Tetherd Cow Ahead

So, Nurse Myra and I have been invited to visit our friends Tuan and Trinh. They’ve just finished doing some renovations on their apartment and they’re showing us around.

The gadget above, sitting on a table, catches my eye.

You’re probably thinking what I thought – some kind of tennis racquet, right? With a power button…? Hmmm. That’s weird. Maybe for a game or something?

“No, no, no!” says Tuan, and picks it up.

He swishes it through the air and there is a z-z-z-z-z-a-p! You know the kind of thing – like an Insect-O-Cutor® sound. And a little violet flash of light.

Oh man! It’s a rechargeable electric mosquito zapper that you can swing! All my life have I wanted this gadget, had I only known it existed.*

Yes, I had found the:

Of course I know that you’re way ahead of me with the ‘all purpose‘. Like, it’s just one purpose, surely? That being the total annihilation of the little blood-sucking creeps.

Aha! Again you’re forgetting the VCF (Vietnam Chaos Factor). Shall I elaborate? Sit back, grab a bowl of dried watermelon seeds, pop yourself a can of Bird’s Nest White Fungus Soda and get comfy.

Nurse Myra and I knew we had to get some of these things to take back home. Hell, with some judicious plugs from Engadget and boingboing I reckon I could sell off a container-load of hand-wieldable Ozzie Mozzie Terminatorsâ„¢ come Sydney summer, but for the moment we thought maybe we’d grab just a modest half dozen for friends and family. Next morning we headed off on our bicycles to a nearby electrical appliance shop.

With the help of our phrase book and some RADA-quality mosquito-extermination miming (with zapping sounds), we simultaneously amused the locals and procured our goods with lavish amounts of our exotic currency†. Now this is what Free Trade is all about!

Simplicity itself.

Unfortunately, Free Trade often comes a cropper when you cross the border, and The All-Purpose Mosquito-Killer Bat was to demonstrate one of its other purposes rather quickly; it is also very effective at holding up the departure of aircraft.

The next day, just as we were about to board our already delayed flight from Danang to Hanoi, we were taken aside by airport security people and quizzed about our belongings.

“You have a mosquito killer in your baggage, yes?” said the polite‡ official.

“Er… yes,” I said.

“It must be switched off for safety reasons,” she said.

“Oh, er, of course,” I said, feeling like a complete idiot. Little zillion-volt spark generator; aircraft-fuel/oxygen mix in the baggage compartment – I got the picture pretty quickly.

The Cellotape came out, there was some quick swishing and sticking – they’d done this kind of thing before. And we were on our way.

Danang to Hanoi, no problem. Hanoi to Sydney…

Nurse Myra got all her zappers confiscated at Sydney Customs.

“But why?” she asked.

“Because they are classified as dangerous weapons,” said the Customs Official.

Well, sure, if mosquitos are drawing up the Import Legislation.

“He told me you could kill a dog with one,” she told me later.

“You could kill a dog with a litre bottle of single-malt whisky,” I said “But they didn’t stop me from bringing that through”.

They somehow failed to stop me from bringing my Mosquito-Killer Bat through either. Tsk. How careless is that?

Do they have any idea who they’re dealing with?

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*Those living in colder climes sans mosquitos may not fully realize the magnitude of my rapture at this discovery. Calloo Callay! No more prancing naked around the bedroom in the middle of hot summer nights with a rolled up newspaper (well, not in the pursuit of exacting vengeance on mosquitos, anyway).

†They cost us about $3 each…

‡I should probably just dispense with the ‘polite’ whenever I’m talking about Vietnamese officialdom; it can just be assumed.

Although my time in Vietnam was hugely enjoyable and full of laughs and surprises, there was, as some of you know, a more serious side to the trip too.

Nurse Myra goes to Vietnam partly as a break from the Sydney winter but mostly to do volunteer work at an orphanage in Quang Ngai. I spent some of my time with her at the orphanage, and I thought I might tell you the story of the Dentist.

Children in Vietnam don’t get much in the way of dental care. Those of us who live in privileged Western societies mostly take for granted the fact that our teeth are not decayed, chipped, rotting or causing pain. In Vietnam, those things are part of everyday life. The kids at the orphanage do have some health care, but for reasons that are possibly cultural, dental care is not a priority in the Orphanage Scheme Of Things.

This year, Nurse Myra raised some money back home in order that a dentist be organized to examine the children and carry out any work required. I think she originally thought this would be an easy task to accomplish. As it turns out, it was full of obstacles. Politics, cultural misunderstandings and other orphanage ‘priorities’, along with language difficulties, conspired to make the visit to the dentist a lot more complex than simply booking an appointment.

Truly, if it had been me trying to get this done, I would have thrown in the towel. The extreme resistance that the orphanage administration showed to this generous act seemed to me to be simply baffling. Nurse Myra is a very patient and persistent person though, and it is to her great credit that after nearly four weeks of negotiation she managed to get most of the children (nearly 80 kids) thoroughly checked, and all their dental problems dealt with. It was a big task. Only two children required just a simple ‘clean’ – most of them had a lot more work than that. I can’t begin to tell you how ridiculously small an amount of money was needed to do this.*

The boy above is our Poster Boy†. There are not too many Before and After shots of any of the kids. It’s kinda hard to get Vietnamese children to smile for photos.

