Sheila Goes Ghana 2022

I had a wonderful video chat with Elvis yesterday. I hadn’t spoken to him in a few months so it was wonderful to see his face and connect.

I am still supporting a piece of the Wound Care Program in Ghana in order for the patients to get wound care 3X a week instead of just 2X a week. This will continue until our volunteer company raises the program fees for future volunteers in order to cover these expenses without my help. Hopefully that will happen in the next few months. 🙏🏻

When I was in Ghana, a few of you had asked about sponsoring children to go to school. And you actually did it!! Thank You 🤗🤗

Several of our 1 year sponsorships are finished now so some of the children are at risk of being removed from the schools for this upcoming school year because they can’t pay the fees. I don’t understand why the new volunteers who have come through Ghana since I left, are not fundraising. Elvis says that when I was there setting these examples with all of your generosity, many other volunteers were following suit. But now since no one is there leading by example, apparently it’s not happening. 😔 (Elvis is understandably not allowed to pressure volunteers for donations).

I’m very serious when I say there is zero pressure here. I’m asking because there is a need and several people have asked about this in the past. So if anyone is interested, it costs about $130 a year to sponsor a child for a year of school. I’m going to responsor my 3 boys from last year for one more year. But I told Elvis that going forward, if any volunteers want to sponsor children for school, I’d be happy to hand these kids over to them because my focus is on wound care.

Thanks for listening and You know where to find Me if you’d like to help. ❤️🤗❤️

Aloha from Asia!! Sending Big Love across the miles!! ❤️

My second 30-day Visa is expiring at the end of this week so I must leave Vietnam in order to get my last Visa. Did a long weekend in Malaysia last month for that purpose so this time I’m heading to Chiang Mai, Thailand. It will be this Thurs-Mon and will include an overnight at an elephant sanctuary. I absolutely can’t wait for that!! You can bet your bippy that I’ll be posting after that trip. Admittedly, I’m still a bit annoyed that Vietnam makes us leave every 30 days but if that’s what it has to be, I’m going to make the best of it and set up some great excursions in the process. They’ve been promising to change the 30-day Visa to a 90-day Visa since last Feb before I even committed to this trip but they still haven’t done it. Honestly, it’s Vietnam’s loss because now I spend my travel dollars in a different country and they get fewer volunteer days than they would have if I could have stayed in this country my entire 3 months. Aka I’m certainly not going to fly to another country and just stay there 1 night so off I go to Thailand for 4 nights 😇

Jumping off the soapbox now and moving back to Tuesday Trivia as promised. Every day there are more and more interesting things that I want to share so just want to get caught up on a few of them.

Vietnam is known for its Street Food. There are many markets in the city where you can enjoy it. This one below is called The Ho Thi Ky Flower Market. It is in District 10 about 3 1/2 miles from us. Half of the market is filled with beautiful wholesale flowers and the other half of the market is Ho Chi Minh’s version of Quincy Market’s Food Court in Boston-you walk up and down the aisle purchasing a plethora of food options including Fried Squid Balls, BBQ mushrooms wrapped in thin beef and coconut ice cream served in a coconut shell where the fresh coconut is shaved from the inside of the bowl into the ice cream then topped with nuts and dried coconut.

Or if you prefer dining with your Furry Friends, there is a Cat Cafe about a 10-minute walk from the hospital where we work. Here you can have lunch with the 6 cats that live in the Cafe like Elena and I did today.

I am more of a dog lover for sure but I thought this was a fun way to get in an animal fix😻

Most every house, restaurant, business in Vietnam has an altar like this to honor their ancestors. I find it so interesting to see what is placed on these altars as offerings. This is the altar in my hotel restaurant.

Today there were oranges (yes they are green here) and coffee with incense burning. The gifts change every few days. I’ve seen beers, flowers and candies to date and look forward to discovering what else might appear there. But these red and gold altars always include at least one Buddha and some red lighting.

This past weekend I laid low since I just got back from that amazing motorcycle trip in the mountains and I’m heading to Thailand in a few days. Took a long walk on Sunday to Le Thi Rieng Cultural Park. It had a small Lake with lots of people fishing, an amusement park for young children, a pool and most importantly a bocce court with some men having some highly competitive matches.

I pulled up a chair to watch the Bocce matches, ohhhing and ahhhing at some great throws hoping desperately that someone would ask me to play. And finally, this man on the left who was practicing on Court 2 made the offer! We played two games and I think I might have scored four points total … he completely obliterated Me but it was really fun to be a part of this even if only in the warm up Court. These guys were amazing and were way out of my league!

