March 23-25, 2012 Hoi An, Viet Nam
Friday, March 23 was a travel day. We left the hotel at 11 AM and drove into the middle of one of the worst traffic nightmares you can imagine. There is one bridge out of the city center of Hanoi going to the airport. There was a wreck on the bridge, going the direction we needed to go. Can you imagine the traffic stood still for a long time? We had a flight to catch to Da Nang, Viet Nam at 1:30. It didn’t happen. Of course many of the other passengers were also in the traffic snarl, and so they held our plane at a different gate. We finally took off about 3:45. A 40-minute bus ride brought us to our hotel (www.vinhhungresort.com). The resort is beautiful. Most of us have rooms in the back, but we are not spending much time here.
Saturday, March 24 began at 6:15 with devotions in Mike’s and my room. The breakfast buffet was amazing. Have you ever eaten dragon fruit? We left at 7 for a 50-minute bus ride to Dai Loc. We set up our clinic in a school, and served 201 patients. The mayor came to thank us, and asked us to dinner at a restaurant near by. The Hoi An region is famous for a noodle dish called “cao lau.” It is eaten with lemon grass and it is very tasty. The restaurant served us this with rice crackers. Wow! We weren’t back to the hotel until 9 PM.
On March 25th, 6:45 devotions came too early! We had the same wonderful buffet, and then boarded our bus for our next clinic. We served 170 patients today. Again, the mayor came to thank us. We returned to our hotel about 6:10. Dr. Brock Millet spoke for Mike and I at dinner: “I want some dinner and my bed.” I can add that my back aches from moving the bins of medical and dental supplies.
Monday, March 26 is our first full day off since we left Utah on March 14. I am looking forward to exploring the resort, doing some shopping, and maybe even swimming in the pool. As I write, it is about 70 degrees, overcast, and very pleasant here on the patio of the breakfast buffet. I am looking across the patio at the river, and watching the small diesel ferryboats move passengers from one side to the other. They operate all night, and I finally understand the putt-putt-putt (about 5 putts per second) that I have heard all night for several the last three nights.
Please pray that we get good rest today. We have served 942 people (mostly children) and we have two more big clinics when we arrive in Ho Chi Min City (Saigon).
From Hoi An, Viet Nam,
James
Today our clinic should have been by boat to an island near Hoi An. It has been very windy so the person at the island said the water was too choppy so recommended we not try to come for our safety. We instead went to one of our team member's village. We call him PM. For some reason there are a lot of congenital heart defects but for the most part the kids were healthy with not horrible teeth. The sun was out this morning and then it turned cool and windy by late morning. Some of us pulled out our jackets by afternoon. All the children came very bundled up to the clinic. You would have thought it was 40 degrees just by looking at them. We saw about 180 kids today with half the kids in the morning and the rest this afternoon. They normally have a siesta time around lunch for a couple of hours. Today we were so efficient that we all got a break as well, including the dentists.
Dr Brock, the American doctor, drew attention to some large garden spiders that were high in the ceiling outdoors by photographing them. If any of you know me, you know that spiders are one of my least favorite things. Those spiders on the ceiling were creepy but I knew that they want to stay up there to get bugs and are not coming down on my head. As Mike K. and Co Cuc and Pastor James were moving a table out of one of the rooms to be used in the pharmacy area, there was a huge spider having a ride on the table cloth. It was just smaller than my hand. James tried to kick the spider with his foot and it scurried under the cloth. Co Cuc tried to find it but said it went up into the table. Thankfully they put the table back and didn't use it. They actually closed the door to that room which made me feel better. I couldn't get that spider out of my head all day and thought that any bench that I sat on surely had a huge spider underneath. I didn't check!!
We will have a day to enjoy Hoi An tomorrow. It is a lovely old town. Some of us will tour around the town on bicycles while others are traveling about an hour to ruins called My Son. It sounds like everyone will have a nice day doing whatever suits them. I look forward to sleeping in just a little. We will end our day with a dinner at PM's house with his wife, mother and children. What an honor for the whole team to be welcomed into his home.
Raina
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