Dental Hygiene?

You have to watch this video! I put this in the top five things I've shot in Vietnam. Watch the hygienist in the background as he cleans the AC unit with the air-blaster that goes into people's mouths...

This takes dental hygiene to a new level:



Huyen, sorry for showing a video of you getting your teeth cleaned!

The Dentist

(PICTURE: Me and about three other people getting our teeth cleaned.)

Last year I went to an American dentist in Hanoi. It cost me over $40 for a cleaning even though the American dentist did nothing more than to say hi to me when I walked into the office. Instead his hygienist from Belgium (or somewhere near there) did all of the cleaning. What made it worse was that the hygienist was extremely rude THREE TIMES to the Vietnamese staff. If she didn't have sharp objects in my mouth I would have said something to her at the time that she made demeaning comments to the people helping her.

In America, $40 would be a really cheap cleaning. However, in Vietnam, paying $40 is extremely high compared to going to a Vietnamese dentist where it costs $1.50!!!! I decided to give a Vietnamese dentist a shot...

When Huyen and I showed up at the dentist there was a long line of people waiting to get their teeth cleaned. We put our names down on a list and went next door to get a drink and play cards. After about twenty minutes the line was gone and it was our turn to get our teeth cleaned. We rode the elevator up to the fourth floor and were pointed towards a dental chair. Immediately I noticed three things:
1. There were five dental chairs in the room.
2. There was no dentist anywhere.
3. It wasn't exactly the most sterile environment.

I gave my typical shoulder-shrug-when-in-Rome expression and took a seat on the chair. A moment later a hygienist was inserting some mechanical tool into my mouth which I presumed was chipping away at plaque. The tool had an extra loud buzzing sound which really irritated my left ear; it sounded like a high pitched stereo system was in my ear canal. Luckily the hygienist only used the tool for about thirty seconds before she moved on to scrubbing my teeth. This portion of the cleaning took about two minutes...and then I was done. Huyen told me I was finished and I said, "Really? That was like three minutes tops." Huyen told me that the hygienist said I had really good teeth and there was nothing left for her to do. Basically I paid $1.50 to have a lady brush my teeth.

Huyen and I swapped spots in the chair and I watched the hygienist go to town on her mouth. Huyen has a little more placque then me which meant the cleaning took seven minutes rather than three.

I left the dentists with a better understaning of the saying, "You get what you pay for."

Lemon Tea

(PICTURE: Huyen holding a "lemon tea" and a taro dessert.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again, there are so many great hole-in-the-wall places in Hanoi. A week ago a friend of mine mentioned a "famous" place called Lemon Tea. I had never heard of it so I assumed it couldn't be that famous. I mean, I am the foremost authority on Hanoi.

I asked Huyen if she knew the place and she said "of course" or something to that effect. Well, I of course had to try the place so the next time Huyen and I were in the area we went to Lemon tea. First let me say this, the place has no lemons. As I mentioned ages ago on the blog, Vietnamese call limes lemons. There are no real lemons in Vietnam...at least that I've ever seen. Secondly besides the tea, the place had lots of sweet soups. We tried two and I was totally won over by the banana soup. Man, it was good!

Apparently the place is really famous because it was packed despite being located on a really quiet street in the Old Quarter. Shows what I know...

Getting High In Hanoi

Last year, when my friend PJ visited, we climbed to the top of a the tower at the War Museum and were treated to a pretty amazing view of the city. The tower was only about five or six stories tall which is high enough to look down on most of the surrounding area. Well, that was last year. Since then, tall building have been spurting out of the ground like weeds. Seemingly everywhere there are now "Vietnamese sky scrapers." I'm not sure why I put that in quotes since I just coined that term.

The other day I started to teach two kids in an apartment on the 24th floor of a building. By New York City standards 24 floors isn't ridiculously tall. However, in Hanoi it is behemoth. When I exited the elevator, I was immediately drawn to the "window" (the quotes this time because the window had no glass. It was more of a hole in the wall.). From the window I got a spectacular view of Hanoi:

After looking back towards the center of Hanoi, I adjusted my view a little to the right. If you look closely at this picture you'll notice that there is barely anything on the right side of that major street and nothing for a few blocks after that one tall building. Well, that's because they're about to build rows of tall buildings.


In fact, I would estimate there are no less than thirty tall buildings starting construction at the moment. I often annoying harp how this city is changing before my very eyes and well, here's more proof:


Both of those building behind Language Link (Lang Ha) WERE NOT THERE 9 MONTHS AGO!

