Giong Rieng Hospital

Tuesday, July 21, 2011

3:45 PM (Vietnam Time)

Yesterday, Scott, Ngan, and I went to Giong Rieng District Hospital, which is in the countryside of sorts. It was really hot that morning, so I was feeling overheated and wasn’t sure if I could make it. After downing a bottle of water, we headed for the bus. This was the first time that Scott and I had been on a public transportation bus. The other buses we have taken were charter buses for long distances, and thus, were much more well-kept. This bus had about 10 or 15 seats in it. There were one-seaters lined along the left-hand side of the bus, 5 in total. There was a bench on the right-hand side and one in the back. The rest of the bus was open space so that people with cargo – bags of herbs, fruits, or whatever else – could have room to store it. The leathered seats were torn and peeling. Once the bus arrived, we had to quickly hop on the bus, then the woman inside, went around and collected money from everyone. Ngan saw her neighbor from her hometown on the bus, and we all waved to say “hello.” After about 10 minutes, we transferred to a different bus.

The ride was scenic. We rode along the river and could see all the bridges made of wood and branches as we drove by. The three of us quickly fell asleep during this one hour bus ride. When we arrived, we were still half a kilometer from the hospital. Men with motorbikes approached us, as they always do when we get off a bus, asking us if we needed a ride anywhere. They wanted to charge us 20,000 Dong (equal to $1 USD), which was twice as much as they should. Ngan shook her head vigorously and said that it was too expensive. We defiantly walked away and asked directions from local coffee shop keepers by the side of the road. We walked along the side of the dirt road until we reached a bridge. Once we crossed the bridge, we turned left and walked through an outdoor market. The sun was blazing, and I had to borrow Ngan’s fold out straw hat. Ngan covered up with hood and mask to protect her skin from the sun. We continued walking, asking directions every few minutes.

We finally arrived in front of the hospital and were surprised at how much more beautiful it was compared to the general hospital. We ventured inside and asked to see Bac Si Thao (Dr. Thao), the vice director of the hospital. We were directed to the ICU. There was an outdoor courtyard with a perfectly kept and trimmed garden. We found Bac Si Thao, and he was extremely welcoming, and his English was quite good. We talked with him for awhile about our study, our goals, and what patients were being included in our study. He made many phone calls to numerous departments in his hospital, asking around for patients for us to interview. In the traditional medicine ward, we were so excited when the doctors said we had 4 patients to interview. Sadly, we found out that they all had had previous strokes, and therefore, had to be excluded from our study. We returned to the ICU, where there were 3 patients to interview.

The first patient was a 42 year old man who had a hemorrhagic stroke which caused him to be completely paralyzed on his right side. During my examination, I asked him to try his best to lift his right arm in the air. After struggling to move it, I saw tears gather at the corner of his eyes. Asking him to move his arms and legs illustrated to him how disabled he was. I then asked him to start reading a few lines, and he let out whimper and started crying. I saw tears dripping onto the sheet next to him and looked to see his wife crying to his left. My heart hurt for him as I watched him cry. I touched his wife and him on their shoulders, and I tried my best to console them. I told them that many of the patients I had seen could no longer understand anything, and definitely could not read as he could. I told him that, to me, he looked stronger than many of the patients I had seen. I patted his wife on the shoulder and tried so hard to comfort her. I can’t imagine how they felt, the thoughts running through their minds about how he would earn a living now; a man his young age disabled because of a stroke. Ngan and I looked at each other, and we both almost started crying ourselves. It was the first time, out of all the patients we had seen, that we had seen someone cry. They slowly stopped their tears and allowed me to finish my exam. Ngan then proceeded to interview them for the study. I turned around and looked at Scott and saw sadness in his big, green eyes too. I wish there was something more that we could have done to help.

