Anyway, since before I came to Thailand I wanted to visit the beaches. When you think of Thailand in terms of a holiday destination you automatically imagine stretches of long white sandy beaches, and relaxing. After a hectic week of placement you just want to unwind and relax anyway. So last Wednesday I was discussing with one of the other students here about doing it, but we ended up just being busy. On Wednesday evening we went market shopping. Chiang Mai is famous for its impressive street markets, so we went to do some souvenir shopping, and there's so much there, it ended up being a really late night. Then on thursday we went almost straight from placement to Tiger Kingdom. Tiger Kingdom is amazing, you get to go and actually stroke tigers, it's so surreal, I have a photo of myself lying on on of the tigers backs. Anyway, Thursday is the evening that at the Gapmedics house everyone goes out for a meal, as a lot of the time it's the last time that everyone's together as some people leave on the Friday and others go off to the hill tribe experience. This meant that nothing could be booked before then. We ended up getting to Friday afternoon after placement still without having booked anything, we still really wanted to go, so we went to the wifi cafe and booked flights and a hotel around 5 hours before the flight departed, it was absolutely insane! We ended up arriving in Phuket International Airport around 1am, to which we were immediately targeted by a company selling tours, so we bought a day trip to Ko Phi Phi, which is apparently the most beautiful island in the area. Because we booked this, we managed to get our taxi to the hotel for free. Now this in itself was an adventure. Firstly the taxi driver didn't know where the hotel was, Even when we showed him the address. Eventually after getting his bearings (and asking directions a few times closer to the hotel!) we end up in this quiet, remote area, of which the hotel as down a dusty track. We got to the hotel with '24 hour reception' to find it was quiet and dark with no sign of anyone around. So naturally we knocked on the door. This was met by loud barking from a guard dog inside, which managed to wake the owner who was asleep on the sofa in the reception area. When we got inside, they hadn't received the message that we were coming, so they had to prepare a room. The room turned out to be nice, spacious and clean, so everything we needed. We ended up spending around 5 hours there until our taxi arrived to take us to the port. So Saturday turned out to be a day of touring islands, snorkelling around Monkey Island, and lunch on Ko Phi Phi Don, the bigger island. We then basically went to the beach before heading back. So when we got back to the port in Phuket, we had no hotel to go back to, so we requested to go to this hotel I'd seen on a Phuket tourism website called 'SB living places'. The hotel was so lovely, comfortable room with air con, a pool, free breakfast, restaurant, gym, rooftop bar and massage suite. We settled in and relaxed there for a bit then headed out to dinner at a restaurant we'd read about in the guide book called 'Cook'. This had Italian and Thai influences, therefore I had a Thai green curry pizza, which was actually really good, especially when followed with white chocolate mousse cake! Thailand is insane, we turned down a ride from a man on the back of his 'motorbike taxi', got photos taken of us and showed a nice israeli couple to the hotel we were staying when they couldn't find anywhere else to book a room.
The next day we decided to visit a beach near to the airport to make it easier to get back. The beach seemed like it would be quite relaxing, which is what we wanted, so we got a bus to the area,which the driver couldn't actually find,which should have been a warning sign. The beach in itself was quiet, but too quiet, it was literally just the beach, whereas we were expecting at least one shop or restaurant in order to buy a drink or something. So after a walk down the beach, we'd started to get thirsty. It took 15 minutes and some getting lost in the forest until we found a shack out the side of the road. It served the most amazing authentic Thai food, and so cheap! We ended up paying 130 Baht (around £2.50) for us both to eat. After food we really didn't want to make the walk back to the beach, so we got a taxi to another temple. We looked round a little, got given our fortunes (albeit in Thai) and took some photos. This however really didn't fill up all afternoon, therefore, after failing to get a song tha-ou to another beach, we found a shack at the side of the road and finished our trip with ice cream, before heading back to the airport. It felt like we were properly backpacking, so not quite the relaxing weekend I was envisaging, but still great.
This week I've been placed in the orthopaedics ward in a much larger hospital in Chiang Mai, which is giving me more trauma related experience. The first day started out with a ward round, visiting the trauma patients in the male and female wards of the orthopaedics department. As all of the cases on this ward was fractures, we managed to see a variety of fixation equipment/ braces which was pretty interesting. Yesterday I was placed in the orthopaedic OPD, in which I saw a variety of different cases. A couple of people came in with osteoporosis, needing a repeat in prescription of their normal drugs, I had a patient come in who'd had a nonunion fracture in her foot for six months that needed surgical treatment, another patient who'd experienced a compression injury in her lumbar region, causing pain in her sciatic nerve, but had also discovered a kidney stone in the x ray to diagnose. An interesting case was 2 different women of similar age, coming in for similar symptoms, neck pain radiating down thier left hand side extremities, however one had negative symptoms in a series of tests including a compression test and a weakness test in a physical examination, the other had positive. However on x ray examination, both had the same diagnosis of neck sprain, with tennis elbow, and prescribed painkillers. I also came across a couple of cases I hadn't heard of before, one having previous treatment for a condition known as meningomyoceles, a mass growing on the spinal column, and as a result had been left with a significant difference in leg length, causing her to walk with a limp. We also had a couple of patients come in with spinal chord stenosis. A final case that was interesting was a man who had had tuberculosis, which had spread to, and deformed, his spine. He'd had previous surgery to correct this, and was taking TB medication, but was concerned about a rash on his shoulder, and was referred to a dermatologist for further investigation. I learnt so much from OPD, and found it amazing how many of these cases would have been dealt with by a GP at home. The Thai healthcare system is so different, many cases just come straight to hospital, and they don't seem to have the alternatives that we have available in the uk, such as walk in clinics, GP surgeries and advice available from pharmacists.
Changing slightly today, I was on orthopaedic surgery. Which was slow, but still interesting. We managed to watch a knee replacement operation and a hip replacement, as well as seeing part of an operation to remove extra digits on a young patient presenting polydactyly, with six digits on each hand, and six and seven digits respectively on the feet.
Tomorrow I'm back in surgery, which should be pretty interesting again, but for tonight it's market time!
3 days left, I'll keep you updated!
XOX
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