Getting Off the Bitten Path
Hello Everyone,
At one of the dozens of travel agency/cafes in Hanoi, I saw this ad ” 4WD Jeep Trip — An exciting way to get off the bitten track and explore the diverse culture and immense beauty of Vietnam’s Northern mountains.” Excellent level of English! Except for that one word, which immediately struck me as a great title for my next installment. You’ll soon see why.
The Bitten Track: A week after we arrived, while waiting for our CVs to make their way through the cyber bureaucracy, we went off on a 3 day trip to Ha Long Bay, due east of Hanoi, on the coast (Gulf of Tonkin). We saw beautiful scenery, hundreds of rocky islands (there over two thousand of these in the vast bay, formed by a giant dragon’s tail), caves and pagodas. Had great meals, a moonlit overnight stay on a boat that looks like a Chinese Junk, swimming, and very exhausting hiking.
And then we agreed to go to Monkey Island. Guess what they have there? The guide said “You can relax on the (beautiful) beach, or go just up the trail 50 meters and maybe you’ll see some of the monkeys that live on the island.” Why, oh why, didn’t we relax on the beach? The 50 meter trail involved 20 meters down the beach and then 30 straight up a rocky cliff. We stayed at the bottom, shaking our heads, watching the 25-year-old French members of our group work their way up and then start shouting excitedly that there were monkeys all over the place up there. So, we started our rock climbing — getting each foothold was just challenging enough to be slow going, but easy enough to think “I can go a bit higher.” Near the top, I could see the monkeys scampering all around near our French friends and several other tourists already up there. I heard someone say, “Let’s get out of here. Stay away from that crazy one there.” Tom was ahead of me and hadn’t seen any monkeys yet. He grabbed a hold of a branch on the lone tree there. That’s when the largest “crazy” monkey jumped out of the tree and latched his teeth into Tom’s arm, hanging there for seconds. He was one angry monkey.
Fortunately, he retreated back into his tree, and everyone was able to make their way down. A local man dozing at the bottom of the trail leapt up when he saw Tom’s arm and took him immediately to the sea, washing the dripping wound with salt water. A few minutes later, the guide at the park station gave treated it with antiseptic and gauze. By this time, I was reading in Lonely Planet about rabies. Long story shorter now — the chance of the monkey having it was probably slim, but possible. If you have had a rabies vaccination and then are bitten by a rabid animal, then you just wash it well. If you haven’t had the vaccine, and don’t follow the complicated post-exposure treatment plan, you get rabies. If you get rabies, you die. Period. Tom hadn’t had a rabies vaccination, and despite the guide saying “we don’t think anyone has died from these monkeys before,” we decided to opt for the complicted treatment. We got back to the “main” island, Cat Ba, and went to the local doc. He knew about tetanus and wound treatment, but nothing about rabies. He thoroughly cleaned and sutured (8 stitches) the wound and passed out some Hungarian antibiotics. That’s another long story in itself. A 60-something doctor in Northern Vietnam–what sort of wounds was he suturing 35 years ago? Moving on, it took 24 hours to get back to Hanoi, but we had read that we had a few days window, and we stuck with the tour program to get back, instead of trying some other method of return which would’ve taken almost as long anyway.
Went to the Int’l clinic in Hanoi, where the head doc is a Dutch man who speaks fluent Dutch, English, French and German (maybe more, but that’s all we’ve witnessed so far). But he’d only been here for 3 weeks, and was much more familiar with crocodile bites from his recent stint in Africa. He consulted the young Vietnamese doctor, and all agreed that rabies treatment needed to be followed. (Was the monkey crazy? Or was it protecting a younger monkey that was also in the tree?) For the rabies potential, Tom immediately got 4 shots of immuno globulin and started the post-exposure 5 shots of rabies over a month. The cost for this is staggering, but had they not had it there, we would’ve been on the plane to Bangkok to get it. For the wound, which now had a red area all around it and was the more obvious problem, they reopened the stitches (not a good idea to stitch an animal bite — it locks in all sorts of bad things). They cleaned the hell out of it, and started a stronger antibiotic. We went back 4 days in a row for daily inspection, disinfection, and dressing, then got the all-clear and a kit to do all this on our own daily. The photos of the wound went to their Med Staff meeting for education (and entertainment?) purposes.
Over two weeks later, the wound is finally looking much better. We go back to the clinic once per week for the next shot and to chat with all our new friends there. I no longer see the angry monkey every time I close my eyes. We haven’t figured out the exact species, but I could pick that bugger out of a line-up if I saw him again. The moral of the story, in case you haven’t already figured it out, is “get your rabies shot before you go anywhere!” FYI, I’m following my own advice and have started a normal rabies vaccine program.
In between trips to the clinic, we were following up on jobs and doing more traveling while avoiding the typhoon that struck central Vietnam. We have signed on for jobs in Hanoi, to start at the end of the month, and are following on housing leads by the minute while living in a small hotel room. We took a fabulous trip to Hoi An, a UNESCO town in the south, and we might head to a beach resort in the south, if we can get everything arranged on housing soon. Not wanting to overwhelm with an even longer email, details on all of these things will come in the next installment of our Hanoi Herald (credit to Adam for this catchy title). There will be stories of the childrens’ mid-autumn festival, excellent meals, the wonderful reviving power of iced Vietnamese coffee on a hot afternoon, and the glories of having tailor-made clothes to flatter/hide figure flaws. For anyone even remotely thinking of coming to visit, these last 2 alone are worth the cost of the airline ticket. Stay tuned . . .
Hope you are all healthy and happy,
Colleen
higgiro39