The Good, the Bad & the Ugly of Southeast Asia Medical Care-Part I

Apparently, being continuously on the road for 9 months can take an incredibly physical toll on one's body. I learned this the hard way starting nearly 3 weeks ago while in Chiang Rai, Thailand. Prepare yourselves by popping some aspirin for during the majority of this next lengthy blog entry I will be regaling you with my journey through the good, the bad and the ugly of Southeast Asia's medical care services. It ain't all that pretty, cough cough, in places, I must warn you, but in the end, I landed at the swanky Bangkok Hospital, which is as close as I have come to staying at a 5-star hotel during this entire trip.

So it all began with a headache and back pain on June 25 in a northern town in Thailand...

Chiang Rai, Thailand (June 23-29)

My intentions in Chiang Rai were to do some trekking in the hills and perhaps a foray into the non-opium producing area of the Golden Triangle. Alas, it being low season, I was unable to find any trekking tours being organized at the numerous agencies I visited and/ or telephoned. However, while visiting the informative Hilltribe Museum and Education Centre (which interestingly enough is located in the same building as a branch of the Cabbages & Condoms Restaurant whose profits go to family planning and sex education projects in Thailand), I met another solo female traveler, Maria from the Netherlands, and managed to arrange for us to go on a full-day tour into the hills outside town where we would visit some of the tribes living in the area - namely the Akha, Yao, Lisu and Lahu. Our tour operator also offered opportunities to visit a Longneck hilltribe concentration camp village of the Kayan (Padaung). But after reading the "truth" about the living situation of this tribe at the hilltribe museum, I couldn't stomach the idea of putting any money into the greedy hands of businessmen who have essentially "imprisoned" these ladies in touristic villages where they are on display for busloads of tourists to gawk over and photograph. These brass-neckringed attired women are originally from Burma yet many fled during the 80's-90's due to the conflict with the military regime there. Unfortunately, living in Thailand has not been the bastion of freedom they had hoped for as they are not Thai citizens and are required to carry ID at all times with limited freedom of movement from the tourist camps. Deplorable! And shame on Thailand for allowing such exploitation to continue!

My outing with Maria was pleasant except for the fact that I definitely was beginning to feel considerably unwell with excessive sweating, backache and headache throughout the day. The highlights of the tour included another visit to an elementary school where I sat with the children and managed to get them giggling with my hammy antics and over-the-top dramatic singing as well as a visit to a tea plantation which was lusciously green to behold but considerably bland to taste. Unfortunately, by the time I returned to my accommodation, the Pankledvilla / Buffalo Hill Guesthouse back in Chiang Rai, I was pretty much shattered and took to my bed for the rest of the evening.

The following day (June 26) I did manage to venture out into the city for a few hours, taking a stroll through the fruit & veggie market (Can never get enough fresh Thai pineapple on a stick!!) and visiting a couple of Buddhist temples, but by late afternoon my whole body felt like it had been run over by a steamroller à la Otto in "A Fish Called Wanda" and my head felt as if it was set to explode much like a watermelon shot to smithereens by a 12-gauge shotgun. As the evening wore on, I felt like I had a fever as well but had no thermometer to confirm that.

By the next morning (June 27), I realized that I had to seek medical treatment pronto so I hopped into a tuk tuk and headed to the Overbrook Hospital in the city centre of Chiang Rai. The hospital was fairly modern but unfortunately by the time I got in to see a doctor, he only had a few moments to spare me before heading off for his lunch break. Thus my physical "examination" consisted of the doctor listening to me describe my symptoms and looking in my throat for a measly few seconds only to declare that I had a bacterial infection. No blood tests were done, uh uh. Nor did he listen to me breathe with a stethoscope. He simply prescribed a 7-day antibiotic plus some paracetamol and an antihistamine, tapped me on my ass (err...just kidding) and sent me on my not-so-merry way.

Huay Xai, Laos (June 29-July 6)

For the next couple of days I dutifully downed my drugs as prescribed, did some blog writing and waited...waited...WAITED...for the friggin' antibiotics to kick in. By June 29, I decided I had had enough of lying around like a sick slob convalescing in Chiang Rai and hopped on a bus headed towards Chiang Kong, a Thai border town along the Mekong River, where one can easily cross over into Laos. One can acquire a tourist visa for Laos there provided one has a passport photo and $35 dollars to spare. On the Laotian side of the Mekong lies the rather flavorless small town of Huay Xai. It is essentially a way station for backpackers headed by slow boat to Luang Prabang (Stay tuned for details on this) or those booked on the "Gibbon Experience" (Coming up next, ffolks!).

I had made a reservation via email while still in Chiang Rai to go on the 3-day/2-night "Classic Gibbon Experience" starting on June 30 ($290) but luckily when I explained how sick I still was to the staff at the head office in Huay Xai, they agreed to put off the trip for a day or two while I continued to recover. The thermometer I bought at the sole pharmacy in Huay Xai confirmed the fact that I was quite feverish (103.2 at one point) and whatever was ailing me had now seeped into my lungs resulting in severe coughing fits and wheezing every few minutes or so. Yikes! At this point I was on Day 4 of my antibiotics (June 30) yet feeling no bloody relief. But the optimist in me, or perhaps it was simply impatience, felt that I could no longer remain boringly bed bound and that surely my drugs had to be mere moments away from providing me much-needed relief, so I informed the Gibbon Office that I would be "good enough to go" starting July 2. If only that had been so...