Don't Put All Your Eggs In One Basket

After yesterday's post, the only appropriate thing for me to do is to post a picture I took while driving...which is equally as unsafe as texting while driving. Yup, say it with me: Hypocrite.

Anyway, apparently in Vietnam they don't have the idiom, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket":

Easy Writer: Biker's Risk Texting On Vietnam's Roads

Recently I've been complaining a lot that people here need to stop texting while driving their motorbikes. In perfect timing, Ryan sent me this great article from NPR:

Everyone knows that texting while driving isn't smart. Now consider this: texting while driving a motorcycle, in heavy traffic. It's not uncommon in Vietnam, where motorcycles are the primary source of transportation.

And it's got public health officials worried.

Pham Thi Thuy Linh is 21, a college student and — according to a recent contest sponsored by a mobile phone company — has the fastest fingers in Vietnam.

She says she can text 160 characters in 25 seconds, though she says she is a little slower texting with her eyes closed — or when driving her motorcycle.

"I think I'm about 20 or 30 percent slower texting on my bike. And it's easier to make mistakes because I'm trying to watch the road in front of me," Pham says.

She doesn't much care that texting while driving is both illegal and not too smart. And she isn't alone.

Vietnam may be a one-party state where political dissent isn't tolerated. But forget about traffic laws in this country where 29 million motorcycles, bad roads and a lot of people in a hurry make for a dangerous ride.

A 'National Calamity'

On a recent day, the floor of the emergency room at Hanoi's Viet Duc hospital is littered, literally, with patients. By early evening, there are more than 100 — the vast majority of them victims of traffic accidents.

Dr. Doan Quoc Hung, chief of the emergency room, calls traffic accidents a "national calamity." He says it is a public health emergency that's getting worse every day. And incidents involving people talking or texting while driving are becoming more common, he says.

It's dangerous not just for them, but for the drivers around them, too. Hung says the hospital performed 14 operations on this day, and all but three were the result of traffic accidents.

People know they shouldn't use their phones, Hung says, and they also know they shouldn't drink and drive. But they don't care, he says. New technology and more economic opportunity are great, he says, as long as people use both responsibly.

Most of these accidents simply don't need to happen, Hung says. And caring and paying for the injured and the dead puts a burden on both their families and society, he says. The hospital should be treating people with real illnesses, he says, and not spending so much time dealing with this.

Change Slow To Come

Tran Van Thanh is a senior official in the government's office of traffic safety. He understands the concerns about texting while driving, but says people's bad habits will take time to change.

He says that with limited resources, it's impossible to crack down on everyone for everything. Drunk drivers and reckless drivers are the priority now, he says, adding that the rest will come later.

At Viet Duc hospital, neurosurgeon Nguyen Duc Hiep is worried that later won't be soon enough. His head trauma unit is full of accident victims. And while he knows driving under the influence is still the chief cause of traffic injuries, he worries what will happen next month when local phone companies roll out cheaper packages for 3G phones. He predicts that those packages will lead to more people surfing the Web while on their motorcycles.

It's crazy, Nguyen says, the way people want to be on their phones, talking and texting all the time.

Meanwhile, the texting contest winner, Pham, says she can't wait to get one of the new iPhone packages.

She says it will enable her to text even faster than she does now, from everywhere — including her bike.

Underwear

One thing I always get a kick out of is when a student (or me) says the word "underwear." Inevitably this compound word always gets a round of laughs by ever single Vietnamese adult in the room. This word, more than any other, never fails to bring out Vietnamese immaturity. I once even had a student ask me, when playing a vocabulary game about clothing, whether she could say the word "underwear." She whispered the word like it was a curse word. Now keep this in mind when reading the next paragraph....

Many Vietnamese boys often wear boxer shorts out in public. They wear them to the gym, walking around the neighborhood and when they play soccer; even one of my private students often wears just boxers and a t-shirt when I teach him. At first I thought this was, well, odd. However, after being in Asia for some time I realized that this was just something that was lost in translation. Boxer shorts are labeled "boxer SHORTS". Men here think they are actually shorts (presumably that boxer's wear). This is an easy misunderstanding especially since most Vietnamese men only wear tighty whities or banana hammock undies. To them, boxer shorts are athletic shorts. To test my theory, I asked a few people recently about why they were wearing boxer shorts. The answer -- confirming my theory -- was that they were shorts. Well, imagine the look on their face when I told them that they were really wearing underwear in public! Yeah, there were gasps...