Funeral in Hue

For a blog about a summer travel excursion, this probably seems like an odd posting, a dour sidetrack to an otherwise sunny and exciting adventure. Actually going to the funeral of a very distant relative here in Hue, however, made me remember one of the reasons I decided to come to Vietnam instead of some other country in Central America, or Europe or Africa. It's a reason so cliched that only Jhumpa Lahiri can write about it anymore without irony: I came, in part, to find my roots.

The language, the food, the very geography highlight the connections ripe for the making. Walking around Hue, certain characteristics about my family become clear. Hue is a city known for education. People love school here. Every slightly decaying French colonial building is a shrine to higher learning. Is it any wonder that my parent's highest aspiration for me and my sisters was to go on to graduate school of some kind? The food is elaborate, the people kind, formal and aloof. The landscape serenely beautiful, the kind that is easy to miss and long for in the deepest recesses of your heart. The longer we're here, the more details about my parents and my upbringing seem to snap into clearer focus.


Oh the language. This one thing is probably, and inevitably, what makes this root-finding business so difficult. The accent of Hue distinguishes it from every other region of Vietnam, and it has done an excellent job of distinguishing me to exclusion. I'm regarded as an oddity on a par with Holly and her big blue hat. I've lost the one thing that could make me feel at home in this city. Every word that I successfully scrabble for in the dark places of my brain, each phrase that I correctly piece together is greeted with moderated indifference. It's expected. Anything less and the questions begin to fly about why I haven't been studying my Vietnamese more back in America.

Any-hue....(sorry I couldn't resist) back to the title of this posting. This morning, we went to the funeral of my mother's cousins mother-in-law. This is roughly equivalent to our future children attending the funeral of Holly's cousin Macie's husband Kent's mother's funeral in Zimbabwe. But it's what my people do. We attend Mass, we sing, we cry, we chant and we remember. And we eat. I've seen this ritual carries out many times, but this time I got to see them where they were meant to be carried out, not 10000 miles away in a country where snow falls from the sky. The transplant is because of other things that my people do: we survive, adapt, and carry what we can. You lose some things, gain others. But you can find lost things sometimes, and maybe be better for the looking.

Kim Long Charity Clinic

"Toi la bac si si kham benh cho on"... "I am the doctor who is going to be examining you." This is my new phrase and I said it over 20 times on Tuesday in my first full day of seeing patients at the Kim Long Charity Clinic. Doannie's aunt is Dr Nguyen Thi Dien, the medical director of this clinic which provides free services to over 35,000 people in the Thua Thien and Quang Tri provinces. Despite what you might think given that Vietnam is a communist country, medical care is not free and patients must pay a fee-for-service for clinic visits, labs, xrays, medicines, etc. The Charity Clinic was started in 1992 to provide free care for those who cannot afford it otherwise, and has grown every year under the careful stewardship of Dr Nguyen and her colleagues. Patients travel for miles from the rural parts of the province and arrive early in the morning to wait to be seen. Each day starts with an education session, this one geared toward reducing the stigma of HIV/AIDS.


Dr Nguyen, or "Di Dien" (Aunt Dien) to us, is a force of nature. Standing at barely 4'10" (making Doannie appear like a giant), she supervises a staff of over 20 volunteers. Her office is full of medical texts and careful records of donations and health statistics from the province. I was thrown right into the fray on Tuesday morning, occupying exam room 14 with my interpreter, Nguyen. Without him and Di Dien I would have been useless, but with his help and her guidance I saw more patients than I have ever seen in a Brigham clinic session. I saw patients with arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension - the usual for an American clinic, but I was working with a vastly different toolset. I didn't know the function of about 25% of the medications on the limited list that the clinic carries. My only blood pressure medications were amlodipine and nifedipine. I quickly learned that asking follow-up questions to complaints like "chest pain" was more easier said than done - more than once Doannie had to fill me in on what was really being said in reply. Lab tests, xrays, and referrals, while available, are understandably reserved for the sickest of patients.



After a siesta during the hottest part of the day, we started all over again in the afternoon. I continue to be challenged by the need to treat so empirically on such limited information about each patient. Doannie and I have been brainstorming about simple ways to systematize some of the care here and to bring in some new educational tools for the staff and patients. Friday we will do home visits with some of the sicker HIV patients in the province, which should be yet another invaulable learning experience. In two weeks I will move over to the medical university, where I hope to learn about the medical education system in Vietnam and hear I am expected to do some teaching. Hopefully there will be a radiologist on site!