We interviewed one more patient and headed to lunch. The Giong Rieng Hospital has a restaurant run by the nutritionist on site, and that is where we headed. Bac Si Thao was excited to share his food and his restaurant with us. For lunch, he ordered us so much food: we had Vietnamese-style short ribs (suong), fried duck eggs, fish from the river, vegetable soup, and some pickled cucumbers. During lunch, we exchanged words in English and Vietnamese. We taught Bac Si Thao, and in return, he taught us. Bac Si Thao was interested in learning about us and what the medical school system is like in the U.S. For dessert, we enjoyed fresh jackfruit and some Vietnamese jello.

After lunch, we went back to interview our last stroke patient of the day. We said our goodbyes to Bac Si Thao. We walked back to the bus station, and we ran to hop on it. We boarded it like a pro this time. The three of us sat in the one-seaters against the window, and I quickly fell asleep. However, the ride was so bumpy that I almost fell out of my seat. Ngan tapped me awake, and all three of us moved to the back of the bus where we subsequently fell asleep again.

Wandering the market

Audrey and Ngan browsing the goods

Meandering back to the bus stop

Views from our bus

A river dominated economy

Buddhism and buses

Duck passengers!

The Next Day:

On Wednesday, Scott and I went to the hospital and waited for Ngan. We gave her a call, and she told us that she was down with the fever. I told her to rest and get better. Scott and I had already committed going to the hospital, so I told Scott that I might be able to interview the patients using the Vietnamese questionnaire. It might just take a longer time. We headed to the ICU where we interviewed our first patient of the day. She was a 60-something year-old woman who was experiencing right-sided weakness. None of her family members could read Vietnamese, so I had to try my best to read the questions out loud to the them or read the English version and translate. We slowly moved through the questionnaire. Finally, a man from the family came, who could read some, and he was able to help me a bit. After an hour, we finally finished. It felt like such an accomplishment. Have I really learned that much Vietnamese while I have been here?

Scott and I moved up to the Neurology ward, where there was one more patient waiting for us. This is the first time that I actually saw a patient with paralysis of her eyes muscles. She was not be able to move her eyes to her paralyzed side, for her it was to the left. Her mouth was severely drooping, and she could not use her left arm and leg. After I examined her, I began the questionnaire. I asked her children the questions. They could read somewhat, so it helped me a lot. Some of the questions can be uncomfortable to answer because they ask about stress and depression, and many families do not like sharing that information. The son was a bit reluctant, but we eventually got through the interview. At the end, the daughter asked me if she will ever get back to normal. It was hard for me to answer, but I also could not lie to them. I told the family that she may get better, but she may never get back to 100% normal. Many of the patients I have met in Vietnam believe that there is an oral medication out there that can cure any disease or ailment. I had to tell them that there was no medicine here or in America that their mom could take that would cure her. The best they could do was to try to push her to use her weak arms and legs (I didn’t know how to say physical therapy), and to talk to her and challenge her so that she uses her brain everyday. I could just see the hope in their eyes fade a little. The son covered his face with his hands and looked distraught. They put so much hope in American doctors, and yet Scott and I couldn’t do anything more for them. They then asked why we were asking them all the questions. I tried to explain that the point of the interview was to discover why people in the Kien Giang province were getting strokes, and if we learned the reason, maybe we could help future patients prevent their strokes. I did not know how to say “research” or “study.” We left the hospital feeling happy that we were able to interview 2 patients without Ngan even though it took twice as long, but Scott and I were also both feeling heavy-hearted as if we were the bearers of bad news.

After a home-cooked lunch, Scott and I met up with Thu, Quoc, Richard, and some PVNF volunteers at the Tropical Coffee Shop. We came in, and they were seated downstairs after pushing many tables together. Many of them were doing work on their computers, so Scott and I took ours out and worked on the blog. It was a calm, relaxing end to the day.