The other great part of this low-key weekend was a wonderful Vietnamese massage. Sorry no pictures of that (😘) but I can assure you it was a full hour of AMAZING with herbal wraps over my eyes, warm stones on my back, the sounds of birds chirping, aromatic essential oils, soft music and full on AAAHHHHHH….. that is until the last 5 minutes when she made a ponytail on top of my head, pulled my hair moderately and then I heard 14 popping sounds on my Chi spot (acupressure energy spot) on the crown of my head – it felt and sounded like she plucked 14 hairs out of my head!! (I sure hope they were the gray ones). When the massage was over I tried to ask them what is the purpose of plucking hair from your scalp? Due to the language barrier, they did not understand my question. So I looked it up online later and quizzed our program staff on Monday morning. Turns out the masseuse did not pluck hairs out of my head, she did what is called scalp popping … this is when they tug pieces of your scalp away from your skull until it makes a little popping noise in order to help you further relax. Whaaaatttt? I WAS RELAXED until it felt like somebody pulled 14 hairs out of my scalp!!🤣🤣🤣

That’s all for tonight. We all know that 6am alarm rings gently or harshly depending upon what time we shut our eyes the night before. It was a nice Tuesday in Vietnam so sending it your way now for you to enjoy too. Be well mes amies💕

I ran out of time on my last post to cover some other things that I’ve really wanted to share about life in Vietnam.

When I was growing up, Vietnam was considered a 3rd World Country. After the end of the Vietnam War, many of their people lived below the poverty line. Since then, the United States, China, the UK along with several other 1st World Countries have invested a great deal of resources here which assisted in the economic recovery of Vietnam. It is no longer considered a 3rd World Country but has instead moved up to Tier 2, aka a Developing country.

Tourism is a huge part of Vietnam’s recovering economy. They invest a great deal of time and resources into that arena. That that is why you have seen a showcase of beautiful places and experiences here. Yes, I’ve done my civic duty (😘) by partaking in so many of these tourist opportunities on my weekends off. This has given them some needed funding and has provided us volunteers with a great deal of fun!

Even though you’ve seen a good deal of the beauty of Vietnam in this blog, it is classified as a Developing Country for a reason. The reality is that there are still plenty of people who work very very hard yet really struggle. That plays a big part in the high rates of stroke and high blood pressure in this country.

We live in a part of the city and work in a hospital that has a lot of people who are enduring quite a poor and difficult existence. The street vendors and the local market owners work from well before sunrise until 10p or later! And honestly, there are so many of them selling the same products, I’m not even sure how most of them can earn a living.😔

This group of shanties were clustered under a bridge along a murky river flowing through downtown. It is just outside of the skyscraper Landmark 81 from the previous post. I often see people fishing in spots like this. I cannot imagine eating anything that came out of a river like this but likely they do.

Many elderly people and young children wander our streets selling lottery tickets. 💔

The majority of the diet of the poor is white rice or rice products, for a multitude of reasons, one of which being that it is an affordable way to fill a belly. Yet those are empty calories unless you can afford the fruits, vegetables and proteins to enhance the nutritional value. I doubt many people in these kinds of neighborhoods eat those luxuries very often.

When walking the streets to work, we see some of the same people regularly. They often wear the same clothes/shoes day after day.

A family of 4 is often seen driving on a moped because they cannot afford a car. And as I mentioned earlier, these streets are very dangerous so moped accidents are very common. I think of the ways we buckle up our babies in rocketship-like car seats in ultra safe vehicles and remember how lucky we are to live the way we do.

Yes, Vietnam is a beautiful country to visit and VERY tourist- friendly for certain but when you step outside of the highly-developed areas and peel back the layers, there still are a lot of people suffering here.

Since I can only practice medicine here in a very limited capacity, I’ve decided that the way I can make a difference is by leaning further into one of my initial objectives … to try to make some Vietnamese lives better by giving them as much love, kindness and compassion that I can squeeze into 3 months.

They enjoy asking us where we are from. My hope is that many people here will feel some sense of comfort+peace because there are people from all over the world who care about them and are here trying to improve their lives.

Another way I figured out how to be helpful is to assist the company that is watching over us. Their name is The Green Lion. Not only do they take excellent care of us, they also run medical volunteer programs in the hospital (my program) AND run a soup kitchen, 2 kindergartens, a Daycare center for Special Needs Children and offer English classes for kids+adults.

The Green Lion receives many invitations to attend local ceremonies/events. When you are invited to these things it is considered rude if you do not send a representative. So I often volunteer to be the rep since the staff at the Green Lion already works so hard. This gives the staff a bit of a break and it gives me opportunities to see things about this culture that I normally wouldn’t see – such as that cultural Festival last week at Nova College where I met those adorable nursing students (and got my 1st henna tattoo)!

Lastly tonight, I just wanted to share a few pictures of random things that I found interesting in my daily travels.

This man was selling bags of colorful fish from his motor scooter on the side of the road. I sure hope those beautiful babies find an aquarium soon!

And what else is on the sidewalk you ask? Just about everything! That is why we often have to hop off and walk in the 12″ of street next to the curb that isn’t filled with traffic.

Yes that is a sea of traffic coming at us at the light. But look at this sidewalk blocked by garbage, mopeds and a street vendor. And this sidewalk is intact…. usually there are missing tiles and broken pieces of concrete so you best watch where you’re walking!

This fruit is called Durian. The locals absolutely love it and consider it a delicacy. But don’t let the pretty colors fool you. It literally smells like rotting trash so it is banned on public transportation in Hong Kong, Thailand and Japan!!

