The Vietnam/Cambodia Border

Today we got a bus over the Vietnamese/Cambodian border. When I entered Vietnam I was distracted by tiredness and an allergic reaction, so whilst I recognised the slowness of the immigration officer at the airport and irritably questioned his competence, the significance of this observation wasn’t obvious, but became very clear when I tried to leave the country. Long story short: I’m technically an illegal immigrant. Work Experience Immigration Guy had stamped my passport with the date of my entry but hadn’t marked my visa as ‘used’, ergo, I had entered without a visa (despite having one). The immigration staff at the border spoke about as much English as I do Vietnamese so it was a tricky one to resolve. I watched my friends walk over the no-mans land between the two countries and wondered what life would be like in a Vietnamese immigration centre. Luckily that thought didn’t become reality because I re-joined the back of the queue and found the equally lax colleague of Work Experience Immigration Guy, he stamped my invalid visa, and I went on my way to Phnom Penh - which I’m about to explore via tuk tuk.

Love Emily x

Ho Chi Minh; Vietnam

Ben, Clare and I have been in Ho Chi Minh City for the past few days and met up with the group which we’ll travel with through to Thailand. This city borders on sensory overload: the lights, sounds, traffic and heat are inescapable but thankfully none of the smells which have almost overwhelmed in previous places I’ve been to. Compared to India the driving is (relatively) safe. There are traffic lights and road lanes which are occasionally observed, and no roaming cattle on the roads. Most foreigners I’ve met are on an adventure and there’s an amazing culture of sharing stories and advice. I’ve never been to a city anywhere in the world with such a great ‘traveller community’ and I love it.

Soon after we landed Clare and I left our hotel to explore. We were given the least interpretable map in existence by reception, which was so useless it may as well have been created by J.K. Rowling. Visibly lost, a man approached us and asked if we wanted a rickshaw tour of the city. Neither of us are inexperienced travellers and we followed all the usual steps (primarily agree a price in advance, 5,000 dong 

per bike, bargain!), were confident we’d got a great deal, and hopped on the bikes. The tour was great: they dropped us off at loads of places, waited for us until we were done, and then took us to the next one. We visited the war museum (harrowing, but well worth a visit), Notre Dame cathedral (an out of place but fairly accurate replica of Paris’ famous building), the Reunification Palace, and the river bank. At the end of the tour we profusely thanked our riders, and they demanded 1,500,000 dong. That’s the original price multiplied by 10, and then trebled. I paid 50,000 dong which is about £6.50 - still significantly more that the agreed rate but an amount I was happy to pay given the great time we’d had. We argued the toss with them about the rest, they pointed at a cash point for Clare to withdraw the money from and grabbed my arm to keep me as a ‘deposit’. Luckily I’m a big white girl and they were little Asian men so it wasn’t at all difficult to get away, which I did. We then legged it, saw one was following us, so dived into a heaving indoor market to take refuge. We stayed there for about half an hour and tried to second guess which exit they’d be expecting us to leave by. We picked the obvious choice, tentatively peeked out to make sure we weren’t still being followed, and then merged back into the anonymous crowds of the city.

The next day we went to the Mekong delta which is a series of small inhabited islands at the mouth of the river Mekong, just before it reaches the South China Sea. We hopped between islands via boat and tried lots of local foods (fruit, honey, cocoa, coconut candy, snake wine), petted a python (2 were kept in captivity so their shedded skin could be used to make soup), and wore traditional conical hats. After we returned to Ho Chi Minh we headed to the street food market for dinner which was amazing, and a far more Western interpretation of ‘street food’ (or vice versa) than I saw in India. 

Today we’ll be getting a bus to the Cambodian border and getting some more ink in our passports.

Love Emily x

Hà Nội, Hà Long, & Ho Chi Minh City; Vietnam

I’m currently in Vietnam with Ben and Clare: I’ve been to Hà Nội and Hà Long, and at the moment I’m in Ho Chi Minh City. 

The flight here was interesting. I have a severe peanut allergy. It’s recently got to the point where being in the vicinity of peanuts causes a reaction. In light of the sad recent case of Natacha Ednan-Laperouse and an 11.5 hour flight coming up with Vietnamese Airlines I boarded the plane with plenty of safe snacks and cards explaining my allergy in Vietnamese.

I looked for an option online to let the airline know about my allergy in advance, but there was none. The moment I stepped on the plane I let a hostess know and requested no peanuts be served on the flight. She seemed confused, so I told another hostess, and finally a third so I could be certain the message had been received by someone. 