-Audrey

Summer service camp

Monday, July 19, 2011

Today we went with the PVNF group to do a medical mission in a small village in the countryside. We had to meet at 5 am to depart on the buses. Yawning and sluggish, Scott and I made our way over. The buses had been assigned to all the volunteers, so Scott and I got onto one of the buses that had extra room in the back. In the States, the back of the bus is always bumpier, and in Vietnam, it is much worse. We could feel every little rough patch in the road. We fell asleep, our heads jostling to and fro. Every time we crossed a bridge, the back of the bus would jump up because the ramp up and down was not very smooth. My bottom was literally lifted off the seat. We got to the river, where buses and people alike boarded a ferry. Scott and I climbed out of the buses and walked to the front of the ferry, where we could see it slowly making its way towards the jungle. To the right and left of us, we could see little speedboats passing by and men in their fishing boats. We also watched the sunrise. I don’t know if I have ever been up early enough to actually watch the sun come up over the horizon, but this time I did. A sunrise is much softer than a sunset. The colors are lighter and less vibrant, as if the sun itself is waking up too.

Project Vietnam gets an EARLY start

Early morning beam of light

Banana delivery

Many people in the Mekong Delta travel by river

Boating into the sunrise

Once we got off the ferry, everyone shuffled back onto the buses to fall asleep for another 2 hour-long bumpy ride. We were woken up sporadically to get out of the bus so that the bus could cross bridges over the river. Apparently, certain bridges are weaker than others and cannot handle all of the weight. We finally arrived to the site, where the buses were parked, and we all filed out to hike to a small, 10-bedroom hospital, which was practically in the jungle.

Sleepy volunteers on the ferry

Capturing the moon

The troops disembark

We had arrived at 8 am, and already, hundreds of patients were lined up outside of the exam rooms. PVNF volunteers immediately went to their stations to do crowd control and take vitals. All of the providers, medical students and doctors, were called into a room to be assigned tasks and to be briefed for the day. Scott and I chose to be in the same room as Richard, an MS4 from UCSD, and Dr. Ed, an internist who works in Huntington Beach, CA. All of us piled into a small, poorly ventilated room with one fan, two translators to the each of us. Richard gave me a run down of all the medications that PVNF hands out. The most important for me would be: ibuprofen, vitamins, calcium, and Mebendazole (anti-parasite).

Many anxious patients

Nervous about his appointment

Slowly, the patients began filing in, ticket and papers in hand. I saw one patient with Richard and was ready to go off on my own with Scott shadowing me. My first patient was an elderly man with a cough and itching with no visible rash. The man was tan and his skin was leathery. His right eye was cloudy and nearly white. I began interviewing him. With so little time and in another language, I basically forgot how to take a history. I forgot my OLD CARTS, and I was asking questions in a very disorganized manner. I mostly was speaking Vietnamese with the patient, but every once in awhile, I needed the help of the translator, Kim, a recent high school graduate. I took a listen to his lungs and heard some soft wheezing, so I asked him to force air out as he exhaled, and I was able to illicit a stronger wheeze. He said he has had his cough, on and off for a few years. I couldn’t discover the cause of his somewhat arbitrary itching, and neither could Dr. Ed and Richard. I also listened to his heart, which was normal. After taking his social history, I discovered that he had been smoking for 30+ years, which led me to believe he probably had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or a chronic bronchitis of sorts. I prescribed him some anti-cough and anti-histamine medications. I counseled him on trying his best to quit smoking or to smoke less or else his cough and breathing problems would continue to worsen. As he walked out, I wondered what I had really done for him. The anti-cough medicine would not cure his cough, and what would happen once he ran out of anti-histamine? Would he just continue itching for the rest of his life? Yet, he woke up early and sat in line all morning just to see an American “doctor”, or rather, medical student. I can only hope that he does try his best to quit smoking. Scott sat patiently by my side, observing and watching.