I needed to find out why the Vietnamese people love Durian so much yet it is banned in other countries in the public… so I tried it…

… note the nostrils starting to flare under the furrowed brows…N-A-S-T-Y!!! You literally wear a glove to scoop it into your mouth so that your fingers don’t smell so bad after. It tasted like spoiled lunch meat with a splash of fruit jelly🤢

But seriously who am I to judge? I love blue cheese dressing yet that looks and smells like something born in a petri dish!

What WAS enjoyable was this sweet bread from a bakery downtown. The other night when I went out to dinner with Tuyen, she stopped our moped to buy me and her son an alligator sweet bread. I’ve seen a whole lot of lobster paraphernalia in 28 years in Maine but never a loaf of bread!

Now that you all have a more well-rounded view of Vietnam, it’s that magical hour when I need to go to bed and you need to get your 2nd morning coffee. Happy Tuesday everyone. I hope it’s a great one! ❤️🤗❤️

… actually that just means I decided to stay put this weekend-explored all over Ho Chi Minh (HCM) instead. Been traveling the last 4 weekends so I wanted to get to know this city better. Also, as much as I love to socialize and I really do, I also love my alone time. Had a good blend of both this weekend.

More on that later, firstly let’s catch up on this week. I hope you all had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend in the States. And so glad summer finally arrived in New England. Geez, kinda late this year!

Oh and before I forget, for those of you that are reading this blog via an email alert that you receive when I post, I’ve learned that you cannot see the captions under the photos. Ugh! In order to see the captions, you need to actually click on the link into the blog and go to the actual post-aka not just read the email because you are missing some riveting caption info (if I do say so myself). I will try to use less captions and just put that information in the regular text so everybody can see it more easily.

Okay now where were we? Oh right, now back to this week… I change departments weekly in the Hospital and this week was the Adult ICU. This is a Rehab/ Orthopedic Hospital so it’s not a high level Trauma Center ICU, although there were a few stable patients on ventilators who were recovering (actually existing in VERY compromised mental states for months now 💔) as a result of brain hemorrhages and strokes.

I was excited to go the ICU since I used to work in the Pediatric + Neonatal ICUs but most of the staff in this ICU did not speak English. And there were only a few patients there this week. Honestly, it was a bit dull. But when the Head Nurse or MDs weren’t too busy, we chatted a lot about the differences in the Healthcare of our 2 countries. I also tried to share some medical information from the US that I thought might be helpful to them. They seemed receptive.

My biggest takeaway after this ICU experience was that in the US, our Medical System functions at a markedly higher level than Vietnam due to factors such as the more intensive training of our Healthcare workers and due to our increased access to more high-tech equipment. That said, millions of people in our country don’t have health insurance for a multitude of reasons. Some of these reasons being that our health insurance is tied to our full-time employment and it is quite expensive hence not affordable for so many. For example, since quitting my job to do these trips, I had to pick up my own health/dental/vision insurance. I’m paying close to $700 a month with a $6,000 deductible!! Thank God I can afford that but that is a luxury not a right in our country that so many can’t afford.

These factors above have created a system where our Healthcare expenditures are higher than ANY other country in the world yet when the Worldwide healthcare systems are analyzed (healthcare infrastructure, quality of care, healthcare access, health technology, and patient satisfaction), the US usually ranks about 18th in the world!!!

Now I’m certainly not saying that Vietnam has a better Health Care system than we do because they don’t (they are much further down that list) but being that this is a Communist country with Socialized Medicine, Healthcare is a right of birth here. Everyone has health insurance that covers 80% of their costs. So although the actual care is not what I would consider optimal due to the reasons I already mentioned, everyone has insurance so everyone gets care and lots of it.

Unfortunately, very hight rates of smoking+drinking combined with everyday life stressors and high salt / sugar diets here have all created extraordinarily high stroke and high blood pressure rates, the likes of which I’ve never seen in my career. There are 20+30 year olds in the stroke unit upstairs (and even a few teenagers) along with a plethora of 50+60 year olds. I think the only diagnosis that’s more prevalent here is Trauma from moped accidents.

Vietnam also doesn’t practice preventative medicine i.e. annual physicals (where we screen for diabetes, high blood pressure, increased lipids etc) so the Vietnamese only go to the clinic / hospital when they are sick….and sadly, it’s often way too late.

The other thing that I learned that I found interesting is that they do not have any DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) policies in place. So unlike in our country, even if you have a terminal diagnosis and there is no hope, you cannot ask for a DNR. Therefore, if you stop breathing in the hospital, you get a full code / CPR done on you.

Along those same lines, based on what I saw in the ICU, I don’t think they have any Living Will or Removal of Life Support (aka Pull the Plug or Feeding Tube) policies in place either. Because if they did, I’m quite sure a few of those ventilated patients would not be existing in the severely compromised states that they are in.

Another medical volunteer asked me if I thought the reason that the Vietnamese Health System doesn’t have these policies in place is because of the Buddhist beliefs around the value of life. Great question! I’m really not sure but I will look into that.

Shifting gears, there was a lot of fun to be had this week too. The college where most of our volunteers are staying (still lovin’ my hotel 😇) asked for some volunteers to play the part of restaurant customers in order for their Hospitality students to be tested in a simulation setting. Had a great prime rib meal served during this stint (great break from the rice+rice noodles) and met two wonderful Vietnamese woman at our table. They didn’t speak English and we didn’t speak Vietnamese but Google Translate gave us the gift of new friends.

