Looking for bandages

Having gotten hurt a small bit while in Viet Nam (a burn on my leg, nothing more) I went looking to replace bandages that I had purchased, in Hanoi, before leaving to Xian in order to meet Zeneta. It seemed that this would be a simple task, run into a drug store and buy some. Nothing is as simple as it should be.

The first place did not have any. So, obviously, I tried a second place.

Simply, as they see it, anything bigger than a small Band-Aid requires a trip to a doctor. Being a westerner, it is not my habit to go to a doctor for every bump and scrape. However, I needed some bandages.

I tried to try a doctor that I knew; the one that I ride with. His office was close. As I entered the response was positive, he certainly recognized me. Even through the language barrier, it was easy to understand, "Hey! Riding buddy! What brings you here?"

I pointed to my bandage and told him that I wanted ten more just like the one I was wearing. He insisted on seeing what was under the bandage; that was pretty much where I lost Gao Jing.

It was not infected but it was still in the seeping stage and he insisted on dressing it. I noted that he did pretty much the exact same things I had done. First the Hydrogen Peroxide, then the Betadine/Iodine concoction, then he added something I did not add and am not to aware of. If anyone has an idea what it was, I would be interested. I suspect that it is similar to the WWI sulfa powder.

It was a white powder that was covered over the entire wound. I was given some for redressing and it seems to have the consistency of flour (I have not tasted it yet). There was no pain associated with it.

At that point a new bandage was applied. One thing that Debra noticed, through the procedure, was the "no hands" technique. Instead of putting on gloves, he touched nothing. Everything he did was done with forceps (I first laughed when he brought out the surgical tray). Even the cleaning was done by grasping a clean gauze pad with the forceps and dipping it in the solution them cleaning. Debra took a couple of pictures in his office; it really was a visit to a time machine.

The care was excellent and quick, the attention was from the doctor and I was given materials for redressing (He has been told, by the people in the riding club, that I am a doctor; but not a MD). Oh, and there was no charge. Gao told me that a normal charge for what he did would have been about 10RMB plus about 2 or 3 for materials. Of course, he still wants me to return for "Chinese belly shrinking treatment."

Back to China

We caught another bus back to Hanoi. While waiting we were watching the other buses and commenting on the use of the roof racks to transport the motorbikes over long distances. No lift is used to get them to the top, a couple of guys on the ground lift and a guy on the roof pulls.

The bus was late; however, it was a relatively uneventful ride. We did note that we were the only foreigners on this particular bus. Like the bus to Hué, this bus ran through the night with periodic W.C. stops.

We arrived at the bus station in Hanoi in the morning at the regular long distance bus station. We then took a cab to St. Josephs. We used St. Josephs as a location because it is a place that the cabbies can find and is only a couple of blocks from the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel.

The cabbie did run the meter; all the same, it surprised us that the cab fare was almost as much as the bus from Dong Ha. Cabs in Hanoi are surprisingly expensive. At one point Debra and I had wanted to rent a motorbike in Hanoi and discovered that we would be responsible for $1,000 USD if something were to happen to it. Neither of us wanted to risk that much; so, most personal transportation in Hanoi was on foot.

After getting to our room we went and read for a while. I then met another person, a Chinese national, who was also in our room. He wanted to know where he could get a "Lonely Planet" for Viet Nam. After trying to give him directions for the places that I had seen them selling cheaply (copies) I then offered to show him.

We then went out and he discovered his next problem. He had been told that his Chinese ATM card would work in any country by his Chinese bank. Well, on the back it says, "Valid only in China." We then went looking for a bank that would take it. After about an hour of walking, mostly in the French quarter, we found a Citi-Bank. It seems that the will take nearly any card.

While walking we had also been negotiating with street vendors for his guide book. The first person wanted 25 USD (about 400,000 VND) and I took him to someone who wanted 90,000 VND and he then continued negotiating with street vendors and eventually got it for about 70,000 VND. At that time I went to the Hostel and had dinner on the upstairs patio.

That evening Debra and I went on another walk and that was pretty much the end of another day in Hanoi.