Audrey gears up

Richard's seeing patients

That morning, I got two other elderly patients who also were experiencing itching. One of the men I thought had scabies, itching caused by a small insect that burrows in your skin and lays eggs in clothing and sheets, but I could see no visible rashes. Finally, I started seeing some pediatric patients. One young girl came in who was 11 years-old, but she looked like she was seven or eight. She was very cute; her hair was in pigtails, and she spoke softly. She was by herself, so I guessed that her mother was being examined in another room. Her chief complaint was that she has had loss of appetite and difficultly sleeping. One look at her, and I could tell that she was malnourished. She had bags under her eyes, her skin was pale, and she looked tired. She answered my questions as best she could. After the history-taking, I listened to her heart and lungs which were both normal. I examined her abdomen while she was sitting on a chair. It was difficult to assess her. There were no exam tables and no where for her to lie down. I consulted with Richard, and we both agreed that she probably had some parasite which was causing her loss of appetite and malnutrition. I prescribed her Mebendazole, an anti-parasite medication, a multivitamin, and Calcium + Vitamin D. All of the children I saw that day had the same look: bags under their eyes, pale, underweight, and tired. What a contrast to the obese and overfed children of America. Couldn’t we just find some sort of balance and equalization of these extremes?

During my examinations, Scott and I saw and heard a lot of firsts. We saw our first perforated eardrum, which was a black hole in the pale grey membrane. We heard our first Grade 1 systolic murmur of a 14-year-old boy. It was a soft whoosh-dub, whoosh-dub, for every beat in contrast to the strong lub-dub, lub-dub of a heartbeat. The boy had been experiencing fatigue, especially after running around, for some time. His mom told us that he had been diagnosed with some sort of valve issue by the Vietnamese doctors here. I asked her if she had ever noticed her son’s lips turn blue from strenuous exercise, and she said no. I told her that there was no medicine that we could give her to make the valve problem go away, but I told her that if the fatigue worsens, she must see a doctor again. We also saw our first “cerumen impaction.” This may sound impressive, but don’t be fooled, it just means a lot of earwax in the ear. I looked into a young girl’s ear and could not see her eardrum, just a lot of dark substance. I was so worried because I had no idea what all the strange substance. Richard comes by and says, “Yeah, that’s just a lot of earwax.” Scott and I saw more patients, and he did many of the lung and heart exams after I showed him how.

Many of the patients wanted medication that would cure them and make their problems disappear. I would ask a patient a question about her symptoms, and she would respond, “You are the doctor. You tell me what problem I have. You tell me what I am supposed to feel.” I think they put a lot of weight on what we had to say or, at least, expected some sort of miracle from us. I did the best I could, and mostly prescribed ibuprofen for pain, vitamins, and occasionally, high blood pressure medications. Even so, what would happen when their high blood pressure meds ran out in two months? Would their blood pressure spike again and cause a hemorrhagic stroke (bleeding in the brain) like so many patients that I saw at Kien Giang General Hospital? I could only hope that we were doing some good for them, if only to offer them the comfort of seeing a “doctor”.

We broke for lunch and all the volunteers crowded outside where there were large bowls of rice, stir-fried noodles, and vegetables. We rested for one hour and ate bananas for dessert. Afterwards, we got back into the grind of things. I don’t know how doctors do back this at home. They have to examine so many patients in so little time. On top of all that, you have stay alert, attentive, and in a good mood. Our last patient of the day was a young 2 year-old boy who has had loose stools for 2 months. He complained of stomach aches and just seemed a bit tired. Scott and I guessed that he probably had an intestinal parasite as well, so we prescribed him Mebendazole. It was finally time to pack up and leave. We all got on the bus and immediately fell asleep, regardless of the bumpiness. We ate dinner with the volunteers again at the same restaurant, Nha Hang Nam Nho, and everyone went back to their respective hotels to immediately fall asleep after the events of the day.