Friday night, I rode on the back of a moped for half an hour through the city to meet my friend Tuyen ( Two- Yen) for a nice seafood dinner. She walks our medical team to the hospital and back everyday and helps get us set up in our respective departments. She is so sweet, happy and hardworking. This was just a little treat for her for being so good to us.

Saturday, our volunteer group was invited to Nova College for their Cultural Festival and a tour of their Campus. Carrie, Liv and I were picked up by the College and driven over there. It was quite sweet. That included nine Graphic Arts students begging us to let them do Henna tattoos on us. Got my first ever Tat!!! Still don’t want a real one on Moi but I really do like the henna!

When we toured the school, we stumbled across a nursing classroom. The student nurses were so excited to meet an American Nurse that they insisted on taking a picture together. They don’t have Nurse Practitioners in this country so I had to explain that role to them.

Later that evening, I got tickets to a Water Puppet Show. It is a celebration of Vietnamese folklore, music and singing. It really was quite beautiful. The puppeteers were standing waist- high in water behind screens, manipulating the puppets via some underwater poles. We didn’t see them until the end of the show when they came out to take a bow. The musicians and singers performed from each side of the stage so were also fun to watch.

There is a skyscraper called Landmark 81 that I can see off in the distance from my hotel room. It looks a lot like the Empire State Building and is lit up all in red+white each night- yes the colors of Vietnam. This was historically the tallest building in Asia until just a few years ago.

The observation sites are on Floors 79-81 and the views were spectacular! The elevator ascends and descends very quickly. In fact, I calculated our downward acceleration to be about four floors per second! “GOING DOWN?”…yes, real fast! I had to keep popping my ears because of the pressure.

Here are the views from up there. Made the 40 story buildings below us look like low-rises.

And this is Ho Chi Minh’s Central Park below, also seen from the 79th floor. Ran out of time today but will go back and walk the park another day.

On my way to Landmark 81, I passed the Bitexco Skyview Viewing Platform. But it was a mere 45 floors up so I didn’t bother going up cuz I was holding out for the better view down the street. It was a cool site to see from below though.

I walked along the river a good deal of the way to get to the skyscrapers and noticed some vegetation that I’ve been meaning to showcase. It’s called Water Cabbage. They are free-floating, usually about 2 – 3 foot clusters of greens. When I first saw them I thought somebody had done some clearing of vegetation and tossed it in the river so that these were just remnants floating downstream. But they are actually little tiny water cabbage rafts if you will, that thrive while floating down the river. I had seen these in Ghana too and remember dodging them as we were jetskiing on a river. There are numerous rivers in New England but I’ve never seen anything like these before.

But the best thing I found on my way to the skyscrapers was a really delicious cup of egg coffee in the Little HaNoi Egg Coffee Cafe.

The locals and the tourists rave about this. When I first heard about egg coffee, I thought it was like a poached egg in your coffee🤢 But no, no, no…. this is a cup of espresso topped with a thick layer of whipped egg yolks+sweetened condensed milk. It was almost like drinking custard with your rich espresso. I don’t normally like sugar in my coffee nor do I like those super sweet Starbuck’s Mocha Choke Ya’ Carmel Frappes… but I’m quite sure this was the BEST coffee I’ve ever had!! What a treat❤️

Need to head to bed now. Tomorrow I will be in the Traditional Medicine Department for the week. I’m really looking forward to learning more about acupuncture, cupping and some of the other Eastern therapies that they practice here.

Happy Sunday to all of you. It was a great one here so I’m sending it your way now. Enjoy.❤️🤗❤️

Hi everyone-I hope all of you in the States are having a wonderful 4th of July weekend!! 🇺🇸 The word on the street is that it has been pretty rainy in New England. I’m SO sorry about that and hope that will give you the chance to get a little extra R&R?

Before I give you the Malaysia updates, my friend Patrick asked some great questions about what we do for entertainment in Ho Chi Minh. Here’s what I told him….there are a lot of volunteers here from all over the world (which is very entertaining in and of itself) and we are in a very big city. Sometimes we have ‘family’ dinners, go out for drinks at rooftop bars, go out for Karokee which is huge here, game nights on rooftop terrace across the street, shop at the local outdoor markets and explore the city. Then on the weekends, we travel cuz we aren’t volunteering. Woohooo
I’m not a big TV-head if I have an alternative, which clearly here I do, but I do have Animal Planet and BBC News in English on the hotel TV so I do catch up periodically on what’s going on at home-according to the BBC anyways😁

Charlie, my volunteer friend, and I had a wonderful time in Malaysia. We stayed at a beautiful Oceanfront Resort for $35 per person per night including a delicious buffet breakfast. It reminded me a lot of the place I stayed in Hawaii when I visited my Brie out there.

We both really wanted to get out of City Life and connect with nature so our first full day there was Sat when we headed straight to Penang National Park to do a lot of hiking in the rainforest and relaxing on remote beaches.

