Here is a link to my photos from Vietnam on the Pacific Air Forces Flickr page: Photos
It's been a long while since I've written, and I've been so many places since then! So first things first, I'm back dating to my trip to Vietnam.
My trip to Vietnam was a very unique experience because it was a humanitarian type mission. We had a team of docs, dentists, nurses, engineers and photographers, (Me!) to cover the whole thing.
We had a long.. and I mean painfully long.. journey on a KC-135 Stratotanker. We were all in jump seats , which are by far the most uncomfortable way to travel. They're essentially a netted seat, and about every third or fourth seat has a bar that runs right down the middle of bottom half.
We had a layover in Guam where we picked up the other half of our team that was coming from around the pacific. They pull people from all different bases to participate, so the other half of our group was all stationed in Japan and Korea.
Fast forward about fourteen hours, and we've landed in Vietnam.
It was hot, sticky and smelly. As soon as we touched down, and opened our doors, there were Vietnamese military officials to escort us off the plane and in to the airport. (Bear in mind, it's a communist country.) We weren't allowed to wear our uniforms while we were there, or have any type of camo print back pack or anything else that would have identified us as military members. It was partially a mix of for our protection, and because the Vietnamese government did not want us to wear them. I think there was a pride issue with the American military helping their people.
So once we got through customs, we all packed on to these rickety buses with big pink curtains with tassle trim and ripped seats. Our first night there we were staying in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. There was no sense of order to the driving, nearly everyone was on a moped, and the first thing we noticed was all the crap that could be balanced and carried on a moped. They're a crafty bunch of people.
Before we actually reached the city, our driver had to stop at some building and pay off some officials to allow our bus in to the city. The roads are so narrow, that buses are not normally allowed. But apparently, if you have money, it's ok. So he paid off the guys, and then took a short break.. with his bong. We're all sitting on the bus, hot, waiting to get going again and our driver walks back up to the side of our bus, sits down on the curb and whips out a bong from is bag and starts smoking. There wasn't much we could do on our end though, except wait for him to finish.
We got to our hotel, which was right next to the Hanoi Hilton, the POW camp where John McCain was held for nearly six years. It was a dismal old prison that had been built during the french occupation of Vietnam. The tops of the cement walls surrounding the prison had pieces of broken glass sticking every which way, and then three layers of barbed wire were stacked above that. We were able to tour it before we left, and it was pretty heart breaking. They've modified it some to make it look better than it actually was. They have pictures on the walls of the American POW's smiling and playing volleyball in the courtyard, playing cards and having a good time. All of which were entirely fabricated to lie to the public. There were still prison cells, and one large room with rows of schackles on the floor where people would sit, and their ankles were locked down. Like I said, very sad.
But we only had one night in Hanoi before we moved on to our location where we were going to be working for the next two weeks. We got on our buses and drove 8 hours on pothole ridden roads to Vinh City. Vinh was extremely poor and dirty, the same as the rest of Vietnam. The Vietnamese government had chosen this area for us to work, because it was one of the worst in the country and needed the most help. We were staying in a "four star hotel," but it was by Vietnamese standards. It had no air conditioning, smelled like sewer, and at any given time you could smell weed somewhere in the building. It was still better than some of the conditions my husband has stayed in on his travels though! ;)
Our work site was about a 45 minute drive in to the country. We passed lots of rice fields, water buffalo roaming out in the streets, and little mud huts. We worked out of a school, which was more like a compound. It had the same huge walls around it that the Hanoi Hilton did, and the pieces of glass and barbed wire. There was a large metal gate that Vietnamese guards stood at and opened and closed behind each car that went in. The classrooms were turned in to makeshift treatment areas and we had set up an entire little hospital within the school. We had everything from womens health to optometry, dentistry to general medicine and even a pharmacy. It was pretty cool.
