A defining experience

The next day, on November 23, 2024, I am Quoc's only guest. He picks me up on his motorcycle; I swing onto the saddle behind him, and the bike coughs its way up steep field paths into the mountains, where we enjoy the view. Then Quoc takes me to the small village of Hang, where he comes from and where his house stands, a traditional structure on stilts.

At the entrance to the village, a woman bends beneath a heavy branch that she drags home, where it will be chopped into firewood. It is Quoc's mother. His 61-year-old father, however, is suffering from cancer and can barely move. Under the same roof also live Quoc's 23-year-old wife and their two-year-old daughter. While Quoc worked in the IT sector in Hanoi and returned to the countryside to care for his father, his wife worked in a hotel in Pu Luong, where he met her.

We continue to the giant water wheels. They are an ancient, ingenious, and still functional system on the rivers and streams to redirect water to the rice fields. Then we walk near the village of Kho Muong up steps hewn into the rocks to the bat cave Hang Doi, which is more than 250 million years old.

Faceplant

While descending to the stream where our motorcycle was parked, it happened. A root stuck out of the ground. My foot got caught, and I fell face-first into the bushes. The left lens of my glasses shattered. The shard could have gone into my eye, but it only ripped a triangular hole in my cheek, one centimeter below. It's crazy that a wound this small can bleed so heavily like a slaughtered piglet.

Fortunately, Quoc, the qualified IT engineer, also deals in natural medicine. He plucked leaves from a specific bush, chewed them, and applied the pulp to my wound. “This will stop the bleeding,” he promised, and indeed, the red stream stopped shortly after.

Quoc took me to the village hospital of Pho Doan, which reminded me of rural clinics in Africa. A young doctor put on surgical gloves, cleaned the wound, disinfected it, and stuck a huge white bandage on my face, which prompted several completely unknown Vietnamese men and women to ask concerned questions in the following days. So, even a battered portrait helps with social contacts.

The doctor gave me bandaging material, pain relievers, disinfectants, cotton, and even latex gloves. I considered contacting my travel insurance before he presented me with the bill for 130,000 Dong. The AXA would have laughed hysterically if I had billed that amount: four euros and sixteen cents.