We Came, We Saw, We Left

by Charles Wheelan

  “The tickets are going to sell out,” Katrina warned.

  Leah is the family member best suited to put down a rebellion, like the Jimmy Stewart character in It’s a Wonderful Life when he climbs on the counter of the Bailey Building and Loan and calms the depositors to ward off a run on the bank. “Let’s try to find a room,” she urged. “It’s a big city.” The kids warily agreed.

  Having been raised in the pre-Internet era, I set out to find a hotel room the old-fashioned way: I walked in and asked the desk clerk if there was a room available. The first two hotels I tried were full. But the third—still only two hundred yards from where the family was standing sullenly with our luggage—had a “penthouse” free. The room slept five; for an extra twenty dollars the proprietress agreed to let us check in right away.

  “It’s a penthouse and we can check in now!” I reported back to the group.

  “How far?” Katrina asked skeptically.

  “Right there,” I said, pointing to a modern high-rise across the street. For one brief moment, I basked in their adulation and respect.

  Nha Trang is nestled on the coast of the South China Sea with lovely swimming beaches running the length of the city. We walked on the beach; we swam. The city is a popular tourist destination for Russians, perhaps going back to the Cold War. In a culture-bending evening, we had dinner at a German brewhouse surrounded by Russian tourists as a Vietnamese cover band played Pink Floyd and Amy Winehouse. It was a relaxing place to pause before stacking ourselves on another overnight bus to Hoi An.

  Vietnam is long and narrow, just over a thousand miles from south to north, but only thirty miles wide at its narrowest point (and three hundred at its widest). Hoi An, one of Vietnam’s most picturesque cities, is about halfway up the country. The historic district, a World Heritage site, has no motorized traffic, which allowed us to stroll past the ancient wooden buildings in relative peace. At night, the narrow streets were lit by the colorful glow of silk lanterns.

  This was all lovely. But to me as a policy guy, the most striking feature of Hoi An was the clothing industry: shop after shop offering made-to-order suits, jackets, dresses, shoes, shirts. There were fifty or sixty stores, many of them in a row, with mannequins in the window and touts darting out the door to offer great deals to passersby. Every store offered a variation on the same basic service: Order the item (pants, suit, shirt, etc.); get measured; choose a fabric and style; and come back in a few hours for a fitting. The result was custom-made clothing overnight, or on the same day for a little extra.

  “What exactly makes this country Communist?” Katrina asked as she observed the hustling entrepreneurs. The efficiency was brilliant—right down to the woman who would show up on a motorcycle with a scale and boxes to ship the items anywhere in the world.

  Hoi An was where we finally made progress in treating Katrina’s bizarre ulcers. The improbable hero was my mother. “Send me a picture of them,” she demanded when we called from Hoi An. “I’m going to the dermatologist tomorrow, and I’ll ask her what they are.” To placate her—remember the conference with the middle school gym teacher—I snapped photos of the sores and texted them along. I can only imagine my mother’s conversation with her doctor: “While I’m here, could you look at this photo of my granddaughter’s foot? She’s in Vietnam.” How does Medicare bill for that?

  Everything about the situation was ridiculous—except that it worked. My mother’s dermatologist made a diagnosis from the photo: leishmaniasis, a potentially dangerous flesh-eating parasite spread by the bite of a sand fly. We immediately went to the Centers for Disease Control website and learned there are two strains of leishmaniasis, one more dangerous than the other. Katrina would need a biopsy to determine which strain she had. This became our top priority for Hanoi, which was our next stop and a much bigger city.

  We flew to Hanoi rather than taking another overnight bus. On our first morning, Katrina and I set off in a taxi to the International SOS clinic, an impressive facility that appeared to serve mostly expatriates. A doctor from Singapore confirmed the leishmaniasis diagnosis. “Can we get a biopsy done here to determine the strain?” I asked.