It had not.

Within 30 minutes of take off staff were merrily chucking bags of peanuts at passengers, wether they asked for them or not. I asked them to stop, to which their reply was “oh yes, no nuts for you”. No - no peanuts for ANYONE! There was a complete lack of understanding of why this was a potentially fatal safety issue and one steward I tried to explain it to walked away from me laughing and saying “no, no, no” and refused to make an announcement asking other passengers to stop opening packets. 

Ben was becoming upset because she could see a rash start covering my chest, neck and face. She is one of the strongest women I know: I have never seen her tearful before, but she was in this situation because she thought I was going to die and there was nothing she could do to help me. We recognised that the mistake (the serving of peanuts) had already happened and couldn’t be undone, but wanted to make sure our plans B, C and D were foolproof. The staff had no idea of the potential need for an emergency landing. Their ‘medical box’ contained plasters and out of date loperamide. They couldn’t tell us where the defibrillator was. Looked at us blankly when we asked if there were non-nutty seats to move to.

I spent the final 11 hours of the flight dosed up on antihistamines and physically uncomfortable with a mild allergic reaction, but the mild nature of it was better luck than judgement. Mentally though, I was entirely unable to sleep because of the paranoia I felt each time I heard the rustle of a packet which may have been peanuts from earlier. A sleepy itch wasn’t just an itch: it felt like the first symptom of anaphylactic shock in my panicked mind. The cabin staff had demonstrated I couldn’t trust them with my safety, so I clutched my adrenaline all the way to Hà Nội and hoped something of what I’d been saying to the cabin crew had sunk in.

Majorly grumpy after walking away from the Peanut Incident and waiting an age for my backpack to arrive on the luggage carousel, Ben and I got a cab to the hotel we’d booked. We arrived after 45 minutes, which was remarkably good time because my research said the journey would take 2-3 hours. We checked in to the hotel, bedded down for a power nap, and then it hit me - we were still in Hà Nội, not Hà Long. Faced with 2 choices: stay in Hà Nội until our flight to Ho Chi Minh the next morning, or squeeze in the briefest of trips to Hà Long and meet Clare there as planned, we opted for the latter, stayed in an amazing 5* hotel in a 15th floor room with a panoramic view of the bay, and had the most brutally effective massage of my life (seriously, it was like BDSM with aromatherapy). Unfortunately it emerged that there had been further confusion when I tried to make plans to meet up with Clare: she had left Hà Long fo Hà Nội that morning. 

There was further narrowly avoided disaster with catching our flight from Hà Nội to Ho Chi Minh. The hotel receptionist was adamant that we could leave at 7:00 to get a 9:40 flight. Dubious, we booked a shuttle for 6:00 instead, and even then cut it incredibly fine. At one point on the journey I resigned myself to having to renounce my claim to have never missed a flight, Clare had checked in at a sensible time and was on the verge of giving up on us and going to the gate, but somehow we made it!!

I’m off out now to explore the Vietnamese capital.

Love Emily x

Off on another jolly

I’m writing this from the Heathrow departure lounge as Ben and I wait for our flight to Hanoi, where we’ll meet up with Clare (who I serendipitously met at Delhi airport who turned out to live <1 mile away, and has since become an amazing friend and travel buddy). The trip has barely started and already it’s been eventful, largely because Ben forgot her passport. She had travelled down south to stay with friends in Reading, and anxiously text me on Friday evening to let me know that her passport remained at her flat. Luckily her flatmate is one of the doctors at work, and was working on Saturday, so I spend a chunk of the day trying to track her down. Someone eventually responded to her pager and told me where to find her, so I went to theatre and she explained, whilst operating (on a patient who was luckily under general anaesthetic), where to find our friends travel documents. 

My body didn’t want me to be lonely on my travels so it gave me another kidney stone for company. It started off as a bog-standard UTI which didn’t clear up after 2 rounds of oral antibiotics and evolved into pyelonephritis, which then turned into a stone. My GP referred me in to hospital, and they advised admission, but I’d rather be in pain in my own bed with the same analgesia as I’d get in hospital, plus cats, so I declined. I don’t think it’s come out yet (if last time was anything to go by then I’m sure I’d have noticed!) but nor is it causing me significant grief at the moment. It’s just hanging out in there; biding it’s time. I look forward to it.

