Free Bound for Vietnam by Lydia Laube Page B

be only three blocks away, the reception staff did not know the other hotels in their vicinity. Nevertheless the two male hotel staff were helpful. They pored over my map and eventually worked out that I had gone wrong at the monument. Thanking them profusely, I went back to it, found where I had made the mistake and was saved from a night on the streets.
    The next morning I set off to get the filling I had lost on the boat replaced. I pantomimed ‘sore tooth’ to the hotel receptionist and she wrote the name of the hospital where I should seek help. It was not far and I walked, asking directions. I would not have known the building was a hospital if it had not been pointed out to me. There was an armed guard at the gate.
    In the grounds I showed my paper to several people and was sent all over the place until a girl in a white uniform marched me to the dentistry department. My guide led me into the building, jumped the queue at the office where patients were waiting to register and, in exchange for the princely sum of eight cents, handed me a ticket that entitled me to treatment. The dental unit was, as usual for anything I wanted, up ten flights of stairs. I consoled myself with the thought that if there had been a lift, it would not have been working.
    While I was hiking up all those steps I had plenty of time to think about chickening out. I had always dreaded the thought of being a patient in a Third World hospital and had sworn blind that no matter what happened to me I would never allow it. Before leaving home I’d had my teeth checked. The tooth that had lost its filling in the middle of a five-day jaunt on the Yangtze River had been the only one that had needed repairs. That dentist would be in a lot of trouble.
    Before committing myself to the ministrations of a Chinese dentist, I carefully considered the pros and cons of the exercise. If I did not have the tooth treated, the worst thing that could happen was that I could lose it and suffer a lot of pain into the bargain. But if I had it filled I risked getting infected with HIV. The minute I set eyes on the building that housed the dental department I very nearly turned tail and bolted. Passing nurses and doctors in grubby white uniforms, I was led through alleys, grimy corridors and chilling waiting areas. Finally, I was put into a very large room that contained six dental chairs over which six dentists laboured.
    Despite my fears, the dentists in their white coats looked reasonably clean. (The only really white coats I saw in China had been in a bank; for some obscure reason everyone in the place wore a coat of dazzling cleanliness.) A young dentist intimated that I should wait. There was not an enormous crowd of potential customers, the only place in China there wasn’t.
    In the fullness of time I was seated in the operating chair. The dentist and I indulged in some mutual pantomime. She seemed to be telling me what grisly procedure was necessary. All the other patients had brought along a couple of their relatives for moral support, but the next of kin, fickle things, immediately left their family member to the mercies of the ministering dentist so that they could attend the much more interesting spectacle of the foreign devil’s exposed oral cavity. They flocked around the back of my chair, hustling for the best view. A few waiting patients joined the sideshow. They seemed to be telling the dentist to get on with it, ‘If you are not treating this bloody foreigner why don’t you let us in the chair? She’s just hanging about doing nothing.’ But we fought them off. One woman, whom I came to think of as the Inspector, took it upon herself to have a good look in my mouth every time the dentist did. Then she relayed what she’d seen to those behind, adding what was obviously either approval or disapprobation. I lay back in the chair under the spotlight, defeated.
    Eventually a second opinion was brought in; an engaging young man, who spoke a few words of