Libby taking a picture of herself at a waterfall.
Eating is another hard part of traveling alone. I have a great imagination and vivid internal dialogue, but I still get kind of bored/lonely when I’ve eaten 3 meals alone for several days. There’s always the read a book option - read the guidebook for you next destination, or something else you brought along. This is good, but often requires odd arrangements of condiments to keep the book open, and it’s distracting from both the book and the meal. There’s really nothing like sharing a good meal with a good conversation partner.
My hammock in the four thousand islands - the correct place to read a book
That said though, I had a great time. I imagine it would be hard to find a better place to be a solo woman traveler. Lao people are generally super friendly, honest, polite, and there is absolutely no overt sexism. It’s also a small place, without a lot of business travelers or white people who live there full time, so it’s easy to ID your fellow tourists and engage with them. Even local people who try to ‘take advantage’ of tourists never more than double the price they’d charge a Lao person. And in a country where the average income is less than a dollar a day, I can hardly be angry at them for charging a bit more from the white people who have clearly spent hundreds or thousands of dollars to be here. (I know young people like to travel in SE Asia because it’s cheap, but it does frustrate me when I see someone haggling or complaining about a markup 12.5 cents, or even a few dollars. That is a lot of money to the sales person and if 2 dollars is going to break your budget as a traveler, you probably shouldn’t be this far from home. Especially when I _regularly_ see patients leave the hospital with easily, and inexpensively treatable conditions because they can’t afford to be treated.) So if I had to pick a place to travel alone, this is a great one. And I’d rather see interesting things alone than stay at home.
Wat Phu, Champassak, Laos
As an aside - Phi Mai Lao may be my new favorite holiday. It’s like a cross between the world’s most innocent and sincere wet t-shirt contest and the world’s biggest water fight. It was 3 days of people at the side of the road throwing water (or hosing down) people in trucks, on motorbikes, on bicycles, or walking. People in trucks reciprocate with their own buckets of water, and people riding pillion on motorcycles and bicycles and people walking shooting each other with water guns. As we drove through town one afternoon, half the town was gathered in their front driveways with music playing, the hose and buckets out, the girls dancing and swinging the hose around in the air above their heads, dousing and washing each other, the guys taking the lookout for (and drenching of) passers by more seriously. The other half the town was in the back of pickup trucks in groups of 5-10 with buckets and water guns, and on their motorbikes. The best part is: they all slow down as they approach one another so they can be sure they have a good opportunity to drench and be drenched. Even passing motorists not engaged in the festivities would, for the most part, cheerfully slow down to have the hose held over them for a few moments. And when I say drench, I mean drench. I stood outside with the girls who worked at the hotel for 45 minutes, and when it became clear that I was joining them the first thing they did was hold the hose over my head and rotate me for a minute. Oh, and it’s 90-100+ outside, so even if someone dumps a bucket of ice water over you, you’re still not ever really cold.
Hundreds of Lao people frolic in Tat Lo, Salavan. The water felt great, and they loved splashing the falang.
Two weeks ago my Mom sent me a link to the obituary of Carla Madison. Carla moved in across the alley from my family when I was in elementary school. She was 54 and a Denver City Council member when she died of metastatic colon cancer. We weren’t close friends, or even still neighbors, but I know she will be missed greatly in Denver. She was a massage therapist when she moved in, and she was so good she would be the one called when a famous band was in town. (I seem to recall a weekend spent working on the Rolling Stones, but maybe my childhood memories have exaggerated that.) She always had a crazy new shade of red hair, she had a home-made evil monkey chandelier in her dining room, had gargoyles installed on her front steps, and she couldn’t stop adopting stray dogs. I remember being kind of scared and in awe of Carla - she was pretty cool but also a bit mysterious and maybe her life was a bit dangerous in addition to being exciting. (I actually doubt it was, but that was my impression in elementary school.) When I learned in medical school that she had metastatic colon cancer, it was my first experience being uncomfortable knowing more about a diagnosis than I could share with parents/friends, and not knowing if someone I was in no way a caregiver for understood what a diagnosis meant. This continues to be an awkward situation when it occurs, and probably always will be. I know that Carla understood her cancer for a long while before she died, though, I saw her last summer during a visit and she was pretty open about it. I wasn’t surprised - she was a smart woman who stuck up for herself and made her own assessment of things, so of course she would have asked the right questions and wanted to understand. I don’t know, but I would guess that she was also at peace with her life and death, although it was clearly terribly unfair. (My impression is that) Carla was a person who lived life fully, completely, without being reckless, but experiencing, giving, and receiving as much as she could. She lived more in 54 years than many people do in a full lifetime. As I approach 30, I hope that my friends would be able to say the same of me - whether I die next week or at 90. Working in medicine makes you aware of the preciousness of life, and makes you want to preserve your own, but you also realize how crazy, terrible things happen to people all the time, so you don’t want to put off or pass up opportunities when they present themselves.