The next morning we were put on another minibus to the Chinese border at Huu Nghi Quan (Friendship Gate). The bus was a small twelve passenger Mercedes, similar to the new Mercedes van that has recently begun to be sold in the US.

The bus took us to the border station and at that point we began the usual process of filling out various forms and then walking several hundred meters from the Vietnamese station to the Chinese Station. Again, the Chinese never checked our bags as we entered the country.

As we entered China the first thing we noticed was that, at this border station, there is nothing. There is no town or shops at all. There are just van and cab drivers all bidding to take those newly arriving to Ping Xiang. After some negotiation we arranged to have a three wheel motorcycle take us. The negotiation took the form of the first person asking for 500. When I asked, "500 what?" (remember, there are three common currencies uses at this point, RMB, USD, and VND) I was told RMB and we just kept walking. Then some cabbies came and asked for 20 RMB each and the three wheel motorcycle driver made an offer of ten RMB each. He was a good choice and even helped us with our bags and in locating the ticket window at the bus station, which he took us directly to.

We then took a bus to Nanning. It was a nice clean bus (that, oddly enough, required us to wear our seatbelts). That bus took us to the long distance bus station and then we had to cross the street to get a bus to the train station. I had a bit of trouble, at first, finding the right bus because while I can read, "Train station," on the bus schedule it was listed as, "Nanning Train Station," it may seem like a small thing, and it was, but it caused a moment of panic.

The bus was supposed to end its line at the train station. However, when the final stop was made there was no station in sight. So, I asked where the station was (hoe cher jan zai nale) the driver assumed I spoke Chinese and answered in some long, fast string. I then shrugged and pointed in all directions and he then understood and pointed me in the right direction (the direction that I had sort of gleaned from what he had said but I was not confident enough to go with).

It was here that we made a small error. Because Guiyang is a larger train hub I decided to take the train from Nanning to Guiyang. So, I got the tickets and we went and had dinner.

At this point, I will add that, dinner was its own experience. In simple, all of the food, at the small restaurant at the train station, looked disgusting. Debra and I both decided to have box noodles and some of the bread that we had brought with us from Hanoi instead. This interested the manager of the restaurant and he came over to our table, with a person to interpret, and asked what was wrong with the food. He was polite and interested in what the issues were that made the food unpalatable to us, as westerners. We discussed it for a while and got some free beer out of the conversation.

As we told him, the dishes all contained parts of the chicken that we do not eat and bones, that we do not eat, or pork. He then asked what we would rather have (adding that they do not know how to cook hamburgers [which they see as the quintessential American food]). We then told him that a simple vegetable dish, on rice, would have been very good. He then pointed out that there was a vegetable dish. We told him that it clearly had pork in it. He agreed that it had pork in it. We explained to him that the presence of pork makes it a pork dish, not a vegetable dish. He then understood our point and we chatted about a few other things for another moment or so.

The mistake we had made was in thinking that there would be more trains to Xin Yang at Gui Yang. At least we got a seat on the train from Nanning to Gui Yang. However, when we got to Gui Yang we found out that there was only one train to Xin Yang, and it originated in Nanning. Thus, we would have done as well to have stayed where we were.

It got worse; there were no bunks or seats on the train. This meant that we would have to make the fourteen hour trip in the standing room cars.

There were only two cars open to standing room and the only tickets being sold were standing room. As I am sure you can guess; it was crowded. The first thing we did was to ask the conductor for a ticket upgrade to a bunk. However, there were no bunks. One good thing about asking for an upgrade was that it made it clear that we were in standing room because it was the ticket that we could get, not because we were cheap. Based on this he insured that we had room to set our packs on the floor of the connecting area between the cars and sit on them as we made an attempt to sleep.

We arrived in Xin Yang and were pleasantly surprised to discover Gao Jing was at the train station waiting for us to arrive. While we were in route Gao Jing had also secured tickets to Qingdao, for Debra, and Xian, for me.

Entering Viet Nam

Debra and I took a sleeper bus for the twelve hour ride from Kunming to Hekou. Hekou is the town in China that we were to cross the border at. The bus is the only means of transport into this town as the railroad tracks were destroyed in a mudslide several years ago and have never been repaired.

