I am running full speed through orly airport in paris. My flight from New York got in late and I am about to miss the plane to Moscow that will carry me to Vientiane, Laos, and on to Hanoi. As I round a corner, I slip on the polished floor and down I go. I know immediately that I have refractured the foot I broke the previous year ... By the time we land in Moscow my foot is swollen and blue, and I know I must get it tended to. I have a four-hour layover, so airport officials get me a taxi and instruct the driver to take me to the closest hospital on the outskirts of Moscow. After X-raying my foot, the doctors confirm it is a fracture, apply a plaster cast, give me a pair of crutches and send me back to the airport. What will my Vietnamese hosts think when they see me get off the plane with crutches and a cast? They don't need the burden of a disabled American descending on them-and how am I going to climb over the earthen dikes that I am coming to film? ...
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