Kayaking to see the dolphins. I think Carla would approve.
Work has been frustrating the last few weeks. I am trying to negotiate resident selection for the next class in a political climate I don’t fully understand, and a language I understand maybe a third of. (For the record, understanding 1/3 words is absolutely not enough to understand the nuances of a conversation between native speakers. General gist, maybe.) The residents were supposed to start today and we still don’t have a final list. And they have to move from all over the country. There are at least 2, if not 3 factions with drastically different ideas of who should be chosen. Time I spend calling, e-mailing, and attending meetings about this is often time away from clinical work, which is the really fun part of this volunteer job. Then I spent quite a bit of time making the schedule for next year work, including trying to make sure people didn’t have vacation too early, etc. Of course, almost none of the residents are happy with it and many want changes. It’s not a simple process to make sure that 21 people each have the correct rotations and all the wards have the correct number of residents from each year working on every ward each month. (Hats off to Julie Cole, who did this for 30+ people per class in my residency program, by the way. I have a whole new level of sympathy for her, and I’m glad I never requested changes to my schedule once it was made. Of course, she did a good job.)
My best attending English students. Poor suckers, I barely understand the language myself.
Even at my most frustrated/confused about work, or at my loneliest while traveling alone, I haven’t regretted the decision to be here now. I haven’t even come close. This has been a great year for me. I’ve solidified clinical skills and critical thinking skills that I had at residency graduation, but was accustomed to having a supervising doctor to confirm or correct. I’ve learned about disease I had heard of only in passing (Meliodosis) or not at all (Capillariasis). I’ve worked normal-length weeks, and I’m exercising regularly. I hope my time here has also been valuable for my residents - I think they are learning, and they aren’t complaining about my teaching, but then again people here generally don’t complain. I think the part of my day that I value the most - clinical rounds with the residents - is also the part they benefit from the most. Prompting them to get the whole story, make a differential diagnosis, and then think critically about what we should test, treat, and think about for later is not something their Lao supervising doctors always have time to do.
Residents and staff at the end of CME. Why I am here.
A friendly old hippie from San Francisco who I met at the Pakse Hotel had 2 pieces of wisdom regarding turning 30; the first was that you should not wake up alone, because it can be a hard day, the second was that whatever you’re doing at 30 will be what you do for the rest of your life. I’m going to bed alone tonight, so unless something crazy happens, I will be waking up alone. I’m OK with that; I do have a birthday card my parents mailed March 26th (So it would arrive in time) to open. And I have a full day planned, so I don’t think I’ll have time for much melancholy. As for the second, I don’t think I’ll be in Lao for the rest of my life (in fact, I hope to be home at this time next year - my next home tentatively being Denver). I do hope that I’ll continue to be involved in global health, teaching, learning, and taking good, compassionate, care of my patients for the rest of my life. I hope I’ll continue to enjoy life and take care of myself as well. So I hope he was right about the second piece of “wisdom.”
Enjoying another sunset over the Meekong - this one from the rooftop bar of the Pakse Hotel with a Margarita! I've never before seen so many fabulous sunsets in one year.
Yesterday I got this message in an e-mail about the schedule from one of the chief residents: “Occasion in your birthday and Laos new year, I wish you have good healths, do not ill or do not fever. Have successful in your life all of your family too. Have a lot of money, but do not forget to share me! Itdermair, and Chief of resident” You couldn’t ask for a nicer sentiment. I wish it back to my Lao residents and colleagues, friends in Lao, and of course all of you, dear readers, who have supported me through these first 30 years. I look forward to sharing the ongoing journey with you!
Jonty, 2, sweeping the yard in his dress. He still knows how to follow his dreams without fear of judgment.
2 comments:
Great post, Libby!
loving it :)
Post a Comment