An emotional first week...
Sawatdeeka from Koh Samet this time!!!
Hello everyone, how are you all?? Thanks to everyone that replied to my email, i loved hearing from you all and getting the goss of whats happening at home.
I am at Koh Samet, its an island in the Gulf of Thailand, just living the life i spose!! Monday is a buddist public holiday over here and we get fridays off so its a good 4 day weekend for us so we have all travelled in different directions across this beautiful country, dont worry Mum, i am in a group of 6!! I think i needed this long weekend, Thailand is really affecting me and i have had a bit of an emotional week encountering their health system.
After the kids at the preschool we spent two days at a community health clinic in the same area, which is quiet a poor area. The nurses here, wow they are amazing! We thought we had to learn things out of our scope of practise!! The nurses in the clinic treat, prescribe, refer, you name it they do it!! The clinic is sort of a big open room with loads of filing cabinets where all the locals files live. So they rock up, find their file, put it in the pile and go outside and wait their turn. Privacy when being interviewed by the nurse is non existent. One girl was talking about very personal female issues with the nurse and there were other women just standing around listening. VERY different to when you go see the quack at home!! We saw quiet an array of medical issues from diagnosing kids with tonsillitus to bronchitis, dressings where a guy had pins in each finger from a motorbike accident (not suprising from the way they drive) to giving injections, pap smears and breast screening.
In the afternoons we load into the bus and go out on home visits in the community to those that cant make it to the clinic. On the first day we went to see an old man who had ciriosis of the liver and had a massive asceite that looked like he was 9 months pregnant with twins. It was so humbling to be invited into someones home. They put down grass mats for us all to sit on and bought us out water and let us take photos of them. He was talking to us through the interpreter and it was very very sad as he was crying and saying that all he wants to do before he dies is to see his son and daughter who have had to move to another province to work. He was crying, i was crying, our guide was crying.... very very emotional. We all gave him some money as he cannot afford health care other than the clinic which cannot provide the care that he needs anymore, they are mearly treating his pain and whatever they can. Very sad.
We caught the over night bus to a place called Rayong which had only about 8 rows of seat and they all folded down so you were almost flat which made it quiet easy to sleep. Then we caught a truck to the pier and caught the ferry over to the island which pretty much looks like an old fishing boat painted nice!! we eventually got accomodation here, you cant book so you just go from resort to resort, check out the rooms till you find something that your happy to pay for.
The water is AMAZING!! Its nice and warm and crystal clear and the beaches have the nicest white sand. alot of hawkers on the beach so we are getting good at pretending that we are asleep!!
I must love you all and leave you as a fire show is about to start on the beach. When i get back to Surin i will attempt to upload some photos so you can see what i am doing rather than just hearing about it!!
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