It's "Hue" better here

For those of you who might not know, and to put the title of this post in context, Hue is pronounced like "Way." It is also the home of Doannie's parents and where we will be spending the next month working. We arrived Sunday night, and in the couple of days that we have been here in Hue, we have really come to appreciate how different it is from Saigon. First of all there are many fewer motos, which has lowered my heart rate considerably.
There is a lot less in-your-face poverty, and there are is a certain air of refinement in the way that life is conducted here. The banks of the Perfume River have been spared overdevelopment, and instead of crumbling houses and storefronts they boast a 2mile long promenade lined with trees and gardens and filled with sculptures. There are over 5 universities here, and an early highlight was a trip to the Quoc Hoc High School, built in French colonial times and attended by Ho Chi Minh. The pristine grounds boast the words "Day Tot, Hot Tot" or "Teach Well, Learn Well." It should be noted that while Hue people consider themselves the enlightened academics of Vietnam, the rest of the country considers them a bit snooty and highbrow. Coming from Boston, we fit right in.

We spent Monday getting oriented to the city and to our new digs - a room over the clinic adjacent to the Convent of the Daughters of Mary Immaculate. Complete with nuns running around in blue habits (including Doannie's aunt, the physician-nun for whom I am working), it is very Sound of Music. Our room is spotless but a bit sparse - we sleep on a simple mat and blanket. But the views overlooking the Perfume River and the deliciously prepared Hue cuisine are well worth it, plus it is forcing me to speak Vietnamese. So far I can say "Toi khong biet noi tieng Viet" which means "I don't speak Vietnamese."

After walking around in 100 degree heat and 100 degree humidity for 6 hours on Monday, the purchase of a sun shade of sorts became our singular quest. Finding the hat store was like finding an oasis in the desert - except that only one hat fit my huge noggin (turns out Doannie's equally large cranium is unusual for the Vietnamese). This unfotunately left us with little room to bargain - they had me cornered, and they knew it. So I am now the proud owner of a ridiculous looking big blue hat which I am sure will feature prominantly in all future blog pictures. Who knows, it might even earn me a reputation about town as the Blue Hat Lady - fitting for slightly eccentric Hue.

War Remnants Museum and Cu Chi Tunnels

I am a small guy. I'm not afraid to admit it and anyone who has seen our wedding pictures would certainly agree. And in addition to all those great games of hide and go seek I used to win as a kid, it finally came in handy today. Holly and I visited the Cu Chi Tunnels, an area 70 km north of Saigon that was a major staging ground for attacks into South Vietnam. It is a 200 km network of tunnels that served as homes, factories and fighting grounds for the Vietnamese through their wars with the French and the Americans. There was even a nursery where babies were born, all 10 to 30 meters underground. I used to think that most Vietnamese were just small. But now I know that we are small AND crazy.

I was the first to volunteer in the one authentic tunnel that tourists are allowed to use. Let's just say that there wasn't a lot of room between me and the bats. To give you a sense, I'm 5 foot 4, and I was on my hands and knees with not much room to spare. Reminded me of my first apartment in Athens. In contrast, Holly had to bail after 15 meters in the tunnel that was widened and lit for tourists.

We also saw exactly what a B-52 shell can do the ground that it hits. Big....damn....crater. Our tour guide also showed us the ingeniously devilish booby traps made by the Viet Cong. Very sharp objects. I also got to shoot an AK-47 for 1 US dollar a round. Let's just say that we left the tunnels with the knowledge that humans can be especially inventive when thinking about ways to kill one another.

Exhibit Two in this case: War Remnants Museum. Blatant Anti-American propaganda mixed in with genuine, sincere, and grotesque demonstrations of how bad war really is for everyone involved. Through a partnership with the Commonwealth of Kentucky (not kidding), pictures of Agent Orange and napalm victims were juxtaposed with images of dying and wounded American and Vietnamese GI's, to be gazed on by silent witnesses 40 years removed.

Take away message: War is bad. Fried chicken is good.

The Seventeen Saloon

After a hard day of riding a hot bus and hot ferry boats back from the Mekong Delta, Doannie and I needed a cold beer and a comfortable place to hang our hats. What better place than the Seventeen Saloon, a western-themed bar complete with Vietnamese dressed in cowboy outfits and walls adorned with the headdresses of American Indians and some oddly misplaced paintings of Mardi Gras. After getting used to paying only 75 cents for a beer, the asking price of $5 for the local brew on draft was a bit shocking. But when the entertainment came on stage, it quickly became evident that it was worth every penny.