Lonely Planet's Southeast Asia Guidebook ranks the "Gibbon Experience" at #3 with a bullet on its top-ranked things to do in the region and, although it did end up being a fairly cool/memorable experience overall (in spite of my ongoing illness), I would hardly have ranked it so high, particularly when it comes to the cost of it. Essentially, it is a chance to slog up & down severely muddy hillside Laotian jungle trails while failing to avoid blood-sucking leeches and mosquitoes in order to go zip-lining between tree houses perched high above the ground. There are actual living, breathing, non-captive gibbons in the area, but most visitors merely hear the sound of their mesmerizing calls in the treetops below in the wee hours of the morning when they are most active. I must admit though that it was quite magical to wake up to their hypnotic whistling and hear them rustling playfully with one another in the branches of the cloud forest below.

There were 9 of us all told in our particular Gibbon Group, but as none of the tree houses can accommodate so many, we were split into 2 groups. In Tree House #1 we had the strictly English-speaking group of Mark & Kat from Chester, Lynne from some other town in the UK and a pair of Asian-American brothers from Washington State. Mark & Kat were an incredibly friendly/funny couple with whom I wish I had had more opportunity to hang out, whereas Lynne struck me as an either incredibly naive lass or just plain stupid for she chose to adorn simple slippery sneakers and short shorts while hiking through the jungle all the while claiming that she was under the protection of the fairies of the forest which would prevent her from ever slipping in the mud or being attacked by ravenous insects. Alrighty, I admit I may be slightly twisting her words here for the sake of this dramatic narrative but...seriously?!? The girl really needed to find a clue and fast! Finally, the pair of brothers struck me as incredibly spoiled and overly critical for whenever I was around them, they seemed to be pontificating negatively, so much so that I couldn't wait to escape their dark cloud.

Thankfully, I was NOT placed with this group but instead slept in Treehouse #3 with three fantabulous Germans- Marco (Aka "Spiderman" due to his over-the-top slightly screechy reaction upon encountering a somewhat large spider perched upon his treehouse bedding), Suzie (Aka "the Buggy Babe" due to the fact that all insectual creatures seemed drawn to suck, bite and nibble at her legs despite her incessant application of bug spray) and finally Soren (Aka "Leech Boy" whose long unprotected pale limbs were continuously decorated with thin trails of blood from the bloodsuckers which lived in the sloshy mud we trudged through). Not only did this mighty German trio prove to be fine companions but they also smuggled in 2 bottles of decent red wine in their backpacks! Now we're talkin'!! It was high time to drown my sickly sorrows with a sip or two (or three) of tasty Cabernet!

The zip lining was absolutely thrilling and I believe that I managed to do it fairly well, reaching the platforms successfully 75% of the time. Unfortunately, the hiking I was required to do between each zip line quickly took its toll on my sad sick sack of a body so after only a couple of hours of activity, I was forced to retire to our treehouse to gather my strength. It was either that or hack up a lung.

One memorable thing I witnessed while tramping along the slick & sloppy muddy trails of the Laotian jungle was the sight of a worm desperately tring to evade a swarm of vicious black ants. I had no idea a worm could do more than slither along at a sluglike pace but this worm was speeding along like a jackrabbit on PCP. For one second, it appeared as if the worm was doomed to be devoured for one of the ants managed to catch up to it and stung the poor creature causing its entire body to spasm violently. Luckily though, the worm overcame the pain within moments and slithered off into the grass where the bully ants lost sight of it. I literally cheered outloud when I realized the worm would live to see another day! But seriously, who knew that ants could be such predators, eh? I will never gaze upon a "peaceful" anthill in the same way again...

On the morning of the third day (July 4), we hiked & ziplined our way out of the jungle, making our arduous way back to Huay Xai. I did have an itsy bitsy dangerous moment just after I had completed my final ziplining. You see I was fiddling with my harness and not watching precisely where I placed my feet on the narrow muddy trail when all of a sudden I found myself slipping over the edge. I would've fallen if not for Little Miss Naive Lynne grabbing me by the arms and pulling me back to safety. So yeah. Another scary sort of life-threatening moment in Southeast Asia to go along with all the others I have been racking up. Oh and thank you, Lynne, wherever you are. And sorry that I made fun of you in my blog.

Once back in Huay Xai, I felt like celebrating with a parade down Main Street as I had managed not to DIE in spite of a further few days of incessant coughing, wheezing and fever. It was a no brainer that I should take to my bed once again to recuperate before traveling onwards to Luang Prabang where I might be able to receive better medical care and my new German friends, whoop whoop, were on the same page as me.

The slow boat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang (220,000 kat) along the Mekong River takes 2 days with an overnight stopover in Pakbeng. The boats' passengers are almost exclusively young backpackers and once the clock strikes noon, the Lao beer starts a'flowing from the bar on board. Departing on July 6, Marco, Suzie and I managed to find seats together on both days (Soren, aka "Leech Boy" was sadly not with us as he had had to return to Germany) and kicked back in order to enjoy the languid pace of the river and lush countryside cradling both sides of the river. Mind you, I was still feverish, still coughing, STILL..SUFFERING

Part 2 coming up tomorrow...