-^-for posterity-^-

i went out to eat with some of my friends tonight and complained of a headache. we were eating banh xeo which is commonly translated as vietnamese pancakes. it is an eggy-dough-like yellow batter that is fried on a giant skillet. it is thin and the cook will add peas, pork, shrimp and anything else they can round up. when the banh xeo is fully cooked various kinds of vegetables are placed in the middle. it is folded over and dipped in fish sauce.

i said i had a headache because my head had been throbbing the last couple of days. too much work and no rest makes jon a tired boy.

he decided that i must have a good, ‘ol fashioned giac gio to suck out all the bad wind from my body. for those who don’t remember, a giac gio is an homeopathic way of healing people when they’re feeling down in the dumps. the giac gioer must take a number of specially made cups, a wand dipped in alcohol, put the flaming wand in the cup and quickly place the cup on the area that needs giac gioing.

the air is burnt out of the cups and they easily stick fast to your skin even in some of the strangest places (the bony part of your shoulder for example). the cups are left to suck out all the bad wind for about ten minutes. then the giac gioer must return and remove all the cups and place them back in various places that the giac gioer deems to be in need of more giac gioing.

i went to my friends house. he is a wonderfully intelligent middle-aged man who speaks wonderful english and is a skillful and determined worker. his house is snuggly situated on a quaint road and i drove my motorbike right up to the door and he drove his inside his living room for the night.

he went about collecting his giac gio materials and i tried to get his cat to eat something. his cat would have nothing to do with me and had a way of climbing right up the walls and sitting on the rafters staring at me.

i went into his bedroom, took my shirt off and laid face down on a wooden bed with a bamboo mat on top. it is not comfortable laying on bamboo without clothes and trying to find a place to rest your head that is mildly comfortable. it’s all compounded because you can’t move at all when you’re being giac gioed.

he came into the room and fired up the wand. he said that, ideally, we would be using alcohol but, because he didn’t have any, we would have to settle for kerosene. the fire was very hot and he shook the wand a couple of times towards the ground. this all scared the cat who ran up and somehow scaled a giant, wooden closet and sat on the edge looking concerned.

he waved the wand over me. it’s quite a thrill to have a giant ball of fire being waved inches from your back and head. it’s warm and, because the room was dimly lit, it cast a jumping flicker wherever it went.

he grabbed one of the jars and held it inches above my back. he thrust the burning wand inside of the jar and slammed it down. the jar instantly began to suck with all the strength of a vacuum. he grabbed a second jar and found a second place. this was all the preliminary testing phase where he was trying to find out exactly where my bad wind was resting. if a spot was very dark purple, it was bad wind and should be giac gioed all around. if the spot is reddish, it should be left alone.

the first giac gioing lasted for a good fifteen minutes in order to really see clearly where i was needing more giac gioing. the problem with this adventure was that, besides lying on a very hard bamboo mat without a shirt on, there were also only a handful of glasses. one must leave the glasses on for at least ten minutes in order to fully achieve giac gioedness. because there were fewer jars and lots of giac gioing to go around, i had to suffer through several rounds.

the whole endeavor went on for a good hour and a half. at the peak of the giac gioing, ones back feels like an entire sheet of embers is being held just inches from the skin. everything feels like it’s on fire.

at the end of everything he put some lotion on my back at everything cooled down.

he then said i should giac gio my chest a bit. i laid down on my back and he placed all eight glasses on my chest for another fifteen minutes. here i could actually see what the giac gio was all about. the skin inside of the glasses would bubble up inside. in some of the glasses the skin would rise up by as much as a half of an inch. it looked grotesque.

i left his house feeling refreshed again. there’s really something to the procedure and i have no idea what it really is.


and my new back.