Halong Bay

Well I'm back at the Hanoi Hilton having spent the last three days in Halong Bay. Pictures don't really capture the place, but I'll add some here.










I'm going to save the rest for when I see you.

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Final Day in Phan Rang

The team finished the last day of surgery on Thursday and celebrated with the local nurses and OR help. It was a nice evening at one of the beach hotels with Keroke by the pool.


Some of our local hosts




The chief of ENT entertaining us.

We got on the bus for Saigon, where some returned to the US, some to Cambodia, and I went to Hanoi to spend 2 days on a junk boat in Halong Bay.
More when I get back to Hanoi.

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Dalat

For the weekend I decided that rather than going to a beach resort I would got to the town of Dalat, which is in the mountainous part off Vietnam. One does not think of Vietnam as mountainous, but much of the country is. We had a 4 hour ride up some rather steep roads with many switchbacks.




The road to Dalat

Once there we were treated to many interesting sights, including several Buddhist temples.





We also visited a large flower park and saw a beautiful exhibit of orchids.




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Food

They say an army travels on it's stomach, well so does a Resurge team. Each day we are given lunch made by a local woman. Today we had a lamb sausage, sweet potato, fried sticky rice and mango.

Our lunch
Just in case we hadn't enough, we decided to have "street food" for dinner. That meant we went to one of the local eating places that on the sidewalk. This one served a type of soup which had quails eggs, bean sprouts, peanuts and a type of ham as well as noodles in a broth.

My dinner.
Another place specialized in a sort of crepe. Hope to go there next week.

The crepes.
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Ytron

Ytron is an 18 month old child from one of the mountain villages. He was born with a cleft lip. When his mother heard a team was coming she walked for several hours and the took a bus, spending about 8 hours total time to get to the hospital. She arrived the day after we had clinic and the schedule was fairly full. The team decided that we would add him to the next days schedule even if it meant the day would run a little longer.




Before his surgery.




After his surgery.






With his Mom, nursing.

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HoChiMin City

Spent yesterday getting over jet lag acclimating to the 90 degree temp and seeing a few of the sights. Found a Hindu temple that I had seen on a previous trip. In fact it was only about a block from my hotel.




It is sandwiched between several taller buildings and only the very ornate entrance tower lets you know it is there. It was built by immigrants from southern India
It honors the goddess Miriamman, who is the goddess who protects against smallpox.




Iam at this time I am unable to add photos. Hope I can correct that.

Is There a Doctor on the Plane?

We are about 2 hours into the 15 hour flight to Hong Kong and just finishing our lunch when the announcement comes that they are looking for a doctor. I must confess that I have very mixed emotions when that happens. If someone is having a heart attack or something like that, I feel pretty unprepared t deal with it. Anyway, as I had told my seat mate what I did I could not escape.
Lucky it was just a pain problem due to a tooth abscess and it was easy for me to recommend some stronger pain medication that was in the medical box. The rest of the flight was uneventful
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