Maybe from now on though, the orphanage kids won’t feel so bad about it.

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*Consider: a trip to the dentist for a child here in Australia, with, say, a couple of fillings and a clean would cost at minimum $50 (US). For 80 kids that’s $4000. It cost about a fifth of that.

†You all know that I’m a whiz with Photoshop, but you’ll have to trust me that I didn’t tinker with these shots.

For reasons far too entangled to go into, Nurse Myra and I were bounced from our booked flight from Danang to Hanoi, and the enchantingly polite and apologetic staff* from Vietnam Airlines bundled us off for a few hours to Danang’s Bamboo Green hotel.

Some people might see this as an inconvenience. Here at The Cow, we look upon such things as an opportunity.

Aha! More guest rules:

Well, of course I already knew by now to check my dry squids at the kitchen, but Conspicuously bulky materials? And Animals including pets? Damn that souvenir water buffalo! Busted on two counts. Well, three I guess – it didn’t smell too good either.

Bamboo Green is the only hotel I’ve ever stayed at which had its own theme song (handily provided as a laminated sheet on the bedside table†):

I think Hyatt and Hilton could learn something from this.

I’m available. And not too expensive.
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*Seriously, how can these people possibly be so nice? It doesn’t matter what goes wrong they handle it with such manners and aplomb that you can’t help but smilingly go along with whatever alternative they offer. (“We are so sorry that your plane has been engulfed by toxic fumes, please accept this plate full of crushed jagged glass and a trip on a rusted bus as a substitute…” Sure!)

In fact, in this case because they had to put us on a later flight, they paid for our temporary stay in a Danang hotel along with a meal, and, I discovered later, crammed a wad of cash (nearly half the fare) in our ticket folder by way of compensation. I guess I’m not used to this kind of concern. Well, not without a lot of whining anyway. In my experience it’s usually: “Your plane’s grounded bud, deal with it.”

†Well, I suppose you never know when you’ll be at a loss for material for a singalong…

Our floating home for a couple of days in Vietnam’s North, on beautiful Halong Bay. The junk Huong Hai.

We have Room 101:

Reverend: “Wow, this floorboard is really squeaky… listen to this,” (pushes foot up and down on board): squ-e-e-u-p, squ-e-e-u-p, squ-e-e-u-i-o-p…

Nurse Myra: “Um, I heard that sound before when I wasn’t near the board. It was doing it all by itself. I don’t think it’s a squeaky board”

Reverend: “Sure it is. Listen – when I push the board, it squeaks,” (pushes board): squ-e-e-u-p, “When I push it again, it squeaks,” (pushes board again): squ-e-e-u-p, squ-e-e-u-p -chitter- squ-e-e-k-k-k-ity-squ-e-e-k.

Takes foot off board, and walks away a few paces. Squ-e-e-u-p, squ-e-e-e-e-ek, squeek, squeek, squeek.

Uh-oh.

Oh man. Room 101. Of course. Everyone knows what’s in Room 101.

Nothing about photographs though.

May Contain Traces of Nuts*

This is a little bag of snacky-type things they hand out on Vietnam Airlines.

This is the ingredient list on the back:

So far so good. Roasted mixed nuts, salt, vegetable oil. Yep, you know exactly what you’re gonna see when you open that little packet, right?

Wrong! You are in Vietnam, remember, where all rules and laws are merely suggestions.

This is what you’re really going to see:

I have marked for you the actual nuts. Yes, you counted right, three (3) cashews. Which as my friend Simon pointed out, are not even technically nuts. Everything else is definitely not a nut, even the cunning little things that look like peanuts. There are peas, little starchy corn things, and the fake peanuts that are probably made of some kind of crunchy soy product.

True, there was salt (probably – it tasted salty), and vegetable oil (I guess being charitable it could even have been peanut oil…). All in all though, the ingredient list is a much better guide to what’s not in the packet.

I had such a great time in Vietnam.

In Quang Ngai City, where I spent most of my time, there is a new supermarket. We love the supermarket. It is a place where you can spend a good few hours browsing.

In the liquor section, there was a bottle of wine which was labelled ‘Wine with Young Bees’. Floating in the bottom inch and a half of the bottle was a sludge of bee larvae. I held it up and to an old man who was watching us curiously examining the swirling insect brood.

“Good?” I mimed, with a big smile and a raise of the eyebrows.

“Nope”, he mimed back, shaking his head and making a face that said “this is one of the most disgusting things ever invented. I don’t know what they were thinking.”

Outside the supermarket, the road is divided into two sets of two lanes by a median strip. This is the only median strip in Quang Ngai. A median strip in Quang Ngai makes about a much sense as an amber traffic light.

You don’t need to understand Vietnamese to get the sense of perplexity people feel about the median strip.

“Why have they done this? What – we are supposed to cycle all the way down the end of this to the corner, turn around and come back to get to something on the other side? Why are they messing with our heads like this? Next they’ll be coming up with some daft concept like, oh, saying you can only go one way down a street or something.”

Consequently, if you need to get to a place on the other side of the median strip from where you are, you just ignore it! You just get on the other side of the median strip and cycle to where you want to be. Like it doesn’t exist.

I love Vietnam. Did I mention?

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*If you’re lucky.