…in Quang Tri and the ancient imperial city of Hue today. So grateful that this story takes me to the far corners of what was once the Republic of South Vietnam.  This country is so beautiful and diverse – I asked my traveling companions from Da Nang today as we were traveling north on Highway 1 along the coast if there was any difference between people in Da Nang and people in Hue and Quang Tri and the unanimous response was, “up here their accent is funny and the people are fake”. Guess that settles that.

While we were in Hue this morning my ankle, that has been giving me trouble after abusing it in the rice paddies earlier in the week, decided to swell up and become so painful that I couldn’t walk.  We were in a small coffee shop talking about it when a woman told us of an elderly woman nearby that heals with her hands and herbal remedies.

What the hell.  We load up and follow her down a narrow lane to a beautifully kept house with flowers and herbs of all varieties growing in every corner of the yard.  We wait outside while the woman goes inside to negotiate my treatment.  My interpreter Lynda is standing next to me and can hear every word spoken inside. Apparently the healer’s son in law was killed yesterday in Saigon leaving a wife and three children, the youngest a year and a half old.  The woman with healing powers would like to help but she is unable to connect with her god-given healing powers. She is ashamed to send us away, but feels unable to perform in her grief.

We are really all OK with that after hearing the woman’s tragic story. Van takes one arm, Tam the other to support me down the front steps when we are halted by a voice from within.  The healer has relented and cannot let us go without giving her magic a try.  Van and Tam wheel around, me in the middle, and we make our way into the dimly lit house.  Hanging on a mirror on the wall is a full 18 inch swatch of silver human hair.  On the bed is an ancient woman with silver hair (matching that hanging on the wall), she can’t weigh 90 pounds. She motions for me to sit on a chair next to the bed and put my foot up where she can work on it.  She uses a spray unknown to me as she works my foot, probing, searching, massaging.  Finally she suggests that the swelling has gone on too long and is too severe for her to diagnose the problem.  She tells me that the foot must be X-rayed. I found myself wishing I had found her a week earlier.  We made an ambitious attempt to pay her for her services, but the woman declined any payment.  She explained that she only uses her skills on those she feels she has a special connection wth. That is good enough for me and we make our way to a nearby hospital for an X-ray.

At the clean and unexpectedly efficient hospital we learn that services are indeed available, but they must be paid for in cash prior to each procedure.  I immediately pay 600,000 VDN (about $27) to be treated by an orthopedist.  Next comes the series of X-rays which come to a tidy 300,000 (about $14).  After the X-rays the orthopedist shows me the break in my foot which he can treat in one of two ways.  The first will involve a couple of screws and my not being able to walk for six weeks, the other is to cast it up and deal wth it later on my return to the US. No mystery attached to my choice there.  The casting cost just under a million VDN (about $45), but was done right then and there on the spot.  

So for less than what my deductible would have been for a simple visit in the states, I was on my way.  Well, I am in a cast, but still…

Fortunately my adventuring around Vietnam was at an end anyway, On my return to the apartment in Da Nang tomorrow it’s just write, write, and write some more.  I have all the field data my body can take at this point.