  “It would have to be done in a local hospital,” the doctor said. After a moment, he continued uncomfortably, “I would not recommend that.” The biopsy is an invasive procedure, he explained. Having it done in a Hanoi hospital would present risks of its own. Still, we finally knew what we were dealing with, if not necessarily the strain. The Singaporean doctor was a member of an online community of tropical disease specialists. He offered to solicit information from the group and e-mail us any helpful information.

  From a historical perspective, the capstone to Vietnam was a visit to the Hoa Lo Prison, better known as the “Hanoi Hilton” and the place where former Senator John McCain was held as a prisoner of war for more than five years. The former prison is fascinating—though not in the way the Vietnamese authorities intend. It is the clumsy and selfserving propaganda, rather than the exhibits, that make the place so revealing. We watched a video running on a loop that explained how “lucky” the American prisoners were to have ended up at this fine institution and how “grateful” they were to their captors. There was even a reference to the nickname “Hanoi Hilton”—but without the irony, as if the U.S. prisoners really had come to think of the place as a high-end hotel. There were photos of the prison staff giving gifts to the POWs upon their release.

  At the same time, the Hanoi Hilton offers powerful lessons in forgiveness. In 2000, Senator John McCain visited the place where he had been imprisoned and tortured. It was an inspiring gesture of reconciliation, both by him as a person and between the United States and Vietnam. Pete Peterson, America’s first postwar ambassador to Vietnam, had also been a POW at the Hanoi Hilton. Like McCain, he was tortured there. As much as the war permeates an American’s visit to Vietnam, so, too, does this remarkable eagerness to heal—not to forget the conflict, but to move beyond it.

  As we contemplated our departure from Vietnam, the travel planning grew more complex. One urgent goal was to get Katrina to a tropical disease clinic. The most logical option was the School of Tropical Medicine in Calcutta, where there were doctors with experience in treating leishmaniasis. We were headed west toward India and could get there reasonably quickly. The only complication with the Calcutta plan was that we would need a multiple-entry Indian visa rather than a single-entry visa. We had plans to visit friends in Mumbai later in the spring; we would likely leave India after treatment in Calcutta and enter the country a second time.

  A multi-entry Indian visa may seem like a mere formality. In fact, we had put ourselves on a collision course with one of the most formidable and officious institutions in the world: the Indian bureaucracy.

  * https://www .facebook .com/charles .wheelan/videos/10210605581607606/.

  Chapter 13

  Indian Bureaucracy 2, Wheelan Family 1

  The visas were ready, the consular official informed us. There was just one formality left, he said. Both of us would have to be fingerprinted. All ten digits. For most families, this might seem like a formality. For ours, it was not.

  THE VISA SECTION OF THE INDIAN EMBASSY in Yangon, Myanmar, is open every weekday from nine-thirty to eleven a.m. Katrina and I arrived at 10:50, figuring we would pick up the forms and then return the next day with our documents in order. The first visit would be a reconnaissance mission. What we failed to realize is that even reconnaissance planes get shot down from time to time. Poised just inside the entrance of the visa section was a gatekeeper in the literal sense of the word: an Indian woman whose sole job consisted of letting people in or out—but mostly keeping them out.

  The woman pointed to the sign on the door saying the office was closed. I pointed vigorously to the sign next to the door indicating that the visa section was open until eleven, and then to my watch, which showed that it was 10:51. As I was gesticulating on the stoop, a man arrived carrying some forms and a stack of crisp American b
ills. The woman let him in. As she went to close the door, I stuck my foot in it. There were more pantomimes on both sides, with my foot still wedged in the door.

  I explained that if I could get the forms and ask one simple question—a ninety-second undertaking—then we would be prepared to return the next day with everything in order. At that point, a sanctimonious European gentleman* told me that I was being rude. He was technically correct. But his criticism would have carried more weight if he were not already standing inside, looking at me over the shoulder of the gatekeeper. It was like someone sitting in a lifeboat reprimanding me for splashing and yelling as I tried to climb in.