The sleeper bus is just that. It is a bus that has no seats. Instead it has rows of narrow bunks. They are double stack and there is a row along each side and a row down the center.

I did not sleep well on it. First, the, mentioned, encounter was unpleasant. Second, it just wasn't a place that I was ready to sleep well. However, the first part of the ride was uneventful. It was raining and the roads were slick but the roads were pretty empty. Then, about four a.m. the bus left the highway and continued down a dirt road for the rest of the journey. At about five we crossed to within fifty kilometers of the China – Viet Nam border and a soldier entered the bus and took all of our passports and logged our entry into a border area. The bus then continued, on the wet dirt roads, the rest of the way.

When we arrived in Hekou we saw that there really was nothing to mention in this town. From the bus station (which is a muddy field, with a couple of offices, encircled by a brick wall) we walked to the border station. It was about two or three blocks and there was very little traffic at the border station other than heavy carts filled with goods being pushed through the 300m zone between the stations on each side.

The goods were offloaded from a truck on one side and placed on very large carts, about 2m x 5m and then pushed and pulled by large groups of up to twenty workers, depending what was on the cart, to trucks on the other side and then reloaded. This allowed the transfer of goods between the two sides with no travel of motor vehicles between the two countries.

Debra and I entered on the Chinese side and completed our paperwork, there were only two forms and they were quite simple, examples were on the wall for those who were unable to read the Chinese and most of the questions were in both Chinese and English.

Our bags were x-rayed and we walked through the open space between the two stations. On the Viet Namese side the process was similar to what we had just done. I would estimate that the entire process took only about a half hour.

Kunming

The first step of my planned vacation to Viet Nam was to travel to Kunming in order to meet up with Debra. The trip to Kunming was pretty uneventful.

I had arranged with the hostel in advance and went straight there when I arrived. I then checked my email and saw that Debra was due to arrive on the second. I planed to meet her at the train station due to it being a bit hard to find the bus to the hostel. Checking my watch, I confirmed that it was the first and I went to the deck to read.

A few hours I looked up and there was a most unexpected person; Debra, who was scowling at me. It turned out that I had forgotten to advance my watch at the end of the month. We then worked out our plan and Debra explained to me that she was short on expected funds.

We then set out for the Viet Namese Consulate. The fact that Kunming had a consulate was the main reason that we had chosen this city for our meeting. The consulate went smoothly; however, we did have to go get pictures and to surrender our passports for three days.

The next day we rented bicycles and went to the bus station in order to get our tickets to Hekou, on the border with Viet Nam. We also rode around and, other than a slight, previously mentioned, mishap had a good time.

We went to a street that caters to foreigners and found some pants I was looking for. I had come with only shorts and wanted some pants with zip off legs. Yes, they look silly; but, that makes it so I do not have to pack as much.

We went by wal-mart for some shirts (keep in mind, by Chinese standards, wal-mart stuff is high quality). Debra noticed that the wal-mart had no parking lot. Customers either arrived by bicycle or taxi. We also went to a Thai restaurant and had a very reasonably priced dinner. After this we returned to the hostel and returned the bikes.

The next day, after my visit to the hospital, I spent following the doctor's orders and resting. That evening we walked to an Indian food restaurant; it was a bit expensive, by Chinese standards, but very good. Debra purchased a couple of DVDs to watch.

We returned and Debra, again, noticed that there seem to be a disproportionate number of apple computes being used by travelers and we ruminated on this observed phenomena for a while.

The next day it was time to pack our bags to continue the trip to

Viet Nam. We went to the consulate to pick up our passports, complete with the new entrance visas, and went to the bus station.

The reason for the lack of recent posts

First, when Debra was here, I was busy. Second, there was an earthquake in Tiawan. This broke the cable from East Asia to the rest of the world.

As a result, the internet has been very slow. Most of the time I can get to the Basic HTML side of gmail; however, I can not load google or most other US sites. I was surprised that this site loaded today (even if it did take about twenty minuets).

I have been doing some writing and will try to post again soon; even if it is only the text.