-Audrey

Once upon a time

Sunday, July 18, 2011

8:47 PM (Vietnam Time)

Last night, Scott and I went to our first club in Vietnam. PVNF has an annual “Summer Service Camp” each summer where a group of 100 people, doctors, medical students, undergraduates, and high schoolers, travel around Vietnam to set up clinic and give medical care to communities in need. Quoc, Richard, and Thu were coming to Rach Gia! After their first clinic on Saturday, Quoc, Richard and the rest of the PVNF volunteers decided to go clubbing and invited us along. Scott and I, being the old couple that we are, were comfortably in our pajamas and watching a movie on Netflix. But, we told each other that we had to rally for it would be a fun night! We got dressed up and headed to Zara Bar in Khu Lan Bien, which was right next to our favorite restaurants and coffee shops all this time. We walked into the club and trance music was pumping so loud that I could feel my entire body pumping to the music. My eardrums were vibrating to the base as if they were base speakers themselves. Scott was the tallest one there and one of 2 Caucasian males. Colored and strobe lights were flashing to the beat, and Scott and I made our way to the dance floor, where we did our goofy dance as we always do. Quoc and Richard were being extremely social and mingling with all the volunteers. We tried to meet a few, but the music was just too loud. Around midnight, we had to leave because the owners of the guesthouse lock the gate at night, and we didn’t want to wake them up too late to unlock it for us. We headed back to the house, found out that we weren’t the only ones coming home late, felt better about ourselves, and finished watching the movie we started on Netflix.

Today, we went to Ha Tien, a coastal town where many of the locals go to the beach, with the rest of the PVNF group. We met them at their dining hall at a hotel in Khu Lan Bien, and the group set off in four small buses toward Ha Tien. The drive was extremely bumpy, and I could feel my stomach sloshing around during the 2 hour drive. We finally arrived in what seemed a random and underdeveloped town, but it turned out to house one of Ha Tien’s precious pagodas. We climbed a large flight of stairs to the pagoda which was basically inside of a mountain. Once you cross the entrance, you stand before a large Buddhist altar and two monks sitting off to the right. The interior of the pagoda is cool and water drips from deep crevices overhead. We explored the cave and climbed up stairs to overlook the view of the countryside outside. We could see the mountains of Cambodia just on the horizon. At the top of one of the faces of the mountain, Ngan told me the story of this pagoda:

Once upon a time, an evil man imprisoned a good man inside the cave with a large mystical bird. The man was able to tame the bird, and together, they shared the cave. A beautiful princess lived nearby, and one day, the bird gathered the man and princess and flew them to freedom where they got married and lived happily ever after.

It was a pretty story, and I probably missed half of it from lack of understanding. We walked around and marveled at the beauty of this ancient cave. It was such a peaceful place.

Ngan and Audrey at the cave entrance

Entering the cave pagoda!

Enjoying the views

Scott, Richard, Audrey and Quoc

Cave explorers

Steep steps lead back into the cave

Surrounding fields and rice paddies

Scott getting artsy

Kind monks looking after the pagoda

Ngan and Audrey telling stories

We then got back on the bus where we headed to our next destination. Lunch was set up for us in an outdoor dining hall, and the food was prepared. About 100 of us sat at round tables right on the beach. For lunch, we had shrimp, lau (hotpot), and some pork. For dessert, we had delicious mini-bananas. The bananas here in Vietnam are so incredibly sweet, and they come in all shapes and sizes. Some are small and fat like little sausages, and some are normal-sized and with green skin even though they are ripe. Scott and I ate so many that we stole some from other tables. After lunch, everyone went out to the beach to lounge or swim. The water was brown, which I think is due to the rainy season, but there were still many people of all ages playing in the water. Slowly, everyone started peeling off their overshirts and jumping into the water. Before we knew it, there were about 20 or more people splashing around in the water. Scott, of course, has his white Frisbee with him wherever he goes, so he pulled that out, and we were tossing it around in the water. Funny, how one Frisbee can bring a group of strangers closer together. After awhile, we got out and went to rinse off to head back home.

