A week in, and I still have this miserable ear infection. Made yet another trip to the hospital today, this time in Hanoi, and guess what? No doctors on Sundays! I've advised Stacey that she clearly needs to move here to work, as doctors don't work evenings and weekends except in Emerge. Insane. But let me back up a bit and describe Hue.
First off, my trip to the hospital there, which can only be described as pure frustration. I went to the only non-emergency desk/reception area I could find and asked where to go, and of course they sent me down to emerge, where I knew I didn't belong. A funny thing about people in Vietnam is that nobody will help you unless you pester them (which is hugely ironic given how often you are pestered yourself). I stood at the emerge desk for about 5 minutes before I caved and bothered one of the clearly very busy docs, who passed me off with a heaping dose of impatience to the guy that drives the stretcher cart thingy. He took me through a winding maze of buildings and paths to the correct ward, where I got out and proceeded to wander around, utterly confused, for about 20 minutes. No doctors anywhere, just patients. No nurses either, no administration staff, nobody that I could direct a question to. After those 20 minutes I gave up and left the ward, searching around for anyone with a white coat or scrubs that might be able to help me. 10 or 12 attempts later, none of the staff I accosted spoke English, aside from the ability to say 'no'. So I gave up and returned to the hostel, defeated. Luckily I have an appointment tomorrow at the hospital here in Hanoi and I've never been more excited to see a doctor - this infection needs to die.
Now back to Hue. Not a good choice on my part. A beautiful city in some parts to be sure, but part of being sick is not having the energy to keep your guard up, and in a tourist trap of a town like Hue, that causes problems. Hue is the seat of the former Imperial Citadel, built around 1800 (side note: I'll upload pictures later, but right now this computer seems to think that my photos are programs and so won't upload them - wheeeeee!). Oddly enough I picked up a book in Hoi An called 'Dispatches', a great book about Vietnam that I had read my first year of Uni, and in it there's a bit about Hue and how extensively the Americans destroyed the palace in order to root out the VC that were entrenched there. Wish I had've read that before I arrived, because there was not a whole lot left to see. Much had been re-created, but that's hardly worth seeing as it lacks charm or aura. What was left were stretches of wall and moat and not much else. After having been through Angkor and such, it was utterly disappointing, but that's what I get for not doing the research. That being said, having read the passages in the book dedicated to the author's time in the city gave it a new dimension that I really enjoyed: I could really imagine it as he had seen it. And that was all that I liked about Hue because frankly I only had the energy for one day of sightseeing and I wasted it.
To me, the real hidden legacy of the Vietnam war is the cult of hustle born of occupation. This goes for all major cities in Vietnam and maybe I just felt it more because as I mentioned above, I was sick and my guard was down, but Hue was an unyielding nightmare of scams and propositions. The moto drivers there were easily the most aggressive and annoying I've run into, some of them even going so far as to grab your arm and attempting to steer you toward their bike. I had one guy follow me for a solid 3-4 minutes while I was out for a walk, he couldn't believe that I was just walking and didn't want to be driven somewhere. And they're not just selling transportation; they're selling sex, drugs, anything you want (they also can't believe you don't want weed or boom-boom with lady). Not at a reasonable price either: you have to bargain your ass off and invariably walk away just to get them even close to a fair taxi price. I took the metered taxi every time, just to avoid them, with the exception of coming back from the hospital, when I couldn't find one. Moto rides are typically cheap because of course you're just piggybacking on a bike, but the guy outside the hospital that flagged me down refused to accept the logic that I wanted to pay less than the taxi ride TO the hospital. Eventually I got him down to the same price, all the while scanning for a taxi that never appeared, and just accepted out of frustration and exhaustion. Sadly, it's this attitude that they prey on.
A few of the other scams I've run into, by no means a complete list:
1. Arrived in Hue starving and exhausted, went to a restaurant that was a little hole in the wall, and I didn't notice that it didn't have prices on the menu, just ordered a standard usually-cheap meal. You can guess what came next: when I got the bill it was the most expensive meal I've eaten in Vietnam. I tried to protest, but it was me against a large number of them, and what could I do except risk getting my ass kicked and the rest of my money taken? You just suck it up and learn your lesson.
2. Met a man named Mr Lee(rolling my eyes even as I type that) who I had seen trying to talk to every Westerner that passed him on the street before I got to him. Asked me where I was from, etc, and gave me the usual 'oh I have family in Canada!' bit, asked if I wanted to go have some lunch. Told him I was on my way to see the Citadel, he said he'd meet me back there at 2pm (I agreed to get him off my back, knowing I wouldn't be back to see him). Clearly he was trying to get me to a certain spot for commission. And because my brain was working at about 3% capacity (dad I can hear you making a joke all the way from Russia), I walked back along the same path at 2pm, where he was waiting. When I told him I had a massive headache and was going to go to the hospital, he tried to take me to a doctor 'friend' of his. When I refused, he turned...unpleasant. He pestered me for a solid 5 blocks. He was basically a step up from the moto guys, well-spoken enough to put on this friendly persona but really just hoping to earn commission off of anything he could steer you toward.
3. Arrived in Hanoi via bus and the exit is swarmed with moto and taxi drivers looking for touts, but the new trick I hadn't seen before was a guy getting onto the bus and declaring that he was from the bus company and that if you told him where you were going you'd get a free shuttle. We all believed him until he led us to his large taxi-van, where we all laughed at him and walked away to find a real taxi.
4. Think I've mentioned this one before, but taxi drivers that take you past a different hotel and urge youto check out the rooms, 'very cheap, very nice! You look, you look, I wait!'. No chance in hell.
Again, I think to a certain extent I'm just really sensitive to this stuff right now, as normally it rolls right off my back. In fact I talked to one moto driver returning from the Imperial Palace who was thrilled that I waved him off with a smile and a 'no thanks'. We chatted about how rude people can be, but sadly in my mind I couldn't help wonder if he was going to pitch me on a ride at the end. But no, when I said I was going back to the hotel then to the hospital he showed genuine concern, shook my hand and wished me well. So of course not all of the apples are rotten.
Anyway, I arrived in Hanoi this morning after another night bus ordeal. This one featured a bus driver who insisted on playing music and concert videos of exclusively female pop stars on the video screens in the bus, dimming the lights at 8pm in order to do so. By 9 just about everyone was asleep but he kept the videos blaring until about 1am. My berth was one of the uppers, and so with a speaker inches from my head, sleeping was even more difficult than usual. It was actually the first time I'd been grateful for the infection as it acted like a natural ear plug. Same deal at 5am, time for the local news over the PA! Was anybody up before that? Nope! Lots of moaning and sighing from the passengers when that kicked in. Add this to the fact that the bus stopped a solid 20 times (that's not exaggerating) to pick up small parcels or snacks for the driver and that they picked up additional passengers that slept in the aisles. Family run bus maybe? Hard to say, but this is Vietnam in a nutshell. I'll describe Hanoi more when I can upload photos and once I've seen more of it, but so far I'm enjoying it: there's a beautiful little lake nearby that was full of Vietnamese (likely more than the usual Sunday because it's Ho Chi Minh's birthday, a big deal here), and lounging beside it was a great way to kill some time before check-in.
Until the next one.
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