Love Emily x

Geneva; Switzerland

I woke up at 10am in Bucharest, still knackered from last nights late night, and the night shift the day before. Unfortunately this was also check-out time at the hostel, and my flight departed at 12:15. Realising that my plans for early-morning exploring had gone right down the shitter and there was no time to be experimenting with Romanian trams to get to the airport, I hopped in an Uber and arrived at the gate to be confronted with one of life’s most baffling mysteries: why do people clamour to get on a plane first? You already know what seat you’ll be in; it’s not like the good ones will be gone by the time you get there, and unless you’re in a window seat you’ll have to get up to let other people on anyway. Why would you opt to spend more time in an even less comfortable environment than the departure lounge? We all take off at the same time!

The flight to Switzerland flew over Lake Geneva (impressive) and was far less eventful than yesterday’s. My Franglais has improved just enough so I can walk into a shop to buy postcards and stamps and shopkeepers hesitantly respond in French, and don’t just roll their eyes and speak in their perfect English, so that’s something. As I was writing the postcards it occurred to me that a crack habit may well be a cheaper hobby than dicking around in foreign countries and spending a fortune on international stamps.

In other news, I’ve handed my notice in at work. Mentally and physically I just can’t do it any more. It’s no co-incidence I’m getting so many UTIs/kidney infections/kidney stones: it’s because I often don’t have time to use the bathroom during a 12.5 hour shift, or re-fill my 750ml water bottle. Every single day I’ll be asked “do you have kids?” by a couple, and the urge to reply with “no, and I swallow every time so I don't know what's going on” or “yes, but social services took them off me” gets stronger each time. It’s probably best to resign before I say that and get fired. 

Love Emily x

Bucharest; Romania

If ‘Jeremy Kyle on a Plane’ existed, then I’ve just had a front row seat at a live recording.

My day started quite badly: I finished a night shift, went home for 90 minutes sleep before heading to Luton to fly to Bucharest, and realised (after I slept through my alarm for 2 solid hours) that 90 minutes in ~24 hours was obviously not enough sleep. Best case scenario was I could get a train which arrived at the airport at 15:03 for a 15:30 take off... worth a roll of the dice, surely? I expect many things from WizzAir but punctuality is not one of them, the flight was predictably delayed by over an hour, and my gamble paid off.

After I (finally) boarded the plane a bit of a kerfuffle kicked off because some passengers needed re-seating to “balance the aircraft” (I don’t know much about aerophysics, but I’d hope there’s a little more to it than moving some fat people around?), but they’d paid to reserve their seats so they were having none of it. The argument with the steward was in Romanian but the bilingual guy next to me very kindly gave me a running translation. Eventually there was a re-jiggle of a fair few people on the plane, and everything was “balanced”. Problem solved!

Wrong.

The initial people who were asked to move didn’t like their new seats and asked to get off the plane. The steward looked really stressed out by this, and I assumed this was because he’d need to arrange for their luggage to come out of the hold and delay things even more. Whilst that turned out to be part of his problem, the far larger issue was the re-re-balancing of the plane, and then checking EVERY SINGLE PERSON’S BAGS to make sure the deserters hadn’t left anything potentially dodgy on board. By the time this was sorted we’d been sat on tarmac for over an hour, long missed the take-off slot, and the pilot advised us of a further hour delay.

I thought the drama was over when we eventually landed the wrong side of midnight, but then some fuckwit tried lighting up a fag on the way to the terminal, received a lot of disbelieving glances from other passengers, decided against smoking the fag, chucked it on the (oil covered) ground, and got arrested. 

The flight delays meant I arrived at my hotel well after the check-in desk closed so, barely able to keep my eyes open and willing to accept any (unoccupied) bed, I found a hostel and crashed there. It could well have been shite, but I was so exhausted that I didn’t notice or care.

Love Emily x

Proper Sepsis Job!

It’d been way too long without a hospital admission!

On Sunday I felt a bit crappy and had a temperature of 38.2 so I have haematology a call to be assessed. When I arrived my temp was still 38.2, P 114, BP 74/31, R 26, o2 91% (aka not at all normal). 

I’m 6 days in to this admission and so far:

Pyelonephritis (a kidney infection) has been diagnosed, treated and cured,

...however...

I’m still spiking regular temps despite IV abx for 6 days.

I’m on oxygen because I can’t maintain my sats above 90%

I’ve got 3 lines in, with talk of a fourth,

...because...

I had a lumbar puncture overnight (?meningitis... again) because I deteriorated even further with an agonising headache.

The sexy catheter is back.

FML.

Love Emily x