Project Vietnam volunteers take over

Of course Scott brought out the frisbee

Relaxing on our beach day

Back on the bus, it was still bumpy, but I was able to fall asleep. At one point on the ride home, I woke up and looked around, and the entire bus had fallen asleep. I guess the day had really tired us out. We had dinner with the PVNF group in a large dining area where we first met them, and everyone headed to sleep early for the 4:30 am wake-up call for the medical mission and clinic the next day.

-Audrey

Typical view along the road in the countryside

A bohemian rhapsody

Thursday, July 15, 2011

9:44 PM (Vietnam Time)

Today, we enrolled our 30^th patient into the study! Hopefully, by the end of the trip, we will have around 50 – 70. On average, we get 3 patients a day by going to all the departments with stroke patients: neurology, ICU, and cardiology. Only 3 patients end up being eligible for the study because we have to exclude patients that have had strokes for longer than a week or who have had strokes before. We work at full capacity and have a routine now. We meet Ngan and Tien in the motorbike parking lot at 9 am in the morning. If it rains, like it did this morning, everyone is pretty much stuck at home until the rain stops. Scott and I bike to work, so we would get soaked. After our rendezvous, we head up to the neurology ward. All of the nurses and doctors know us by now, so we just ask if there are any new patients for us, and we head to the rooms to interview. I examine the patient first to give them the NIH Stroke Scale which gives us a measure of severity. Then, Ngan and Tien interview the patients, asking questions about smoking and drinking habits. Scott closes it up by looking through the patient’s chart and filling out CT scan results and getting the necessary information for the study. He does this with charts in Vietnamese. It’s quite impressive. Watching him, you would think Scott was fluent in Vietnamese and can read it. Then you find out that he actually has memorized certain words that he is looking for, such as blood pressure.

We then head to the ICU, where the patients’ conditions are much more severe. In fact, most of the patients are in a coma or can hardly speak or move. The families are quiet and supportive while they hope for a recovery. It is difficult to walk inside and look through the windows of the rooms and see patients hooked up to old machines. It is also difficult for me to scale the patient because they are unresponsive, and I mostly just give an estimate of how severe their stroke is. One man, who had bleeding in his brain, which is called a hemorrhagic stroke, could not blink his eyes. His eyes just stayed open, and I didn’t even know if he was focusing on me or not. There was some sort of debris building up at the bottom of his eye because he could not blink. Flies were landing on his face, hands, body, as if he had already passed, but the machine that was breathing for him was still pumping away. We interview the patient’s family, and the most we can do for them is to give them a pair of reading glasses to thank them for their time and for sharing with us.

More family member in need of reading glasses

What captures my attention most at the hospital is that patients and their families walk around everywhere with bare feet. Maybe they don’t know that blood has spilled on the tile or that microorganisms grow there. Maybe their feet are made of steel.

Tien says that Scott and I are developing a fan base. We have added one to our group, Long, now because he wants to learn English. One of the doctors in the neurology ward has also befriended us to practice English. We walk the halls of the hospital in a crew with Scott in the lead—as if we are his little minions. Today, we took Long and the neurology doctor, Bac Si Thao, to get coffee at Hai Au Restaurant to practice some English. Scott and I especially like to work on their pronunciation, especially of the sound “th”. Tien laughs as I go through the same lessons with the new guys as I did with him and Ngan. Tien immediately picks up, “They make the same exact mistakes that we did!” It’s almost as if Scott and I are letting them in on a little secret—the secret of how to pronounce the ‘th’ in “three”. In exchange, I get to improve my Vietnamese. We exchange English word for Vietnamese word. Scott has also improved on his pronunciation though we still tease him about it.

Long practicing pronunciation with Audrey

Tien enjoying coconut juice during the English lesson

For lunch, we went back to the large outdoor market to buy fruits and vegetables to cook at the guest house. The market consists of stalls and stalls with rows of bowls holding every shade of green vegetable imaginable. The leaves are overflowing their containers. Ngan and I roam from shop to shop as we pick out our produce for the day. We cook the food and share our meal together at the wooden tables and chairs. Scott and I have missed cooking at home and now we feel much more relaxed now that we can walk downstairs and whip something up.