  I did not get the rest of my body inside the door before eleven. Katrina and I returned to the hotel and downloaded the requisite forms. The next day we returned to the embassy well before the posted opening time of nine-thirty a.m. When the office opened, Nasty Woman in a Sari was once again standing guard. We watched in horror as she slammed the door on an elderly Japanese man who was there for his fifth visit. As I looked around at the other supplicants in line, I began to have a bad feeling. Everyone else had electronically uploaded their photos to the visa form. Our photos were attached with a paper clip; the instructions online had said that uploading the photos was optional.

  After an hour and fifteen minutes of waiting outside in brutal heat, we were admitted to the promised land: the air-conditioned antechamber of the visa section. In an adjacent room, the clerks distributing visas were standing behind windows like bank tellers. A male official asked to see our paperwork. I presented him the forms and the required cash. He shook his head disapprovingly. “The photos must be uploaded to the form,” he said. “Also, these dollar bills are not acceptable.”

  Each visa cost $102. All of the bills, including the singles, had to be crisp and not issued before 2013. Our $100 bills were fine, the man told us, but the singles were too wrinkled. It was now 10:40. Katrina and I rushed outside to find a business center with good enough Internet to upload our photos, and then a money changer who could give us four crisp American dollar bills. We wandered for ten minutes and found neither. “We can run around in the heat,” I said, “but that’s just confusing motion for action. We’ll never make it back by eleven.”

  “We’re going to give up?” Katrina said.

  “We didn’t give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor,” I answered—a sarcastic reference to a famous scene in Animal House.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked. Apparently she hadn’t seen the movie.

  Eventually eleven o’clock arrived and the argument became irrelevant.

  This was a Friday. The visa section would not open again until Monday, leaving us the weekend to enjoy Yangon without being consumed by the visa quest. It was too hot to explore on foot during the day, but in the late afternoon the temperature became more tolerable and we set out walking to the Shwedagon Pagoda, the most sacred Buddhist pagoda in Myanmar. We were back in our travel comfort zone, wandering through a city to a place of interest—until one of Katrina’s bandages came off. The prospect of an open wound on the streets of Myanmar was terrifying. Fortunately, we were standing in front of a supermarket. I went inside to buy gauze and tape. We rewrapped Katrina’s foot and continued on our walk. The open wound was a reminder that we really needed to get an Indian visa.

  We had a strategic decision to make. We could return to the Indian Embassy on Monday and continue to do battle. The image of the Japanese man returning for his fifth visit loomed large in my mind. Or we could try something radically different. “The Indian consulate in Mandalay gets great reviews,” CJ pointed out. He read aloud some of the reviews: “Easy . . . efficient . . . friendly.”

  “That’s four hundred miles away,” I pointed out.

  CJ shrugged. “How are things working out for you here?”

  “It’s only a ten-hour bus ride,” Leah offered.

  We decided to go with the positive reviews. Katrina and I booked an overnight bus to Mandalay. Leah, CJ, and Sophie would go to Bagan, which was in the same general direction. We would meet up later.

  The main Yangon bus station was the size of a small college campus. There were hundreds of identical-looking buses in long rows. If the taxi driver had not dropped us off in front of our bus, we would never have found it. The hot air was thick with mosquitoes as Katrina and I waited to board. When we did get on, the bus was almost ninety degrees, according to the digital thermostat at the front. By the time it cooled down, I was coated in sweat and furiously scratching my mosquito bites.

  Sometime around four a.m., when I had finally settled into a deep sleep, the lights went on and the driver yelled, “Mandalay! Mandalay!” Katrina and I got off at a dusty, dark, modestly foreboding station. We hired a taxi to take us to the hotel we had booked. Luckily, given our physical and mental condition after the hot, mosquito-infested overnight bus ride, we were able to check into our room right away. We dropped off our laundry with a woman who ran her business from under a tree. She instructed us to return to pick it up at the end of the day. We had an excellent lunch, explored the city, and visited a temple on top of a small mountain to watch the sun set. When we returned to the woman under the tree, our laundry was ready: a stack of clean clothes, neatly folded and still warm. Mandalay was lovely when we were not thinking about why we were there: getting Katrina to India for treatment.

