For Richer, For Poorer

I am swimming in a private outside pool in the mountains above Hanoi. We had been invited to the University Principal's "European style" country house. Earlier, we were shown around a neighbouring artist's house which George Bush is to visit in November, where I was distracted by the incessant urge to place booby traps everywhere. After the swim we drunk wine, a rare luxury, by the pool and were served fruit by his "staff". Later, we were wined and dined back in Hanoi at an expensive seafood restaurant. (The rather predictable reason for all this extravagance from a man we've never met? Our manager from Britain was here).

The next day the bubble that is the Vietnamese upper class life, burst. At least for us, as we learnt that my fellow English teacher's Vietnamese boyfriend was hospitalised after a motorbike accident. She found him screaming as he was bundled down the corridor on a metal stretcher, having had no painkillers since he was found on the roadside five hours before. Blood was pouring from the cuts on his head, soaking the pillow when he finally got one for his bed without a mattress. Judging by the five other patients sharing the tiny room, there would be no one to clear it up.

It is a world away from the international hospital we would be sent to if the same thing happened to us. A bright, white, air conditioned clinic with magazines and toys for children, and yes, adequate medicine.

Living here means you build relationships with people here, and the harsh contrasts in your lives, even when you are in this country as a volunteer teacher, and he is a doctor's son, are incredibly hard to cope with. As are the contrasts between the increasingly rich Vietnamese upper class, who are reaping the rewards of the IMF reforms and can afford the international hospital, and the public hospitals whose resources have been cut to ensure their prosperity.