Halong Bay, and another busy week at Hanoi Hospital

COUNTRY: Vietnam
PROGRAM: UniBreak
PROJECT: Community Healthcare
WRITTEN BY: Nicole Powers & Sam Scheffer

After a challenging first week had by all of the volunteers, a well deserved break was in order. It took a long and bumpy bus ride to get to the beautiful island of Halong Bay, where we spent the weekend on an overnight boat relaxing and sailing around the islands. We sipped freshly made cocktails made by our funky barman who entertained us with his westernised gangnam style moves, and enjoyed fresh seafood.

The group paired up to kayak around the islands taking every opportunity to capture the beauty of Halong Bay. Jordan and Sam S, two of the other volunteers amused the rest of the group with their uncoordinated strokes, refusing to go the whole distance as they had spent most of their energy travelling in circles. At night we played card games to entertain the time in between testing every cocktail on board.

Sam C felt it was safer to wear the fluorescent life jacket the entire trip, giving us all a laugh at meal times. We speak on behalf of everyone when we say the people volunteering ate like kings the whole trip with roughly 8 different plates to choose from to accompany rice. The presentation of each meal was extremely detailed, turning tomatoes into swans and various vegetables into flowers making dinner a glamorous site.

Week two in the hospital flew by for most, with many girls finding themselves getting in on the action more and assisting the doctors and nurses.

Sarah, Penelope and Sam C witnessed more babies being born and got to work in the prenatal clinic, measuring and examining pregnant women who come in for their routine checkups with their doctor.

Elena, Nicole and Julia learnt new injection and wound dressing techniques in the surgical and trauma ward this week, enabling them to help with general surgical patients. They have also learnt the art of how to communicate with patients to a degree simply by utilising body language.

Temika and Kelly (who are studying Occupational Therapy and Biomedical Science) undertook night duty in the Intensive Care Unit. Here they were confronted with many emotional challenges, with one of the greatest being a 19 year old patient who had fallen off a ladder and was now a quadriplegic. They found it difficult when they learnt the lack of independence he would be faced with for the rest of his life. On a lighter note, the girls volunteering have also been spending much of their time practising massage techniques on patients and on each other in the physiotherapy department, scoring many free massages from the doctors, which we are all very envious of.

Jordan and Sam S have found their mark in emergency, attending to wound dressings, taking blood, and even assisting in CPR. Listening carefully to the doctors commands, the girls assisted with airway management but unfortunately witnessed their first death. It was an experience they will never forget as they were able to compare the cultural differences between Australia and Vietnam in terms of grieving. Later in the week they witnessed a patient who had been in motor vehicle accident. The girls were also able to apply knowledge previously learnt in Australia to the situation, ensuring that the patient’s airway would be maintained.


We are making the most of our nights off, taking every opportunity to explore Hanoi. The medical students introduced some of the volunteer group to their university, eagerly wanting to know how it differs from Australian universities. They showed us their library, foreign language rooms, lecture theatres, and then took us to try some traditional corn and fried banana.

All in all our week 2 has been quite eventful. We are eagerly awaiting our trip to Mai Chau this weekend, as well as new experiences on different wards in week 3 and 4.