So yesterday straight after a street breaky of fried opla (eggs) and banh mi (small baguette). I decided to be brave enough to visit the local dental clinic. I did however, ask my friend Susie to come with me. Not only into the reception in case it took two of us to explain what it was I wanted done. But I also asked her to follow me up stairs and sit with me while I had my procedure done.
Not like it was a tooth pulled or a root canal..
Just a chipped tooth getting capped...
Still..if you're scared of the dentist, you're scared of the dentist.!!
So without an appointment, and without asking how much it was going to cost, I found myself sitting under the bright light of the dentist chair...
This time I was nervous of him not understanding what I wanted. But the whole procedure seemed to be exactly like the last time I chipped my tooth in Brisbane, and needed to get it capped.
So I sat back and tried to relax.
Around 20 mins later, I was back down at reception paying the exorbitant price of 200,000 vnd...roughly $10.00..
Then later that day, while I was swimming in a public pool, I decided to get in some cardio, and started doing laps. I'm not very good at steering under water, so I generally wear goggles, or open my eyes in the water..
Well this water must have had a bucket load of chlorine in it, because within seconds of opening my eyes, they were stinging like crazy. My right eye in particular. About a week ago, while I was riding my bike flat chat home from an evening out. A bug flew into my eye, and hurt like heck. It took about a day for it to settle down. Using drops and saline solution. So I'm wondering if the old wound hadn't quite healed and set the eye off again. Closing my eye killed with pain. But it was fine if I pulled my eyelid away from my eye, so I figured there was either something stuck in there, or a mighty big scratch under the eye lid.
Either way, it was so painful it was hard to breathe.
This morning I woke up hoping it'd be better. But no.. So I started to google stuff, and then I started to panic. Then I thought, how will i ever find an eye doctor, and get him to understand me. Idea..!!!
I went and found Tan, my landlady and asked her if she knew anywhere I could go. And of course ...there's one 4 doors down the street. It's 7am..and she has her hair in rollers, as she's going to two weddings today. But she takes me down the street to what looks like a mobile phone shop..and out the back is a small room. She explains what I said to her, and leaves. And now I'm lying on a table with another "really" bright light shining in my face....
The doc does speak English, thankfully, as he said..." Your left eye" and I said " no, my right eye".. .
I'm fairly certain that the next thing he did, was to turn my whole eyelid inside out...I wouldn't say painful, but a very strange sensation..then I'm sure he ran something resembling a crocheting hook around the upper rim of my eyeball, back and forth, back and forth. Now that was too weird..
Again, not painful, but really freaky.
He poked and pulled. Put in a few solutions. One felt like acid, and I thought.."oh I went to Vietnam, and came home blind"...strange thoughts go through your head when you're nervous.
Anyway, he finally finished poking around, and asked me to sit up.
It feels better already.
He goes to a glass cabinet and fishes out some tablets, from white bottles with no labels on them ( which all looked the same as each other)...eek... And then gets me two lots of eye drops. He then sits very close to my face and explains to me, how to take them. I repeated the instructions back to him, just to make sure we were on the same page.
He nodded.
So, "how much do I owe you"...
Must be the magic number...you guessed it...200,000 vnd...$10.00
Where in Oz would you see an eye specialist, without an appointment, before brekky, complete with drops, antibiotics and pills...for 10 bucks..?
I ask you ...
"Only in Vietnam"..... It's the title of my new book...
Watch out for it in all major bookstores...complete with pics..