For anyone with me in Thailand in the spring of 1999, let's just say that this place gave the Thai Cowboy in Chaing Mai and the performers in Assless chaps singing "Country roads take me home" in Bangkok a run for their money. What we got was not rockabilly or sounds from the heartland, but rather a metal band with a bit of Bon Jovi thrown in. This was made all the more surreal by the fact that the band was wearing "40 Watt" T-shirts from Athens, Georgia and the debut of coordinated thrashing hair routines. During the instrumental portions of each song, the 3 scantily clad backup singers AND the male lead would launch into highly syncronized gyrations of their long locks. Please see attached video - words do not do it justice.

Mekong Delta

From Saigon, it's pretty easy to access the entire southern part of the country, and one of the most notable features is the famous Mekong River Delta. Both the rice basket of the country and the site of swampy battles during the American War (read: Vietnam War), it offered many sites and experiences. We got to do a home stay with a fabulous family that taught us how to cook some delta dishes and were exceptionally patient with Holly's Vietnamese.

Over two days, we took small boats throughout the many tributaries of the Mekong, visiting floating markets and islands throughout the delta. Even though we recognized that this was a big tourist event, it was still interesting to get a glimpse of life in this really rural part of Vietnam, and it was a nice contrast to the hustle and bustle of Ho Chi Minh City. Life in the delta revolves around things you can do on, with, and in your boat. People sell fruit, vegetables and snacksfrom their boats. People shuttle things to and fro on their boats. Lot's of people sleep in their boat. And judging from the large numbers of children scampering around on the boats, people do a lot of not sleeping on their boats, too.

The people of the delta are extraordinarily industrious and do things with rice, coconuts and bamboo that most people would never imagined possible. We saw people making rice paper and noodles, and learned that three or four people can churn out 500 kg of noodles per day using tools made only from bamboo. People there make coconut candy and also make a curious concoction: cobras and scorpions steeped in rice wine. Did Doannie have a sample? Did he have two? Yes. Did Holly? No. Did she grimace and make the yucky face? Also yes.

Arrived safely in Vietnam! + First Day

Welcome to our Vietnam trip blog! We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City safely on Tuesday evening and were quickly welcomed by the hustle and bustle of this crazy town.

We spent yesterday getting our bearings and visiting the VCHAP (Vietnam-CDC-Harvard Medical School AIDS Partnership) Clinic in District 5 of Saigon. We meet with their staff and saw three HIV case presentations, and in doing so, discovered a gap in our respective strengths. I know more Vietnamese than Holly, and she likewise knows more medicine, but my already tenuous ability to piece together meaning starts to break down when words like "Zidovudine" are thrown in there. The situation was made all the more difficult by the presence of Dr. Donn Colby, Medical Director of VCHAP-HCMC, who speaks Vietnamese as fluently as the guy that sold you pho at the street corner. Only he also knows the medicine.

From the Infectious Disease Hospital, we went to the Jade Emperor Pagoda, expecting to see a tourist-oriented, grand and ancient spectacle of a temple. Unexpectedly, but not unpleasantly, we instead found ourselves visiting a quiet, somewhat-shabby, but serene place of worship for the Buddhists of Ho Chi Minh City. We were some of the few tourists tip-toeing around people prostrating themselves before altars, suffused with the smell of the incense placed by worshippers going about their daily prayers and meditations. Turtles big and small splashed obliviously around the moat that surrounded the pagoda, symbols of good luck and fortune. Then the torrential rains came, reminding us that for all of the urbanity of HCMC, we were still essentially in the middle of a coastal jungle.

We decided to make the long walk that transects three of Saigon's 10 Districts back to our hotel. We saw huge differences in wealth, cleanliness and western influence, moving between streets with classic Vietnamese sidewalk food for sale from carts, to high-end shopping streets with young professionals and French pastry shops. We saw the pagodas and rickety shanty huts of Saigon's massive underclass and the huge French colonial buildings that still held the seats of the city's power. But most of all, we saw the scooters of Ho Chi Minh City.

Honda must do brisk scooter business here in Saigon, because you cannot turn a corner without seeing about 800 of the loud two-wheelers buzzing around you like a school of fish. Nor should you turn a corner without looking both ways ten times with three Hail Mary's thrown in for good measure. Only through the powers of divine intervention and Matrix-like bullet dodging do the people of this city survive unscathed. Scooters dip and dive between taxis, zip around pedestrians, plow up onto sidewalks in droves during rush hour. Seriously, the margins of clearance between people, cars, and scooters cannot be more than a few centimeters, and although I'm glad that all scooterers wear helmets, walking in this city makes me want to have a riot shield and a baseball bat.

Holly holds my hand like a small child and is afraid.