Acupuncture - With Sign Language

Vietnam continues to feel like a fever dream stitched together by heat, confusion, optimism, and increasingly questionable decisions.

Today I went to what can only be described as a mysterious underground Vietnamese acupuncture wizard. Tiny room. No English. No explanations. Just intense eye contact and the quiet confidence of a man who has definitely stabbed thousands of people professionally.

To be fair, I also speak no Vietnamese. So our medical consultation mostly involved me pointing at various body parts while making vague suffering noises and attempting interpretive dance-level demonstrations of “my muscles don’t work properly.”

Somehow, against all logic, he understood.

The Squeeze, meanwhile, sat outside the curtain the entire time listening to what probably sounded like a hostage situation unfolding in stages.

Every few minutes:
“OW.”
Silence.
“Jesus Christ.”
More silence.
Then the occasional nervous laugh from the acupuncturist which did not inspire confidence.

Apparently this was healing.

An hour later I was folded, stretched, poked, prodded and needled like an old couch cushion. At one point I’m reasonably sure I briefly left my body and became aware of previous lives. There were moments where I considered whether this was still therapy or if I was being quietly assembled into flat-pack furniture.

Meanwhile The Squeeze remained outside, loyal but absolutely unwilling to swap places with me once he realised this wasn’t the relaxing spa treatment the brochure probably implied.

But weirdly? I felt a bit better afterward.

Not cured. Not suddenly sprinting through the streets like an inspirational pharmaceutical commercial. But looser. Lighter. Less like my muscles had been set in concrete sometime around 2019.

So naturally, full of post-treatment confidence and poor impulse control, we walked home past a guitar shop I’d been eyeing off all week and I bought a ukulele.

Because apparently this is who I am now.

A woman wandering through Vietnam collecting alternative therapies, cocktails, dresses, and small musical instruments she absolutely does not know how to play.

Anyway, we’re now back at the hotel sitting by the pool, mildly sunburnt, vaguely relaxed, and pretending we’re the sort of people who casually buy ukuleles overseas instead of normal tourists who return home with fridge magnets and regret.

Vietnam really is becoming less of a holiday and more of a very strange personality transformation.