Under the weather in Vietnam!

---

WARNING! This blog may contain material that some may find disturbing.


So after all that fun in Saigon we headed to Nha Trang, a beach town in Vietnam where we hoped to just chill and relax, little did we know what we were letting ourselves in for.

The first day we did just as we had hoped to, we spent the day on the beach relaxing and taking things easy. Then in the evening we went out for dinner and a few drinks which then turned into something a little more than that when Paul and Dave decided to sample the local buckets which contained large amounts of very cheap alcohol which have a not so good effect on people the next day. This was very true in the boy's cases as I seemed to fine the next day, however the boy's were shall I say a little worse for ware and so we ended up doing very little apart from when I had to run food erronds for Gary who was in our hotel room getting over his hangover.

The next day we were hoping to get back to normal and go and sight see or do some more relaxing on the beach but I woke up feeling pretty rubbish and having to visit the ladies room very very frequently and also had a fever so Gary ended up having to look after me for the day apart from when the boys came to call for him in the afternoon and they went out to play for a few hours.

We had hoped that I would be feeling better the following day but I was becoming increasingly weaker from it all and now Gary had also come down with it and had a really high fever (38.5!). Being the clever guy he is he decided to consult the Asia and India travel health book we had been given and it advised that if you had been to the toilet more than six times in one day, to call the doctor. So the next thing I did was brave it downstairs to get our receptionist to call the doctor out for us. By the time I had made it up the stairs the doctor was right behind me and so he came in and checked us both over and asked whether either of us had eaten any uncooked fish or mango in the last 24 hours which is when it hit me that it must have been the Mango that was in the fruit salad I had for breakfast the day before I had become ill and which Gary had tasted when I mentioned that it tasted funny. Once he had diagnosed us and given us a shed load of pills he then also took blood samples and told us that he would be sending his assistant up to put us on drips for a session of profusion. This took us both by surprise as we didn't think it was serious enough for that but he assured us that because of the amount of fluids we had lost it was a very good idea.

So that was a strange experience as you can just imagine Gary on one bed and me on another hooked up to drips, Gary's was hanging on the blind on the window and mine from the fan on the wall next to me and anytime we wanted water we had to ask each other to throw the bottle across the room and hope it landed in catching distance. This was all made even funnier when Paul and Dave arrived back from their morning dive to find that not only had Gary now come down with food poisoning but that we were both up in our rooms hooked up to drips.

The next couple of days were spent rehydrating ourselves and gaining our strength so we didn't really do much apart from having to keep postponing the overnight bus we had booked to get us to Hoi An. This did however mean that we would be leaving the same day as Dave and Paul which worked out well considering. So the day we had planned to leave we were all packed and ready to go but unfortunately a string of events leading up to our departure led to us not being able to catch the bus to Hoi An and meaning that the guy's had to go without us but were oblivious to the fact as they ended up on a different bus. The long and short of it is We had a real effort trying to get the money to pay for our room, which our receptionist was demandidng before she left work. This meant that we had to rush around trying different ways of getting money out as none of the cash machines were working and in the end we just borrowed it from Paul. By the time we got to a restaurant for dinner, ate and got back to the hotel to wait for our bus, I had started to feel really strange and agitated which meant I couldn't sit still, then we were rushed onto our bus which was extremly overcrowded and as the lady in front of me put her seat back so started my first ever panic attack which wasn't the best timing and with an 11 hour bus journey there was no way I was going to calm down anytime soon so we decided that it was best to get off the bus and find a hotel so that we could call our Doctor, which is exactly what we did and without fail Doctor Son was there as soon as he was able. Once he had managed to calm me down and give me a sedative he explained that he believed that I had had an allergic reaction to the pills i'd been on as I had been complaining of feeling sick shortly after every dose. So the doctor's orders were to rest and he gave me some pills for the next journey in order to prevent an attack but to only take them if I felt I needed them. So the next day we booked onto a sleeper train as we thought being so early in the morning it would be less busy and at least we would have more space in a bed.

So on to Hoi An where we had been told to go if we wanted any clothes custom made for us. We could hardly resist but i'm quite proud of the two of us as we came away with just one pair of shorts for Gary and I had my perfect LBD (LIttle black dress). The place itself was a nice little river side town which came to life at night being lit up by colourful lanterns and the locals entertain other locals and tourists with their skills on the drums.

To break up the journey to Hanoi we decided to then stop off in a town called Hue where the lonely planet guide said was a really good Vietnamese restaurant where the owner who was deaf and dumb had designed his own bottle openers which consisted of a bit of wood and a nail. So of course we had to stop here. It was just like the lonely planet described and as mentioned there was indeed sight of the famous bottle openers and to our astonishment the owner was there and offered to make us all one each which pleased the boys no end and they were playing with them all night. So we had to somehow get to Hanoi from Hue and we were talked into getting a sleeper bus for the trip which we did think would be quite novel and to tell the truth it was to start with as we all got up into our bunks and settled in. However it all went a little down hill from there as the driver decided that he would play his music extremly loudly all night and drive like a maniac which for Asian standards is saying something. Now you may say to yourselves why didn't we just get up and ask him to turn it down, well let me tell you we would have except for the fact that we would have had to climb over a whole isle full of Vietnamese families who were sleeping in them. Therefore there was nothing to do but to bear it which was nothing less than torture. Then to make things worse, the bed in the middle of myself and Paul which we thought had been forgotten about was finally taken by a little Vietnamese boy who was travelling with his father. This little boy was also the most fidgety little boy I have come across as he was tossing and turning the whole night and there isn't that much space between beds on these things. So to say it was what we expecxted is maybe a slight over exageration.

After all that we've finally made it back to Bangkok safely and are about to get on an over night bus to Chang Mai where we will be spending our last week in S.E Asia before heading to India next tuesday. We'll let you know what we get up to there when we can but if we don't write before then we'll be blogging from India, Mumbai most likely.

So until then........


V&G
xxxx

---

Comments

[Anne and Rob]

Keep well
Wow! Your sojourn in Vietnam sounds somewhat horrific! Hope you're both feeling much better now. Didn't realise mango could do that to you. What was on the mango to start that reaction? It doesn't usually do that. Was it the water it had been washed in or unclean hands which had peeled it? Did the Doc give any explanation? It's great to have friends with you who can support you when necessary. It's cold and wet here, although today it's 15 degrees and I'm going out in the garden to prune and tidy the place of fallen leaves, bark and branches which are down everywhere from the windy conditions we have had. Keep well.