The hiking was quite beautiful and very serene….yet also uber humid aka sweaty. It was quite hot but thankfully we were covered by the canopy of the rainforest most of the day so not in direct sunlight. And we could swim at the 2nd beach in the late afternoon. Miraculously, no issues with bugs!!! Except of course for some good-sized fuzzy spiders on the trees. But hey, as long as they’re not on my body, no problemo.

As for wildlife, we saw a 3 ft monitor lizard run across our path almost immediately when we started hiking. I was so excited and it was so fast that I couldn’t get a picture before it disappeared into the woods . We also saw several monkeys, a 10′ line of army ants that disappeared up a tree, 6″ grasshopper, salamanders, butterflies, and a 14″ brown snake…now although I had wanted to see some cool snakes, I kept my distance because in Ghana I was told a similarly-looking snake was poisonous. No need to test that theory!

But the best ‘wildlife’ that we encountered was 3 American woman researchers at Monkey Beach!! Cora and Woohon were in their early 20s but Kirsten was my age with 3 kids in their early 20s. And get this, she and her husband live in Portsmouth New Hampshire which is about 30 minutes from my house!!! (um, my former house).

Charlie and I had so much fun with our new friends that when we left the National Park, we walked to a local food market and had dinner with them. They want to visit Vietnam soon so I offered to be their tour guide if they fly over – their research project is in Malaysia this summer. If that doesn’t pan out, we’re going to have a reunion at Kirsten’s house in Portsmouth in September. Fun!

Charlie left the day before Me so I did a solo Day on Sun. Took a nice walk along the Ocean Blvd in the morning before it got too hot.

After my walk, I took the public bus to Historic Georgetown. (thank you Charlie for teaching me that Google Maps has a bus directions option along with the walking and driving directions. Who knew? Not I 😇)

Loved the Kecang! Now I was energized for some beautiful sights in Georgetown. But after a few hours when my daily step counter hit 22,500 steps, I decided it was time to grab a Rickshaw for a 1 hour tour of the Interactive Street Art Murals.

The 3 primary ethnicities in Malaysia are 70% Native Malaysians (Bumiputarans), 23% Chinese and 7% Indians. I would not have guessed that the Indian population was so low because the first 4 people that I interacted with in hotels, taxi cabs and at the airport flying in and out of Malaysia were all Indians. So I had thought the Indian population was much higher but glad I got to experience some of their wonderful Indian food while over there.

On my way to the airport we passed this Mansion. The driver said this was a wealthy neighborhood and that this Mansion just sold for about $100,000 less than what I just sold my house for in Maine!! OMG, if I didn’t have family and friends in the 🇺🇸 that I loved so much, I could live happily ever after in a palace in Malaysia!!! 👳👳‍♂️…😘

I need to head over to the volunteer accommodation now. We are having a family dinner tonight with karaoke. I’m going to pretend that it is my welcome home party but the reality is we got 50 new volunteers yesterday that we need to get to know better. I guess I’ll share my party with them tonight😇

It was so much fun reliving my trip and sharing all of this with you! I hope life is treating you well❤️🤗❤️

XOXO Sheila

Greetings from the tropics and Happy Summer!! It’s always summer just north of the equator with plenty of sun each and every day 😍/🥵….leapfrogging from much-appreciated AC to AC!!

The weekend trip to teach English in Mui Ne and Duc Linh was really eventful. In order to attract volunteers to go 3 hours up to their fishing villages for the weekend, the English School there entertains us with: multilpe beautiful activities in between the English classes, GREAT food and a private air conditioned car with driver all weekend!

Learning English is a very very important skill here for educational and career opportunities. For parents who cannot afford formal English training for their children, they take every opportunity they can with the volunteers or with passerbyers in the street, to have their children interact with English speaking tourists in order to improve their conversational skills. That is why we were recruited to travel to teach those kids last weekend. They live in fishing villages where there aren’t a lot of tourists and don’t have the opportunity to practice their English very often. Therefore, recruiting our volunteers to come help is very important to them. I will probably go up there another weekend before I leave because it really was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed feeling more helpful than I had felt in the medical world here thus far.

But this week at the hospital, I am finally having the opportunity to really roll up my sleeves and help. I am working in the Pediatric Physical Therapy room and I absolutely love it.

I have seen more children with special needs here in 1 hour than I did in Ghana in 6 months! Everyone here has health insurance so most can afford treatment. And unlike Ghana, they do not believe in Black Magic curses here so they do not let these children die after birth.

One 8yo old boy (Nu pronounced New) that I’ve been working with this week has been living at the hospital for a few years 🥺 His family lives in an impoverished area where they don’t have Physical Therapy services. So he will be here getting intensive therapy for a few more months until he is discharged home. Then I guess we hope and pray for the best for him.

This Friday I am going to Penang, Malaysia for 4 days with another US volunteer Charlie-don’t get any ideas, he’s 18 years old so it will be like a Mother / Son trip. 😇 We both need to leave the country because Vietnam will only grant us volunteers one 30 day Visa at a time. I’m a little excited and a bit irritated that we have to do this. It smells a bit scammy, like another way to collect more fees from tourists. Supposedly, the Government here is going to be granting 3-month Visas to volunteers very soon but they’ve been saying that since I planned this trip in March- I haven’t seen it yet. If this doesn’t happen before I leave for good in late Aug, then 30 days from this Fri, I’ll have to leave Vietnam again for the weekend. I’ll either visit Thailand or Singapore because although Cambodia shares a border with us, it’s quite corrupt and I’ve been warned not to go there. No need to tell this Americano that twice…. Malaysia here we come!!

