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This morning, I went to get my Vietnamese Medical Exam to make sure I am fit to go offshore. They didn’t like my other one because it is almost 4 years old. So one of the secretaries took me down to the VSP hospital. VSP is the oil company, Vietsovpetro. Anything stick out about that name or logo?

Yeah… So most of the signs are in Russian, the building is clearly communist influenced, and the procedures are very…Russian.

My last medical took me 30 minutes and I saw one doctor. This one took 4 hours.

The area was all open air. There were rooms, All the doors opened out to a sidewalk. Like a motel.

I stopped at window one and got a form. After some discussion, I got a form in English. And worked my way down to Window 8. Getting stamps and extra forms and paying. From there, we went to get some bloodwork done.  Two nurses and three doctors stabbed me a dozen times in 8 locations and worked the needle around to find a vein.  And gave me a 50ml test tube to pee in. So I went to a bathroom 500 feet away that smelled awful and tried to pee in such a small tube. I didn’t do so hot. And no paper towels. So I had to walk back to the test room with open tube of wee I manged to get it all over the tube and my hands. Thy took this, grunted and stamped my paper.

From there, I went to another room. A doctor showed up, had me take off my shirt and raise my arms. He grunted and stamped my paper.

I went to another room. I had to do a vision test. Basic stuff, but one neat thing was they had a vision chart that had pictograms on it because of the illiteracy rate. My chart was the basic kind. I read the lowest line, She grunted and stamped my form. I walked across her little room and sat in another chair where a lady shined a flashlight in my eyes. She grunted and stamped my form.

I go to another room. Do the turn and cough. The doctor took out his aggression against Americans by squeezing way harder than is normal. He grunted and stamped my form.

Off to another room, I sit in a dental chair… my teeth get poked and prodded. She grunted and stamped my form. Directs me to another chair where a guy shoves something up each nostril so he can look up there, looks at my ears and makes me say ahh while jamming a tongue depresser in my mouth. He grunted and signed my form.

I go to another room. The doctor looks at me and asks if I get dizzy. I tell him no. He grunts and stamps my paper.

Another room, another doctor. This one makes me take off my shirt, slaps my back with something and grunts. He stamps my form and waves me to another room.

Another doctor shows up, listens to me with a stethoscope for a few minutes. He has me beat my chest like Tarzan while he listens.  He grunts and stamps my form. I’m starting to wonder if they are just jerking me around.

I go from there to the X-ray room. Huge line here. While we are waiting, an ambulance pulls up and drops off a stretcher with a woman that is clearly injured and totally blissed out on painkillers.

The X-ray tech(Who was incredibly pretty and incredibly unhappy with her job) directs me to the X-Ray machine. Makes me take off my shirt and press up against the machine. She took my X-ray, I went to look at the machine. Jokingly I said “No cancer?”She puffed up and said “You good. My machine no cause cancer!” She scowled, grunted and stamped my form.

Stretcher lady was still outside. From there I went to get an ECG. The doctor had me lay down and she stuck all the sensors on me and plugged me into the machine. After 10 minutes, she pulled off all sensors, grunted stamped my form and showed me to another room. And turned off the lights. After about 5 minutes of the weirdest psychological warfare, another doctor comes in. She has me take off my shirt and lay done. She rubs quite a lot of lube on my belly and starts using an ultrasound on me. She grunted and stamped my form. I left the room and stretcher lady is still outside, 30 minutes after being dropped off.

I go from there back to front part of the hospital and get a hearing test. After a bit of confusion with the rules, we get it sorted. Doctor grunts and stamps my form. And that is it. After 4 hours, the best medical minds in Vung Tau have decided I wear glasses and I am fat.

I also found out I am blood group “O”. I’d give blood but I am pretty sure mine they don’t want it.

I’ve had an assistant working with me for two weeks now. I just found out his name is Van Dam. Which is cool. Sadly, I’ve been calling him Benjamin for two weeks.

He is Vietnamese, but it isn’t uncommon for a national to have an anglicized name either because they are tired of their name being mispronounced, They are given it is a nickname, their name sounds close or their parents actually named them that because it sounding cool. I’m not kidding. I worked with a Malaysian of Chinese decent named Nicholas.

His coveralls and hardhat said Benjamin, so I called him Benjamin. He never corrected me and he responded to it. So… I assumed it was Benjamin. Nope. Van Dam Nguyen. I feel a little bad,  but he never told me different.

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Originally uploaded by Fronzel
This is the front desk for our office in Vietnam.

The secretary came to me with some candy and offered it. I took it and she said she likes to give me candy because I must like it since I am so fat.

Two minutes later, she repeated the same thing about me in English to the other Vietnamese secretary.

The first night in Ho Chi Minh(not Saigon, but Ho Chi Minh. If you have a date in Saigon, She’ll love you long time in Ho Chi Minh) I stayed at a nice hotel. From there, I moved to the Song Hong Hotel that has an overly complicated shower control system.

Today, I ate a few Rambutan.  They taste pretty sweet and are delicious. Just disturbing looking.

The flight over was hard to sort out. I was given a date to be here by, and getting on a flight into Vietnam was difficult. It is a real hotspot apparently. Or just hot.  I worked for 12 hours today getting my equipment ready. I drank roughly 5 liters of water and sweated it all out.

From Ho Chi Minh I took a hydrofoil to Vung Tau. The people in Vung Tai are friendly, the city look like every other city down to the KFC on the corner(All hail the monoculture). Being a pedestrian is interesting. Motorcycles are everywhere and the drivers assume they have the right of way. I’ve noticed the signs spell the country as Viet Nam, not Vietnam. And Pronouncing it the redneck way of Vietnam instead of Vietnom will get you corrected. Maybe they shouldn’t put an A in it. Of course, I’m the jerk if I correct their pronunciation of my name.

I was hoping for a quick job, but with every email, the job gets longer.