On the Road – Brief Impressions.

The next 2 weeks of my trip in brief tidbits:

September 22 – Muang Khua hospital. No 6 year doctors seeing patients, but good facilities and equipment, and polite and engaged staff (3 year doctors and nurses) providing patient care. We didn’t round with them. If they had a pediatrician and an Internist (Ok, and a surgeon and OB) they could be a great small hospital.

September 23 – Travel to Muang Sing – Muang Khua to Udomxai (3 hours), Udomxai to Luang Nam Tha (3 hours) both on lovely roads. Luang Nam Tha to Muang Sing – 3 hours, longer than usual due to several large mud slides on the road. Arrived in Muang sing to Bryan and a crowd of 10-20 Lao children who were super happy to see Leila and shy to meet me. Dinner on their lovely balcony overlooking the army barracks, road, and countryside while the sun set.

September 24 – Market trip and butterfly children’s center in the morning – great to see Leila and Bryan in their element. Bike ride in the afternoon, then made spaghetti sauce from scratch to eat with rice noodles and Chinese cabernet (terrible!) for dinner.

September 25 – Mitchell Montessori Cinco De Mayo paper flowers at the childrens center. Bike ride to Koma’s Akha village in the afternoon – 6 KM up hill and lovely views on the return. Purchasing of large amounts of beautifully woven local handicrafts at a private market put on by local girls in Leila and Bryan’s house in the evening.

September 26 – Bike ride in the morning, children’s center for jump rope and puzzle games in the afternoon.

September 27 – One more walk through the weaving village and a few more purchases in the early afternoon, Last evening at the children’s center.

September 28th – up early and packed 4-5 kilos of new belongings tightly into my travel pack. Minibus to Luang Nam Tha where I rounded with 2010 graduate Veokham, who appears to be doing a fabulous job on his ward. Like recent residency graduates worldwide, he complained that we had not taught him enough musculoskeletal diagnosis and treatment – but he had managed to (accurately, I think) diagnose a patient with spinal chord stenosis anyway. Bike ride in the afternoon during which I took a wrong turn and ended up riding more than 20 KM, much of it on village trails. Luang Nam Tha valley is beautiful with rice fields and mountains, and the last leg was with beautiful late-afternoon lighting (but home before dark despite my miscalcuation.)

September 29th – attended teaching by Dr. Veokham to hospital staff in the morning – Dengue fever with all slides in Lao language! Wow! Gave the staff in the blood bank some excitement by donating blood – several cell phone camera photos were taken to document the occasion. Said a sad goodbye to Leila after lunch and had a relaxed afternoon.

September 30th and October 1st – travel to Mae Sot – LNT to Bokeo, across the Mekong into Thailand, and on to Chiang Rai the first day. Chiang Ria – splurged on Pizza and Salad after 2 weeks of not enough wheat or cheese. Chiang Rai seems like a nice little town. The next day, Chiang Rai -> Chiang Mai (bus station only) where 7-11 provided a safe but unappetizing lunch during my 2 hour layover, then on to Mae Sot. Thai buses and roads are much nicer than Lao, - there are assigned seats and I bought my ticket relatively early! But the movie on the first bus was so disturbingly violent I literally had to keep my eyes shut for much of the first 2 hours. Too bad,t the golden triangle has beautiful karsts. Arrived just in time for dinner with Cindy’s friends, delicious Thai food.

October 2 – Sunday in Mae Sot, a town on the Thai – Myanmar border. Brunch! at a Canadian run diner and a bike ride to the border, where even more beautiful textiles were purchased. The border has been closed for over a year, so no temptation to go across for a day.

October 3 – Got to see the clinic of Dr. Cindy – former HF IM coordinator, Med-Peds doctor, and now doing research and clinical care in very resource limited settings for Burmese migrant workers. Very impressed with the level of care, but more so with the training, skill, and motivation of clinic workers, most of who have less than a high school education, and are themselves ‘undocumented’ workers. Amazing work Cindy and her team are doing!

October 4 – Mailed 6 kg of textiles home to the US from Mae Sot, took the early afternoon bus to Sukothai, where I splurged on a hotel with a pool. Sukothai was in the process of flooding, so I would have gotten wet anyway, but the pool was a much nicer way to do it.

October 5 – trip to Old Sukothai and viewing of the ruins of an early Thai capitol city. Travel through flooding New Sukothai is probably what I will remember most about this day – flood waters are very mobile, and seem almost malicious. (I suppose I had always imagined them as static or slowly rising, not rushing and flowing, or rising quickly after spilling over something. Now I know.) People of New Sukothai for the most part going about their business and children playing in the wakes created by trucks passing through higher (2-3 foot) water areas. Lazy and not wanting to get my feet dirty again after the pool, ate a nice dinner at the hotel.

October 6 – Bus to Chiang Mai, hotelier kind enough to take me to the bus station in his truck, so I remain dry despite worsening flooding in the city and surrounding areas. My friend Ken arrives to find the hotel has cancelled our reservation and finds a nice replacement hotel (with pool!) Swimming, fruit shakes, pancakes, and an evening jaunt around Chaing Mai. Ken is MUCH slower at the night market than I am – isn’t that backwards? I must remember he’s seeing much of this for the first time, while I’ve been in Asian tourist market situations for a year now. Also, he’s pretty sleep deprived by now after an overnight bus.