Charlie and I will be staying at a nice place in Georgetown/Penang on the beach where we will do some water sports and some hiking in the nearby Penang National Park. It will be nice to get back out into nature again.

Goodbye for now. Be well, be happy and thanks for being here with Me!! ❤️🤗❤️

Hi everyone, hoping this post finds you well! This weekend I’ll be heading to Mui Ne and Lagi, a coastal area about 3 hours from here in a remote Fishing Village to teach English to children there. Not sure what the Internet situation will be there so thought I would post now.

It was back to work at the hospital this week after our wonderful beach getaway. This week I’m volunteering in the Physiology Department observing outpatients receiving therapies via ultrasound, shockwave, infrared deep heat, TENS and spinal traction etc. The mornings are busy but when it is quieter in the afternoon, the staff allows me to experience these therapies firsthand. I noticed the patients really wincing during the Shockwave therapy. I thought, “I have a high pain tolerance so I’ll give that a shot”. Well, lesson learned! I nearly jumped off the table when the first wave hit! It is like striking your funny bone quite hard twice per second for about 3 minutes (felt more like 10). It was so incredibly uncomfortable, I was squirming like a toddler getting shots. Wowsers that hurt!! But after, I must say, my shoulder felt so light and relaxed. They said you can only have shockwave therapy once weekly for about 6 sessions…. I’m thinking once in a lifetime might be plenty!!😇

As a thank you to the medical staff for all of their free Eastern Medical therapies on my lifelong orthopedic challenges, I volunteered with a few of my comrades to teach the hospital staff some medical terminology in English every Wed and Fri during half of our lunch break. Today was our first session, it seemed to go quite well. Oh and lunch breaks are 2 hours so that everyone in Vietnam has time to eat and take a nap. I try not to nap because we Americans have completely flipped our days and nights. So far I’m sleeping well at night so I don’t want to risk interfering with that.

I had hoped to to do a lot of Hands-On Medical practicing here like I did in Ghana but the regulations are more strict here since I don’t have a medical license in Vietnam. (I didn’t have one in Ghana either but they were so desperate for help that they did let us medical people practice a good amount).

So I’m still trying to find out how I can best help here. I’ll keep rotating departments in the hospital every week hoping to find one that will let me do more Hands-On. Teaching English is very helpful to the general public and to the medical staff so I am happy to keep doing that too.

I’m trying hard each and every day to be kind, compassionate and respectful to all of the Vietnamese people in my presence. My hope is that I can show them that there truly are good American people who do care about them and want to help. Yes, trying to spread some 🇺🇲 ❤️ in 🇻🇳!!

Just finished a great book called Catfish and Mandela (thank you Terri) by Andrew (An) Pham about a young Vietnamese man biking across Vietnam in 1999 trying to recapture his Vietnamese roots after fleeing to America with his family as a young child 2 years after Saigon fell. An and his family needed to leave this country in 1977, after his father was released post bribe after 2 years in an inhumane Viet Cong prison camp where he had been held because he had worked for the South Vietnamese Army with the Americans as an English teacher during the war. What I found so especially sad in the book was that An was often treated quite poorly here in Vietnam on his bike trip because people from South Vietnam who worked with the Americans and then escaped to America were often viewed as traitors (labeled Viet-Kieu) therefore not welcome here upon their return. This was true for An especially up in the north which was Viet Cong territory during the war so hence where former enemy soldiers and their families still resided.

Several of the volunteers here with me are also Vietnamese who immigrated to the United States as children (or are 1st generation Americans after their parents immigrated) and are now back here visiting their Homeland / their extended families. I explained to them what I just described above about An’s journey here and asked if they had suffered a similar fate upon their return visits. (Now keep in mind that when An was here, the war had ended almost 25 years prior but now we are approaching the 50 year Anniversary of the end of the war which will be in April 2025. So my hope was that the animosities had stabilized further by now.)

Their answers were very interesting to Me. For the most part, here in Vietnam, these volunteers have only experienced a few minor hostile incidents (especially when traveling up in the north of the country). But what I found especially surprising in their answers was that back in the United States, Vietnamese immigrants from the North and South of Vietnam, often still consider themselves enemies and do not integrate with one another. Everyday is full of big surprises!

Shifting gears now. On the social front, in the evenings, sometimes we’ve been going out for drinks at this nice rooftop bar which is walking distance from us. And last night, 15 of us went out to a Karaoke Bar, Karaoke is HUGE here! We had our own room filled with disco lights, two big screens, 2 mics and very loud speakers. I dare say we blew the roof off the place. That was really fun!

Many restaurants have aquariums where you pick your dinner- fish, crabs, clams,snails….(oh and frogs🤢) Doesn’t get much fresher than that right? But lucky for this guy below, I think he was just there for the entertainment.