Now, that is skill

Delicious bitter melon

The market experts

The biking experts

Fresh fruit- mang cut

Our private chaffeurs

In front of our guesthouse!

Matching outfits

That night, we went out to karaoke with Ngan at a place in Khu Lan Bien. The three of us had a room to ourselves. Ngan sang Vietnamese songs, and Scott and I sang American songs. Since we were in a private room, I was uninhibited and song my heart away. Even Scott sang. Together, we sang “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen and wondered what Ngan thought of this strange song that changed tempo every few measures. The karaoke place was filled to the brim. The building was several stories high, and each room was occupied. As you walked down the hallways, you could her all the echoes of Vietnamese songs and drunken men and women singing along to them. We all sang until our throats were sore and then headed home.

-Audrey

Audrey serenades Scott

Ngan and Audrey

Enjoying our private karaoke booth

Lucky for us they had some English songs!

The kitchen territory

Wednesday, July 14, 2011

12:30 PM (Vietnam Time)

Scott and I cooked our first meal at the guesthouse yesterday. Scott and Ngan went to the market to buy us vegetables and came back with bagfuls of exotic fruits and vegetables: bon bon (Vietnamese fruit), mang cut (fruit), longan, cauliflower, bittermelon, and chai bau (translates to pregnant fruit, because it is shaped like a butternut squash and looks pregnant!). Even cooking was an adventure. The lady (Co Loan) that keeps the house is overly helpful and didn’t believe we could cook. She kicked Scott out of the kitchen immediately and started the rice for us without asking. I wanted to make my tofu with tomato dish similar to my mom’s, but Ngan and Co Loan kept wanting to help or making comments. I kept having to say, “Don’t worry, I know how to cook! I cook at home all the time.” Every little thing I did, Co Loan would comment on. “Why are you cooking the tofu so long?” Then, she would dip her chopsticks into my sauce and taste without saying anything. I opened up a few backs of rau thom, or herbs, looking for some basil. They were teasing me, saying, “You can’t cook that in there! That’s for banh xeo (Vietnamese pancakes).” I kept asking Ngan, “I am looking for basil.” No one understood until I asked Scott to bring down his computer and pull up google translate. Finally, the point got across and Co Loan went outside to cut me some fresh basil. I finally finished my dish and set it out on the table. Co Loan came over to taste it and said one word, “Good!” I felt accomplished as if I had just won the challenge on some cooking show. Then, Ngan proceeded to cook the bittermelon with eggs. I found out that the kitchen is a very territorial place. It must be the place where the woman is in charge. I had to urge Co Loan not to wash our dishes and that she already did too much for us. I think she is slowly starting to warm up to Scott and me.

Cigarettes and fruit

Fresh seafood

So much for so little

Fish from the sea

While we were cooking, Scott and Bac 10 (literally translates to Mr. 10) were having a little Vietnamese lesson together while enjoying the tropical fruit. I could here Bac 10 teaching Scott words such as: fan, eat, bicycle, delicious, all the names of the fruit, and so on. Bac 10 would stop every once in awhile and smile would brighten his very stern demeanor. It is really hard to get a smile out of Bac 10, so Scott had also accomplished something. Bac 10 said that Scott was a funny guy. We offered Bac 10 and Co Loan lunch, but they had both eaten. However, they did enjoy the fruit with us. I think our little gesture of cooking and offering food softened them up to us a bit. Overall, it was a challenging, yet enjoyable experience. Now I definitely appreciate the safety of my own kitchen.

-Audrey

Piles and piles

Never short on fruit

The ones that look like plums are our favorite

The kitchen territory

Vietnamese family style

Homemade tofu dish