How much to ride the elephant?

At the hospital amazing things continued. Necessity is the mother of invention?? They do a fabulous job with what they have. And These guys are fast. Hours faster operatively than we are. 5 hour cases are done in 2.5-3. And they don't cut corners. They do have the important incentive that their patients are awake and their spinal injection is going to run out. The other day I asked how old a patient whose bladder we were taking out was. The response from the surgeon was to lean over the drape and ask him. He, the patient, responded "81". I don't think I will ever get over patients talking during huge abdominal surgery. Precision is of ultimate importance and this results in very little blood loss. One of our unexpected purposes as residents is to learn from them, and in exchange we show them new things and discuss our standard management which varies greatly here and is sometimes at best unexplained.

After work back to the Citadel and the forbidden purple palace (their stone was colored by wiping ash on it, thus giving it a purply hue), I went for the official tour. This time we went to the hall that paid homage to all of the king's of the dynasty, and I rode an elephant. The elephant was definitely more interested in food than taking me around the citadel or whatever my guide was expressing to him. Our wanderings consisted of ripping down lots of beautiful trees near one of the temples until the guide had me climb down. At least he doesn't go hungry. At found out after my ride that ancient royal ceremonial clothes were included in my landscaping by elephant tour. Bummer.

That night Hao took me to a "special" massage. I have to admit even I was a more than a little frightened of this. We got there and he tried to get me the Vietnamese price of 7 dollars (the white people price is 12) and they wouldn't do it. Whities may be harder to massage. After further discussion with his family all prices here are marked up 50-80%. Hotels, food, merchandise, everything; even my two dollar pedicure. (Hao doesn't know it yet but I am going to have him book my next hotel). The massage itself was very different than any that I have had. She mostly worked pressure points in a variety of ways and when she was done with each body part she either smacked or karate chopped me (I ended up going again a few days later and addition to the karate chop/smack move I got what I trust was a really strong therapeutic hair pull). I felt really great afterwards, energized if you will, not like overcooked spaghetti. Hao them tells me he ended up paying for four hands instead of two. He says he needed them. I decided not pursue that any further.

The pics: the citadel, koi fish we fed, my elephant ride, post citadel snack, the or, me and Hao