That’s all for now. Got in late last night so calling it an early one tonight. Wednesday was a great day here so sending you a wonderful Wednesday too. Enjoy❤️

Hi everyone- Happy Weekend! Before I forget to tell you, I’ve been meaning to mention that I absolutely love your comments and try to respond to each and every one of them within the day. I think you get an email when I reply if you are signed up for emails but otherwise you can always click on the title of the blog you commented on then scroll down to the comments section to see my reply.

Oh and be sure to read the captions under the photos because I drop a lot of good info there.

Now there have been a few general discoveries that I’ve been meaning to share so before we dive into culture week, I digress…

One discovery was that as hot as it is here (and yes yesterday’s ‘feels like’ temp was 107°F / 42° C), I noticed that most people go by with long sleeves+long pants with a hat/hood on. I assumed this was a form of sunscreen which would be cheaper and more effective than sweating off the sun creams. But I was wrong, the reason people stay covered up is that very light skin is valued as a sign of prosperity since you are viewed as either not needing to work or working indoors whereas dark skin is viewed as a more peasant-like status since people who farm are usually poor and work outside so they have much darker skin. I was sad to witness that once again, white skin and light hair (many young people dye their hair orange or blonde) have a higher social status. 😔

The second discovery was more of a fun fact. Each toilet, whether public or private has a wall-mounted hand sprayer aka a bidet if you will? Sometimes there is toilet paper sometimes there is not (we always carry toilet paper in our packs just in case) but there is always a bidet. Now if you’re really inquisitive, you might ask, “Is the water in the bidet warm or cold?”……cold!! I can tell you first-hand, that will wake you up in the morning… real fast!!!😜

Breaking news from my Northern England volunteer pal sitting next to me at lunch today….. they actually call these devices-Bum Guns! Brilliant Mates!! Those Brits sure don’t mince words do they? But you always know exactly what they mean! 🤣 (if that is that you can actually understand these Northerners. Their accent is very different from the Royals down South in London)

Week 2 proved to be as exciting as Week 1 AND two of the new volunteers that arrived last Sun were my age!!!!🥳🥳 – James from Florida and Jane from South Carolina-but she was born and raised in Scotland. I love her accent! (Scottish accent that is, not that (grating) Southern Drawl)😇

This week was Cultural Immersion week on Tues-Thurs. The first day we walked all over one of the ritzy parts of Ho Chi Minh, District 1, which I mentioned in a prior post.

The final stop on Day 1 was the Vietnam War Museum Memorial. Now keep in mind this is a communist country and hence a government run facility. It really was fascinating to see such a completely different portrayal of that war than I had heard in our history classes. I was born the year the War began but I do remember as a young child hearing about the controversies surrounding the Vietnam War and some of the protests that were taking place. I babysat for one of my cousin and her husband – he returned without half of his R leg from stepping on a land mine in combat.

I remember being taught in history classes that the United States invaded Vietnam in order to protect it from Communism and to prevent the spread of Communism into the surrounding countries of Cambodia, Thailand etc.

This Museum however had a completely different perspective of the Vietnam war. The museum portrayed a very unjust war where the American intention was to establish a territory in Asia. There were accusations of a fabricated attack by the Viet Cong Navy in International waters on the USS Maddox which gave the Americans justification to declare war and invade Vietnam. Honestly, from what I read later, there appears to be some truth to that fabrication even in reputable American sources.

There were rooms and rooms of pictures of the effects of Agent Orange, massacres of innocent civilians and various brutalities imposed on the Vietnamese by our soldiers. No mention of course of any POW camps where American captives were held and tortured.

There was also a great deal of National pride portrayed around the fact that despite their soldiers being significantly outnumbered / out-gunned, Ho Chi Minh and his forces along with hundreds of thousands of civilians who were dragged into this war by both sides, finally  prevailed against this Superpower and have maintained their independence since the fall of Saigon April 30th 1975.

After processing all of this, my feeling was that War is Hell no matter what side you are on so the truth of what actually happened here probably lives somewhere in the middle of the Vietnamese and American perspectives???

After a few hours in this Museum, I pulled aside our tour guide Jack (my Asian Elvis) from our volunteer program and asked him why the Vietnamese people are so nice to American tourists when clearly their people felt such deep pain and resentment around the “American Civil War” as it is referred to here. Jack said that the Americans have helped rebuild Vietnam for decades since the war ended and American tourism is an important part of their economy so they have chosen to forgive and move forward with us in peace.

On Day 2 of Culture Week, we went to the local market to explore the goods then made homemade spring rolls (plain rice paper wrap) and summer rolls (deep fried- more like what we call egg rolls).

The third and final day of culture week was spent at the Cu Chi Tunnels. This is another Vietnam War Memorial Museum which covers the ingenious 75 mile underground tunnel network that was built from North to just beyond the city limits of Saigon in the South to help move troops and supplies from the north to the south without being detected. In the tunnels, the soldiers could fight, live, sleep and strategize up to 30 feet underground!

At the end of the tunnel tour we ended up at a shooting range there. Outside of my brother’s childhood BB gun, I’ve never shot a gun before so I thought why not pop an AK-47 while I’m here!?!

You need to hold on tight to prevent the kick back on your shoulder and to prevent a fractured cheekbone leaning in to aim… but kick back actually wasn’t too bad! After shooting over the target many times I actually finally hit a few! Charlie’s Angels eat your heart out!! I always wanted to be Kate, now maybe I can finally apply if they do another remake!