The Vietnamese government had given tickets to people they deemed needed medical treatment, but hundreds more without tickets showed up at the gates each morning wanting to be seen. We saw about a thousand people a day. Many with infections because they dont have access to doctors reguarly. One old man was a veteran from the Vietnam war, fighting for the Viet Cong I'm sure, and had had his leg blown up, but never sought medical treatment. His ankle had been blown side ways and broken, but without a doctor, it healed sideways and broken and he hobbled around with the sole of his foot facing outward. Another woman who said she hadnt been able to hear for years, turns out, her ears were so jam packed with ear wax, they were packed all the way out to her external ear. One of our techs had to sit there with tweasers and pick it all out. But in the end, she could hear.
Our engineers built a birthing clinic down the road from our school. There was one already standing, but it wasnt much of one. There were hypodermic needles all over the ground, in the dirt, a literal shit creek running behind the facility and it was the least sanitary place you could possibly imagine. So they partnered with members of the Vietnamese military, and some locals who showed up out of nowhere and wanted to help, and they totally revamped the clinic.
Our days were long and hot, I took two or three showers a day just because we got so dirty and nasty throughout the day. When we'd get back to the hotel, we'd all head down the street to the KFC. YES.. there was a KFC. And it tasted like home, surprisingly enough. And it was one of the few things that didnt make me sick. We drank lots of beer because it was cleaner than the water. There were a few days where the only thing I'd eaten was a piece of toast for breakfast, icecream cone from KFC for dinner and beer. A couple of times I tried to venture out and eat some of the food that was provided to us, but it made me so sick.
They have no concept of refrigeration. The beer was warm and the meat sat out. I ate fried rice one morning, and bit into a piece of rancid meat. I went back up to my room, puked and went to work.
Sergeant Early, our broadcaster, nicknamed me 'Toast,' because it was the only thing I could keep down.
After two weeks we were so ready to go home, it wasnt even funny. It had been fun, but we were ready to go. The only thing standing between us and home on the day of check out was an 8 hour bus ride back to Hanoi, one night there, and 14 hours worth of flying back to the states.
When we got to the airport and got on our plane, we were so thankful to see our 135 crew who flew in to take us home. We loaded on the luggage on to the plane in record time and sat down and shut up. We must have burned rubber peeling out of there.
We were about two hours outside of Guam and we were all stretched out on the floor of the aircraft, sleeping, watching movies on our laptops and reading, when we hit a little turburlence. I was asleep in my sleeping back on the floor when I bounced about six inches off the ground and landed again. I woke up and saw people scrambling back to their seats and putting their seatbelts on. So I rolled over to do the same. I had just gotten out of my sleeping bag and was bent over to pick it up when our plane dropped 300 feet and everything that wasnt strapped down, including me, flew up and hit the ceiling. I think I closed my eyes, I'm not sure, but I remember hitting my head on the pipe running down the middle of the plane, then came back down and landed on my wrist. Overall, nothing was broken and I felt ok. A couple of guys pulled me up real quick and stuck me in my seat and buckled me in. My roommate who I'd been sharing a room with in Vietnam had hit her head too, but she landed back on the luggage pallet and began having seizures. Luckily, all of our docs were on board and they did what they could until we got to Guam. A couple of other guys got banged up too. One of our engineers had caught his head on something on the way up and had about a 6 inch gash that went from the top of his head down the back of it.
One of our docs was a facial reconstruction surgeon and he ran around and triaged all the guys in the back. I felt fine at first because my adrenaline was going, but after I sat for a while, it all started to hurt.
When we got to Guam, there was a crew of medics waiting for us and my roommate and the engineer were hauled off to the hospital in Guam. The rest of us were seen by the docs who were waiting for us and given some motrin. Bad news was, we were stuck in Guam. Our plane was broken. The jolt to the plane from dropping and then coming to an abrupt stop had popped the rivets off the pannels on the outside of the aircraft. So we were stuck. We stayed the night in Guam and it wasnt until about three days later that they finally decided our plane was too broken to fix any time soon. So in the end, we booked commerical flights home.
That last little wrench in our trip made it the most fun I never want to have again. I had a blast while I was there, it was new and exciting, but I think I'll pass if I ever get the opportunity to go back.
Pictures to come soon!
