Thursday
February 17, 2011
What a busy busy busy week. Plus I’m suffering from the 3am syndrome again. I wake up at 3am, toss and turn and can’t go back to sleep until past 4am. Then I wake up for real at 7.45am and feel like crap. I even have to drink coffee, which I don’t really like to do.
Monday
January 3, 2011
This morning there was an asshole on the bus who thought it was perfectly acceptable to blast his music for all and sundry at 8.15am. This sort of anti-social behaviour really annoys me (like the other time a woman ate melon seeds and indiscriminately threw the shells on the floor of the bus) so after about 15 minutes I couldn’t take it and told him politely to turn off the music, turn it down or use earphones. To which he replied, “i’m in the mood” and ignored me. So I got up and moved to the lower deck and found myself a seat there instead. But what do you think I could have said that would have compelled him to turn off the darned music? I’ve been trying to figure it out, haven’t come up with something plausible and effective yet.
Great way to start my day by the way…
Thursday
December 30, 2010
So this is turning out to be some kind of holiday. I’ve managed to miss all the main highlights of our trip. I had a fever a couple of nights ago, which then evolved into a nasty bout of gastroenteritis. I’ve had these episodes before, they’re commonly known as stomach flu and my GP once said it’s not necessarily bad food. It could be virus or bacteria from the environment or water.
So I had this fever on our first night in Sapa and the next day I was just feeling so out of it. Stayed in bed while topo and fur went off on their trek to visit the tribal villages. In the evening we then hightailed it back to the train station at Lao Cai, the border town with China. From there we hopped on the 9 hour train to Hanoi, during which I hardly slept a wink because I kept having to visit the loo. I was just passing water and the cocktail of meds I’d swallowed – ultracarbon, imodium, po chai pills. It was one of the worst nights I’ve had in a while. I was practically going every hour. And train toilet, not so nice.
I was so tired and lethargic that I didn’t bother washing my face for two days. Once back in Hanoi we went to one of the few foreign medical clinics around. The doctor — Spanish or Mexican, couldn’t tell — declared I was extremely dehydrated and put me on an intravenous solution and some antibiotics. The IV was uncomfortable and waiting for two packets of diluted salt water to drain into my veins was quite laborious. Let’s not even talk about the US$302 bill.
I felt slightly better after that but still continued to have diarrhoea so I decided it would be too stressful to go to Ha Long Bay. So yesterday the girls set off on their what i imagine to be wonderfully scenic and romantic junk cruise and I’m still here in Hanoi. I spent most of the day in bed but thankfully felt near 100% and the diarrhoea just suddenly stopped. At which point i thought damn I should have gone to Ha Long.
I was such an inconvenience, they had to help carry my pack, order my take-out dinner, take me to the doctor. Bah. Anyway they’ll be back later this evening and I’m sure we will have a fun New Year’s Eve together anyhow.
