding of the hospital and types of treatments used. Despite using several extreme forms of manual therapy, the physios also have lots of good funcional treatment ideas. The education and involvement of parents in the childs therapy is fantastic and all the physios are great at interacting with the kids. We now have a greater appreaciation of the lifestyles of our supervisors and the nature of their working day. Physios at the hospital earn around $50 a week, while the doctors take home around $80 a week. Hence, most have second jobs and work at night also. It is little wonder the whole place goes to sleep throught the middle of the
Ninh Binh
Boating through Ninh Binh. It's known as Halong bay on land. Ang and I had a speedy boat! day. We have also learnt the reason for a lack of patients is the broken electro equipment! The Vietnamese mostly love electro and hate exercise (massage and mobilisation), and thus only want electro. One mum even took her child to the toilet several times during physio because she didn't want her child treated like that! Our supervisors have been very welcoming and provided many laughs throughout the last few weeks. Most of all they love to feed us though. Numerous times a rice cooker has been pulled out from under a bed containing potatoes and various other vegetables. Today we tried unripe quava (looks like a lemon) and choco-pie. While its a lovely thought, its usually a struggle considering brekky was normally just an hour or so before. Its fun to imagine our supervisors at home continuing to pull random food from various corners of the hospital rooms in Melbourne and trying to feed us all the time! We have been invited out to lunch with our supervisors tomorrow as well as a short tour of Hanoi on the back of their motorbikes so is should be an interesting day!!
On saturday we did a day trip to ninh binh, a small town about 100km south of Hanoi. theres not a great deal to say though. The best thing about ninh binh is the large rocks (maybe small mountains.. im not sure exactly) through which water runs. the boat ride though here was pretty spectacular, but otherwise theres not much to see apart from a couple of temples (which all seem the same to me).
We also thought we should do a few touristy things around hanoi this week. So we went to see the museum, Ho Chi Mins musoleum (closed..again), the temple of literature and the citadel. We worked up the courage to get on the motorbikes for the first time. They dont go as fast as they look, but this doesn't mean they slow down through the intersections! We have found some great places to eat thanks to a friend we met in Sapa. Diana works at RMIT uni here for 3-4 months a year, and has been a great source of infomation. On a downer though, Belle has been sick for the last week, involving several trips to the international medical clinic. Luckily we took out travel insurance as the first consultation cost $290 USD!!! (included a drip and some drugs) I think she is starting to pick up today so hopefully she will be better soon!!
Less than a week left in Hanoi, followed by a few days in Halong bay this Sunday, and mid next week we will start travelling down the coast!!
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Ali
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photos
Cath - I still don't have any of your photos. Particularly keen on that one of my favourite Vietnamese man - Minh! All my photos of him are rediculously ugly and don't do him justice. xo