Back to Saigon

I've thought that on this trip my dad and I would together go to Phat-Diem village in north Vietnam, his birth place and a place that buried my grand parents when my dad still a teenager. This would be his last trip back to his home town and I also wanted to learn more about my root, but soon after Kathy & I left to Da-Lat city, dad became sick as some kind of virus attacked his right arm and wrist, he got a fever on and off at night, then one of my cousins took him to the neighborhood's doctor, who is 71 old and perhaps, lost some of his "marbles", and instead of helping my dad getting better, he made my dad's condition getting worse. As soon as I get back to Saigon, I took my dad to Vu-Anh hospital - one of the very few hospitals in Viet-Nam that has the international certification, based on some International Standards (ISO) requirements.

a nurse taking dad's blood sample at Vu-Anh hospital

After an MRI scan and physical examination by a French doctor, who diagnosed that the other doctor's shots in the shoulder has damaged some of the bone areas but the pain on my dad's wrist is started to heal and with some pain-killer prescription that take at night will help my dad able to sleep well at night, otherwise - as he kept moaning and twisting all night, my mom couldn't get enough sleep and that she would be exhausted and collapsed soon or later. So instead of staying in VN for few more months as planned, my parents got to back to USA soon, right after my younger brother's wedding, in order to find out what was really wrong with my dad's hand & wrist. We then spent more than a week in Saigon to take care of my dad, thus there goes my plan to travel outside of city and take more landscape picture. Instead, I used my point & shoot camera and took any snap-shot around the city whenever I can.

street vendor in Saigon city

The above image may soon be gone within the city limit, because as traffic become a major headache for the local government, and they just banned the self-modified 3-wheels vehicle from enter into the Saigon city, because they said it created congestion for many. It's not just the modified 3-wheelers, but also some type of street vendors - that according to the government - they blocking traffics and they could tarnished the city's image, since the street vendors seem doesn't look "civilize" ( a code word for un-healthy or non-sanitize food prepare) as I often saw the billboards boasting Saigon is one of the most modern and with a high culture among cities in Asia.

I wondered when these street vendors will be
forced out of their way of making a living.

We have been back to Viet-Nam totally six times and had never been in hospital, but on this trip Kathy & I had been checked-in twice (one for my ears infection and Kathy's with skin rash), now with several trip in & out of a couple clinics and hospitals in Saigon city, including 5 trips to visits my cousin & uncle. I've learn quite a bit about the health care in Viet-Nam, well - to be exact - in Saigon city, and if the people in America could learn from Canada, European country and from a communist country like Viet-Nam about a national health-care program, the wise one would have to agree that (relative speaking) there is no best nor a perfect health-care in the world, and just a few major tune-up here & there, the America will even again, the golden standard for the rest of the world, one of those is the Tort Reform , indexing any cost associated with the health's expenses, premium and removing the pre-existing condition , etc... It costs me about $13 USD- including prescription medicines - at a public clinic, and $18 USD for Kathy's doctor visit & drugs. As for my dad, I remembered it cost him totally around $300 for all the trip to several clinics & hospital, including MRI and prescription. If this happened in America, the amount would be at least 10 times over!
The Vietnamese gov. didn't required everybody to buy health insurance, but provide or cover the basic medical for everyone, and whoever has more money are free to go any private hospital for more expensive treatment if they wished. In between, poor people sometime get help from charity or depended on generosity of others, but foremost they believed in fate, in self-destiny that everything happen for a reason - even in death or serious illness, accident.