While you were stirring around this morning to go vote, it was last night for us. We were reminiscing about our long string of new, exciting, and improbable experiences here in Vietnam. I almost feel guilty about having such fun and great good fortune in general. Last weekend’s events are an example, as will be next weekend’s. For, this coming weekend, we are going to Nha Trang to celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary. Wow, forty years!
On Saturday, around noon, we went out with Co Phuc, our Vietnamese language teacher, who had invited us to visit a famous traditional medicine museum. First we went to a Vietnamese restaurant and enjoyed a lunch of sautéed pumpkin blossoms, a very common tofu bowl slow cooked with green onions, garlic and herbs, a squid and mixed-vegetable dish, and a wonderful soup. How fine! 
After lunch, we taxied over to the museum, which is housed in an authentic old, five-story wooden house. The museum’s collection builds up across 2000-years, and has some truly ancient artifacts. It’s a collection put together as only true collectors can do. We saw the original writings of the father of Vietnamese medicine, a famous follower, and the father of Vietnamese acupuncture and his illustrations. We saw rows upon row of bottles containing concoctions from plants and animal parts. All the old tools, boilers, bottles and ceramic fermentation jugs (yuk!) were on display. The guide dressed me up in a period hat and gown, and Judy photographed me working with herbs and a grinder. 
The museum is now supported by a modern traditional-medicine company, whose products are sold in tea bags at the gift shop.
So as to make informed purchases, Judy and I underwent examinations by a traditional doctor. She just felt our pulses, said I had a bad knee and needed to do something about my shoulder. Right on target, so far. She worried, too, about my cholesterol, little personal, I thought, and she couldn’t be right about everything. I bought several boxes of teabags of medications for equanimity and blood pressure reduction. They contain a famed red fungus, anciently recognized as highly potent. The meds cost next to nothing. Oh, and I did buy some anti-cholesterol teabags, just in case. The doctor thought Judy might have some thyroid trouble. Could she noticed the scar on Judy’s neck?
The museum was very interesting, and the experience of exam by a traditional doctor was our first, excluding some acupuncture treatments in Malaysia six years ago. Great afternoon.
Tags: Vietnam