Entries from December 2005 ↓

I’m aware that this won’t be very exciting for anybody but me (and possibly my Mum, who will work herself into a frenzy about 3rd World medical facilities) but I’ve just been to the dentist and it was WONDERFUL!

There’s something quite unnerving about letting strangers stick sharp things into your mouth and scrape around, but this time I’m glad I did. I’d been bothered for a couple of days with red gums and was becoming increasingly manic about the implications of them. As I get older I become more anxious, more of a hypochondriac. Any headache has me reaching for the guidebook’s health section to read that I have either the first signs of typhus, typhoid, Hep A, B or C, malaria, dengue, tetanus, diptheria, bilharzia, arachnophobia, yellow fever, polio or Crohn’s disease. Normally it’s nothing worse than a hangover, but it doesn’t stop me worrying.

So off I popped. Down the road from my hotel is a boutique dentist’s surgery with a very attractive receptionist. So I popped in for a check-up and came out one and a half hours later with six new fillings and a numb face.

I had always prided myself on the state of my teeth. Previous trips to the dentist over the past few years have never lasted longer than 15 minutes. I’d get a little badge that says “I was brave” and compliments on a perfect set of incisors. So perhaps I had been lulled into a false sense of security, even overconfidence, about my oral health.

It took three minutes and six sharp stabs to identify cavities I never knew I had. I suppose if you poked me in the eye with a sharp stick it would be sensitive as well, but there were definitely painful spots that contrasted with the non-painful spots either side of them.

It was unlike any dental appointment I’ve ever had (the last one was over two years ago) but I remember fillings being metallic, slimy tasting and liable to stick out like a nun at an orgy. These this time involved a little bit of paste and an ultra-violet gun. I got pricked twice by a syringe with a bent nib (a novelty in itself) and didn’t feel a thing.

To combat the red gums I had a “scaling and fluoride polishing - Full Mouth” and my molars are shining like cats’ eyes. You can’t even see the fillings. The price was the best thing - 4500 baht, 92 euros or 63 quid - and teeth 14, 15, 16, 24, 25 and 47 are good as new.

So don’t forget to floss, children, and for dental work of any gravity, head off to the airport …

I’ve wussed out. I write to you from Bangkok, where I fled two days ago after losing myself in Hanoi. I’m not alone. I’ve been exchanging emails with fellow losers and have counted two comments about arriving in (and leaving) Hanoi. April said “I really had enough of Vietnam as well, they are fucking crazy and I cannot believe I managed to get out of the place alive.” Meanwhile, Olivier wrote to me and said “Ouais ben, je viens juste d’arriver a Hanoi .. and I only want one thing .. get the hell out … as I was telling you before, I’m just totally bored of vietnam …”

Nothing wrong with Hanoi per se, it just comes at the wrong end of 2000 km overland. It’s a bit like Ho Chi Minh City, a lot colder, just as charmless. It’s got the pitfalls of a big city with very few of the benefits. There was some lovely beer. A lot of the folk were terrific. A lot of them were less terrific. I was sick of saying “no … because NO …” and paying up to 20 times face value for stuff. The food in Vietnam was some of the best I’ve ever had anywhere. A lot of places had taken both chicken and egg off the menu (I don’t know which one came off first.) Vietnamese pork is unlike any I’ve eaten anywhere else. Ditto the tea, although more than a pot can be a strong laxative. Ditto the coffee - world-beating. I bought a percolator. Unsure of what to match with the pearls I bought, I picked up a tea-set. Apparently I should have been looking for a twinset, but I don’t know what a twinset looks like.

Also had to invest in a new bag to lug around my new toys. Rather like the Buddha, perhaps the shell-embossed chopsticks and matching case will be less exciting in the cold light of day. Vietnam also had some great pith helmets, but I persuaded myself I could do without them (and am now regretting it.)

So nothing funny has happened, nothing to make you chuckle. I got detained at a bank in Hanoi for suspected fraudulent use of travellers’ cheques. The teller was convinced the signature on my passport was different to the one I was supplying. So they took photocopies of my passport, visa, plane ticket, driving license and made me sit down in a back room and write out my signature 20 times, twice for each cheque. Having taken note of where I was staying and satisfied themselves that I am me, they let me go with a cheery “please come back soon!”

I took a taxi to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum to look at the old man’s body. The cabbie stiffed me with a rigged meter and when I got there it was shut, so I walked around the outside and then got stiffed again on the way back five minutes later. Good job I cashed the cheques, I suppose.