Bitten by a Rat on Party Street — A Traveler’s Tale

The little Bui Vien rat bastard.

The Mystery

T’was the night before Wednesday, and all through Bui Vien Street (HCMC, Vietnam). Many creatures were stirring, many of them backpackers.

If you’ve never been to Bui Vien in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, I can tell you it’s like Khao San road in Bangkok. If you’ve never been to Khao San road, then imagine your nearest city’s party street with a lot of street vendors and people begging you to come into their bar. It’s a fun experience, loud too. Overall, Bui Vien is a great place for people-watching and cheapish drinks.

So there I am sitting with a friend drinking my $2 mango smoothie, observing the young Vietnamese crowd, when all of a sudden I feel a pinch on my left big toe. Immediately lookingatown to my bare foot and flip-flop on the ground, I couldn’t see anything that could have caused the pinch. Maybe I had caught a sharp edge in the concrete. Perhaps a stick? Nope. Nothing. I didn’t see anything. Needless to say, I was perplexed alongside my friend because I started to think she thought I was crazy.

“Maybe it was a rat”, she joked.

“Huh… Maybe”, I replied unwillingly.

No blood, but the little bastard got a little taste.

So, we continued drinking our smoothies while I freaked out internally a bit more about what it could have been still. That’s when out of the corner of my eye, protruding from the standing platform for a bar, I saw him. The little rat bastard peeking again towards that glory of white meat he tried to nibble at on my big toe.

“There he is!”

Now confirmed about the mysterious source of toe pain, my mind even went crazier. Rabies. Tetanus. Rate bite fever. This can get seeally quickly. So not feeling like paranymorey more that night because a FREAKING RAT BIT ME, I went home and looked up hospitals that could keep me from dying.

The Response

Now you might be thinking that I don’t need to be worried because the little f*cker didn’t break the skin. Maybe so, but I’m not taking chances. Have you ever seen people at the end of their rabies journey? It’s…