By Ray Kuschert

During my early days living in Hồ Chí Minh City, I was faced several health issues. In my first two years in Việt Nam, I had gained about twenty kilogrammes. The eating culture here is vastly different from that in the west.

Back home in Australia, people usually only dine out once a week, and grabbing a quick Big Mac at McDonald's was rare. Alcohol was also reserved mostly for weekends, watching football or gatherings with friends.

But in Việt Nam, the dining culture was shockingly different. As a foreigner with many Vietnamese friends, I found myself dining out and drinking four or five nights a week. As a result, my weight ballooned from ninety-four kilogrammes to one hundred and twelve. It wasn’t healthy at all!

One morning during Tết, I woke up with my entire body aching so badly I couldn’t move. My first thought was to call my girlfriend for advice. She said she knew someone who could help and would call me back in a few minutes.

I lay there, unable to move, each minute feeling like an hour, until the phone finally rang. After speaking with her friend, she suggested I visit a traditional medicine doctor who would give me some herbal treatments.

Although I wasn’t sure why, I agreed. She gave me a phone number and address, telling me to either ride my motorbike or take a taxi.

This was one of the rare times I truly felt lost as a foreigner in Việt Nam. You don’t know which way to turn. Hospitals won’t treat you unless it’s something like a broken bone, it’s hard to explain things at massage parlours because of the language barrier, and even explaining to friends is sometimes a challenge. At that moment, I felt incredibly alone and vulnerable.

The doctor I was sent to was well versed in traditional medicine and decided acupuncture was the needed treatment.

In this case, the idea of sticking needles into my skin to treat back pain seemed absurd. I generally preferred proven western medical methods, but desperate for help, I had little choice but to trust my girlfriend and hope this strange method would work.

It was a scorching hot February morning, over 34 Celsius, as I painfully rode my motorbike to the address in Gò Vấp district.

In front of me was a shabby building made of bare concrete with patches of faded paint. I wasn’t even sure if the clinic was still operating.

Inside, I met an older man and a woman. My Vietnamese was non communicative, but I managed to explain I had back and neck pain so bad I couldn’t move.

The man led me upstairs to what looked like a doctor's office with a desk, an ancient computer and a treatment bed.

 

Next to the bed was a window open to the noisy, polluted street. The office was lined with dusty old walls, the roar of traffic mixed with the hum of a corner fan and the general feel of the place was utterly old and mysterious.

On the doctor’s desk sat a rusty fifteen-year-old computer, completing the ancient vibe of the room.

Sitting there in the treatment room, my stomach twisted with fear. here I was, an Australian who barely spoke basic Vietnamese, was about to be treated by a man who didn’t speak a word of English. And this man was now preparing a pile of needles to stick into me. To say I was only 'a little nervous' would be an understatement. But being in a foreign country, I decided to let things happen however they may.

This wasn't how I wanted to deal with things, but I had no other choice.

The man instructed me to remove my shirt and sit in the chair. He inspected my neck and shoulders without saying a word, then left the room.

I sat there alone for about three minutes, wondering what in the world was about to happen.

When he returned, he pushed in a small cart carrying a machine with about twenty thin wires connected to it. From a small box below, he took out some small, packaged needles and began sticking them into my neck and back.

Clearly, I was getting acupuncture!

After inserting all the needles, he started connecting the thin wires to them. I believe there were about ten, maybe more. I vividly remember the heavy feeling of the wires pulling on the needles in my skin.

Without any warning, he then turned on the machine.

Every twenty seconds or so – Zap! – an electric current jolted through the wires.

This is when the language barrier truly became a nightmare.

I began twitching like a fish out of water. Every twenty seconds… Zap! Another jolt! I tried telling him the electricity was too strong, but he simply smiled and said: "Ok... Ok... Ok!"

Zap! And the shocks continued.

After about five minutes of this 'torture', I began losing the will to live. Zap!

I didn’t know how much longer I could endure, but there was no way to ask him to stop.

Zap!

I couldn’t even text anyone because my arms were convulsing uncontrollably.

Zap!

I was exhausted.

Barely able to move, I glanced at the man standing at the door. He was holding a brand-new iPhone, recording my treatment. Zap!

I had lost all control and couldn't even speak. Zap!

"Oh God, please stop," I screamed in my head but couldn't voice it.

He then sat down at the desk, opened Facebook on his computer and I could see he was live-streaming my session to his thousands of followers.

Finally, the treatment ended.

I took a moment to gather myself, got dressed, and reached for my wallet to pay. But he refused, smiling and repeatedly saying: “Free. Free. Free.”

So, I left without paying a dime, possibly giving this old man and his thousands of followers a hilarious day to remember.

From what little Vietnamese I could understand, the man had been treating people in that house for over thirty years and I was his first foreign patient.

That’s why he refused payment and of course, why the entire session was filmed.

The next challenge was explaining to my girlfriend what had happened.

That afternoon, I went to her house and told her about it. To my utter amazement, she said she had never heard of or seen such a treatment in her life.

I was dumbfounded. Why did she send me there if she knew nothing about it?

Phuong, my girlfriend, explained that she had never had back problems herself, so she called a friend who had a bicycle accident last year.

Apparently, this friend was a bit crazy.

He recommended the place because he had gone there twice, though it didn’t help him either – he still had bruises!

I was speechless that she had sent me to a place on the advice of a 'crazy' friend where the treatment hadn’t even worked.

After all the pain and fear, I still wasn’t sure if the treatment worked. I was still sore, but my neck and back did move a little more easily than before.

However, there’s a big difference between traditional acupuncture using only needles and modern electro-acupuncture. Modern electro-acupuncture is widely used in hospitals and clinics around the world. It’s based on traditional methods but performed in a much safer and regulated way.

Honestly, I had only tried acupuncture once, so I can't fully judge its effectiveness. But I do know that if you stay healthy, you almost never need such treatments.

Thank God! VNS