So it was back to work on Friday in the hospital and then 12 of us rented a bus and a beautiful Villa at the ocean 2 hours away in Vung Tau for the weekend. We got here last night and the place is amazing- complete with our own karaoke setup which of course we christened last night! Total price for this trip will be about a hundred American dollars for everything-transportation, lodging, meals.

Sending lots of love around the globe and looking forward to your always thought-provoking replies!!

Off to the Beach. Aloha, Sheila🌅

What a busy start to the trip! I prefer busy to bored so that works for me! We had orientation on Mon, volunteered at the hospital for the rest of the work week and then went to the Mekong Delta on a fantastic sightseeing trip on Sat. After all of this excitement, woke up on Sun with a bad cold. (Wahn Wahn) I guess when you turn your sleep schedule on its head, run like chickens in and out of this heat/AC amongst thousands of people everyday, it’s bound to happen. Slept a ton on Sun so feeling markedly better today.

Let’s start by exploring some interesting observations about this beautiful country.

Upon arrival when standing at the baggage claim luggage carousel, I noticed there were far more cardboard boxes than suitcases going past.

Many people who arrive here to visit family bring boxes and boxes of supplies as gifts and because there is such a need here for medicines, vitamins and general supplies that just aren’t readily available to the people here.

It occurred to me later that it should have been surprising to see this many people coming home to visit given how difficult it is for them to obtain a Visa to more prosperous countries like the US, Canada and the UK. The mentality seems to be that if someone from Vietnam (or Africa) is granted a Visa, that person may never leave the receiving country so therefore Visas are very difficult for them to obtain. So in essence, these people are born into a third world country and struggle to get a Visa to leave to seek a better life. That was such a shock to me because it is so easy for Americans to get Visas to go almost anywhere. This was yet another example of The Haves vs the Have Nots which once again is often assigned merely because of the random geography of one’s birth.

Vietnam is a communist country. I would have thought that it would have looked/felt so completely different than a Democractic Country. I had wondered before arrival if there would be soldiers everywhere to maintain a very strict social order, if there would be curfews and limitations on drinking /smoking but honestly, I have experienced none of that here. It doesn’t feel any different than walking around Boston except that there are far more mopeds and I can’t read the signs because I don’t speak the language (Google translate has been a Godsend and I’m getting pretty good at charades!) Health insurance is a right here so although the healthcare system is in great need of more financing, all people have insurance that pays 80% of their healthcare costs.

I’ve already discussed the crazy traffic so I won’t go back into that again except to say that is still a shocker each and every day to witness such chaos. Although I gratefully haven’t witnessed any accidents, many many patients at the Rehab Hospital where I work are there as a result of brain trauma/broken limbs due to moped accidents.

For the month of June I will be working with the Physical Therapists in the adult stroke unit. I have a special affinity for one of our stroke patients. He is a 91 year old former English teacher named Nam. He lights up when we come to do his therapy because he loves to speak English with the American lady. I love it too because I can hardly communicate with most of the people here so what a treat!

The hospital is overcrowded and in great need of funding for expansion, medical supplies/equipment and staffing. But as in Ghana, these healthcare providers do the best they can with what they have. And overall, in spite of that, they do a pretty good job. One hospital room can be filled with 9 men and women only a foot apart from one another. There is no privacy whatsoever. And a family member needs to stay with each patient to take care of their daily needs + bring them food. So there are more like 18 people in each relatively small hospital room since each patient has a family member sleeping on a mat on the floor.

We walk about 20 min each way back and forth to the hospital in the morning and then again after lunch so getting in lots of steps! Yeah! We try to stay in alleyways out of the busy traffic so get to enjoy some beautiful sights there…

After a full week of work we decided to do a cultural immersion day trip South to the Mekong Delta Region on Sat. After a 2-hour bus ride and a visit to a Buddhist temple along the way, we boarded some boats to explore the tributaries of the Mekong River along with Coconut+Unicorn Islands. On the islands we had a beautiful Vietnamese lunch, musical performance and several demonstrations about the making of coconut candy, coconut whiskey and honey. Here were some of the highlights…

After a long amazing day, we board those buses and head back to Ho Chi Minh for a nice dinner in District 1. The city is divided into 24 districts-19 Central and 5 suburban Districts. District 1 is one of the upscale City centers. We are about a 20 minute cab ride from there.

That’s all for now from Vietnam but I have a beautiful update from Ghana. Do you remember Precious? She was one of the two young nurses that I brought with Me for a beachfront/hiking weekend getaway with Prosper the PA? (She also helped me pick out my African dress for that wedding). Well, she got married last weekend!! She is absolutely beautiful inside and out😍

Time to go. We have family dinners at the market every Mon night to welcome the new people that arrived over the weekend. Take good care everyone. Sending Big Love hugs + kisses ❤️❤️

I just got several great questions from Rachel in the “Good Morning Vietnam” post. I’d like to think that I responded to her with some equally as great answers.😋

If you are interested, just tap on the title of that blog post then scroll down to the comments section. Enjoy 😁