  That night, Katrina went online and began doing more research on leishmaniasis, a disease that can do great harm if left untreated. Katrina scrolled through photos of people whose faces had been eaten away by the parasite. She found a blogger who had lost several toes to “fucking leishmaniasis.” She read about an internal strain of the disease that can be deadly. Katrina, never voluble, grew more silent and brooding. “Those are people who didn’t get treatment,” I said.

  “How do you know?” Katrina replied worriedly. She sent a text to a high school friend of hers, Kati, who was living in Munich and studying biology at a German university. The two of them had planned to travel together in India and Nepal. Katrina informed her that the leishmaniasis might force a detour and disrupt their travel plans. Kati responded to Katrina’s text immediately and said she would contact the Tropeninstitut in Munich, one of the world’s preeminent institutes for the study and treatment of tropical diseases, to learn what the doctors there had to say about leishmaniasis.

  The next morning, we took a taxi ride to the consulate, making sure to arrive early. Shortly after nine, we were shown into a small office, where an official interviewed us about our travel plans. The process was smooth; the officials were friendly. We paid our fee and were told to return to pick up our passports with the new visas in three days. The rest of the family had made it to Bagan, five hours away. Our plan was to join them and then return to Mandalay to pick up the visas at the appointed time. Katrina and I took a hot, cramped minibus from Mandalay to Bagan. As I stumbled off the bus, trying to reinvigorate the circulation to my legs, I began to wonder if I had a finite number of long bus rides in me.

  Bagan is one of Myanmar’s most picturesque cities. Thousands of temples and pagodas dot the landscape, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Exploring this ancient kingdom, however, was not our top priority. Kati called from Germany with an update: the Munich clinic had an expertise in leishmaniasis (great news), but the treatment could take as long as eight weeks (less great news). The Germans were using a new medicine that had not yet been approved by the FDA for use in the United States. Kati had even procured the cell phone number of a doctor at the Tropeninstitut.

  Katrina phoned the doctor to gauge how quickly she needed to get to Munich. We had a trek planned in Bhutan that she really wanted to do. “You can wait a week,” the doctor told her. “And then you need to get here.” Separately, we had heard back from a doctor in Calcutta that the clinic there did not specialize in the “New World” strain of leishmaniasis that Katrina had most likely picked up in South America. Months of confusion and uncertainty finally gav
e way to a plan: Katrina would fly to Germany for treatment. The irony, of course, was that we had set in motion an elaborate process to get our multiple-entry Indian visas, which we no longer needed.

  Our passports were in Mandalay, but there was no way I was getting back into a minibus for the five-hour trip each way. For a modest sum, I hired a taxi for the day. The driver picked us up at our hotel at six forty-five in the morning. The relative comfort of the backseat of the car was delightful; the drive turned out to be my favorite day in Myanmar. As the sun rose, we watched the country pass slowly, like a good train ride: men and women working their fields, children walking to school, little roadside villages bustling with activity. At one point, a herd of cattle blocked the road for an extended period of time before they finally parted and let us through.

  We arrived at the Indian consulate in time for the visa pickup. The visas were ready, the consular official informed us. There was just one formality left, he said. Both of us would have to be fingerprinted. All ten digits.

  For most families, this would be a formality. For ours, it was not. Katrina has only nine fingers, having lost one in a car accident when she was very young. I went first and placed each finger, one at a time, on an electronic print reader. How was this going to work with only nine digits? Katrina stepped up and pressed one finger at a time on the machine, leaving the index finger on her right hand blank. The software demanded ten fingerprints. The visa could not be processed without them. The Indian bureaucracy was playing its final card.

  The consular official fiddled with the fingerprint machine but could not get it to accept any fewer than ten digits. Eventually he said, “We’ll just skip it.” He pasted the visas in our passports. This, too, was a lesson in bureaucracies. This gentleman had already decided that we were going to get our visas; therefore, he became our partner in the process rather than our enemy. We walked out of the Indian consulate in Mandalay with two multiple-entry Indian visas. Never mind that we no longer needed them; we had taken on the Indian bureaucracy and prevailed!