Vietnam and area

I love going to Vietnam. It has many features that make it feel like a Pacific Island, yet exotic features (to me as a Westerner) that feel more Asian.
Many spell the name Viet Nam, but it is more commonly one word, one capital letter: Vietnam. This is a small country that wraps around the coast of the Southeast peninsula of Indochina, surrounded clockwise by the East Sea (South China Sea), Cambodia, Laos, and China.

With a population of about 91 million squeezed into a land mass about the size of New Mexico, Vietnam is the 13th most populous country in the world. It is a little longer than California, but skinny coastline for the most part. The density of the population is about 672 per square mile, compared to 84 in U.S. You could get the same density by moving everyone in California into Kentucky!

Vietnam has a rich cultural history of over 20,000 years. In modern history, it has been occupied and colonized by many countries, most recently France and Japan. After WWII, political upheaval put an end to the monarchy and Vietnam became a republic. Most memorable to Americans is the Vietnam war, which divided our country as it ravaged theirs. The US withdrew in 1973, and Saigon in the South (now Ho Chi Minh City) fell to the Communists in 1975. In 1976, the country became the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. There were about 3 million Vietnamese dead and 4 million injured in this war, as well as about 1 million who fled the country after the take-over. US losses were great with over 200,000 dead or injured, but the losses to Vietnam were huge.

I am surprised at the youthfulness of the population; in fact almost 1/2 the population are teenagers or younger. Not many people are left who even remember the war, although stories abound that they are willing to share. The history aside, these people are warm, friendly, kind and generous.

Most developing countries give priority to basic health care for most people, eradicating infectious and parasitic diseases, and promoting family planning. When someone has a scar or birth defect that renders him or her abnormal in appearance or function, it is not usually treated, as it is not life threatening and the numbers afflicted are overwhelming. But in reality the impact upon the person's life is enormous, as that child or adult is often ostracized as possessed or evil, even being sequestered outside with the animals. Procedures we take for granted are simply not widely available.

Resurge makes an effort to set up two-week clinics in various parts of the world, integrating as many local health providers as possible to partner in the delivery of plastic reconstructive surgery to those without access to such care. This trip is a new model with only section chiefs being sent, with Vietnamese nationals filling in the gaps. Where there is usually a U.S. team of 16 or so, our group is a surgeon, anesthesiologist, two nurses, pediatrician, and translator. The rest of the team will be Vietnamese and will join us there.

Our specific site for this trip is Quang Ngai. Quang Ngai is in Quang Ngai Province, which is almost exactly in the middle of the Eastern coastline of Vietnam. About 100 miles south of Da Nang, it was a stronghold of the Vietcong during the war, and was the site of several massacres, including My Lai in 1968. It is a poor province, with mostly farming of rice, sugar, coconuts, and peanuts; as well as cattle, fishing, and some light industry.