a souvenir scar from vietnam
The doctor examined the two-inch gash carved into my shin. “When did this happen?”
I added the hours. The previous afternoon’s Jeep ride through southern Vietnam’s pine forests, watching the blood run down my leg. The night spent hoping the bleeding would stop, and the morning discovering it hadn’t. Two hours waiting at a hectic hospital in soaked bandages before it abruptly closed for lunch. A five-hour bus to this small beach town.
“30 hours ago?” I guessed. His eyes widened. He looked at my wound for another minute.
“You need stitches.”
He gave me a fizzy liquid to drink and prepared a needle. I looked away. When I was four years old, I would dash away screaming before the doctor could wrangle me down for my shots. At 24 years old, I tried to stay calm in a dingy clinic found from Googling “English-speaking doctor Mui Ne.”
“I’m scared,” I whimpered. The doctor’s eyes softened, and for a moment he looked like my father. My Chinese-American ethnicity had confused dozens of Vietnamese locals over the past weeks. They would approach me speaking Vietnamese, until they registered my sheepish smile. When I explained I was American, they’d look me up and down, and ask why I looked Asian. What I at first found uncomfortable turned into affection for a country that treated me like one of their own. One week before this accident, I was bicycling on the road when motorbike thieves sped by and snatched my bag. One local after another jumped in without asking anything in return – chasing the thieves in vain, finding police officers, and translating at the police station.
The doctor touched my arm and promised it would only be a little pain.
I had gone on a hiking tour through a canyon along the Dasar River, led by two local guides. We learned to rappel from a rope tied to a tree trunk, and by afternoon, we’d accomplished an 18-meter waterfall and 32-meter cliff.
The grand finale was a 65-meter waterfall. I stepped to the edge and took in the view of sprawling evergreen in Vietnam’s central highlands. Trying to keep my fear of heights at bay, I trusted in my harness and descended, struggling to keep my legs perpendicular. I leaned forward as I strained to hear our guide shout down to me, just as my feet slipped on rushing water and I slammed against the rocks.
Hanging in my harness, I glanced down and felt the paralysis of fear slowly taking hold. A sharp rock jutting out had gouged out a chunk of my shin. The second guide was at the bottom, 40 meters down. The first guide was no longer in sight. I breathed. I hoisted my feet up, and my descent to the bottom was a blur of rocks, water and blood. My clearest thought was wondering whether the white exposed in my shin was bone. When I reached the ground, I motioned over the guide. I cried in front of six strangers as he doused my leg with iodine and wrapped it in bandages. I limped 30 minutes up the mountain back to the Jeep. The guides insisted a hospital visit was unnecessary, and I believed them, until the bleeding wouldn’t stop.
Just as the doctor promised, my first stitches were only a little pain. I left the clinic with a shockingly low bill–$25 without insurance. I kept traveling. I hobbled through southern Vietnam and Cambodia and cleaned my wound every night. One month later, I arrived in Bangkok and went to the hospital to see if I was healed enough to start diving. “Oh my God,” the doctor gasped when she peeled back the bandages. She ripped the scab off, declared it infected, and gave me antibiotics to start the healing process over again. In Singapore three weeks later, the second scab finally fell off, revealing a two-inch teardrop scar five shades of pink.
Since returning, people always ask me about my favorite country of the trip. I find it so hard to answer, because how can I possibly distill these vivid seven months into a superlative? So instead, I talk about the country that gashed a souvenir into my leg. I roll up my pant leg and tell a story of blood, pain and pride.
