The Waiting Room

Monday mornings are crazy. The waiting room in the outpatient department is like a crazy bus terminal with dogs sleeping under the benches, Buddhist monks in their robes, crying babies, and everyone drinks water out of one cup. Awesome.

The Moei River separating Burma and Thailand

As you can see, it's a secure border. There is no way to walk across the Moei River here or anywhere else.

The Bridge to Burma

The official name is "The Thai-Burmese Friendship Bridge" or something like that. I've been running to the border and back again at night for exercise. It takes about an hour. No, I haven't been going alone, but it's quite safe and quiet.

Mae Tao Clinic parking lot and registration area

That silver beast is my bike! And that crowded area in the distance is the registration area. Mae Tao Clinic is a free clinic surviving on donations. It turns out that it is a sort of safe haven for unregistered Burmese. The patients come from across the border or live in the surrounding area working in sweat shops (14-hour days, 2 days off a month) so they can send money back to Burma. I've seen a lot of bizarre cases, including what I think was scleroderma. There are a lot of new diagnoses of liver failure, cancer, nephrotic syndrome, malaria, TB, parasites, and stress that I see in clinic. The wildest case was scleroderma. This is pretty amazing considering my only tests are a urine dip stick, a glucometer, a malaria prep, and hemoglobin.

My bedroom for two months

This is my crash pad for a couple months. I am surrounded by mango trees and birds in the morning. It is a good place to be.

Highway 1 -- The Asian Pacific Highway

This is supposed to go all the way to Istanbul, if you were allowed to cross through Myanmar by land.

Mae Tao Clinic

This place is great. Wierd, but great. I've settled down in a nice guesthouse and met a wierd mix of folks. Virtually everyone I have met is here solely to volunteer with one of the many non-governmental organizations (NGO's) in the area. I have met only one person who has actually been backpack travelling through SE Asia. Most of the folks at the guesthouse are either volunteering to teach English to Burmese or volunteering at the Mae Tao Clinic (a few medical students and EMTs, but strictly observing, apparently). It is a strange collection of people from all the world, a bunch of do-gooders, actually. Freaks.
So I'm not really up to speed on the situation here, but the government in Burma is a military junta that placed the leaders of the popularly elected political party under house arrest back in the 1990's, and they have skirmishes with the rebel army in the Karen state in Burma (across the border from Mae Sot), which sometimes causes refugees to flee into Thailand. At the same time, like many border towns, the local economy thrives on the illegal border crossings. I have heard that maybe a third of the local population consists of illegal aliens, many of whom work in sweat shops in the local economy. These Burmese have no rights, so there are NGO groups here helping out with their plight (I can rhyme!).
The Mae Tao Clinic, where I have been the past couple of days, sees Burmese people who are either living in the area, or have travelled from smaller villages in Burma. The clinic looks like a refugee camp and makes the Krabi Hospital look like a modern sparkling facility in comparison. They have "medics" who do almost all of the caregiving in pediatrics, primary care, ob/gyn, and surgical departments. There are only two or three Western docs there right now...After tomorrow, there will be only two (me and someone else). The clinic sees a couple hundred patients a day. It is awesome. I have only been there a couple days (I'm working in the outpatient department!), and I've already seen a few cases of malaria. Back home, someone with fever, mild headache, back/neckache, and general discomfort would probably have a viral syndrome; here, it's probably gonna be malaria. My first patient was a doozy -- a 13 year old kid jaundiced with ascites! I was thinking, "Dude, are all your patients this messed up?" There are also lots of amputees from landmines in Burma. (Reminder to self: don't go trekking in Burma.)It is a whacked world, but it is fun being here.
This weekend a group of us went off to visit a gibbon sanctuary, where there were rescued gibbons in cages. Some of them were blind, crippled by polio, and amputees...man, it was like Mae Tao clinic all over again! We also visited a waterfall which was nice and cool. I will try to upload some photos soon.
I would tell you that I've rented a 100 cc scooter for the month ($86!), but I don't want to scare my parents. (Hey, Mike D! Remember me getting crushed by your bike? You should see me now!)
Tomorrow I have to help give a lecture on heart problems, which will be interesting since they have no diagnostic tests other than a blood pressure cuff and a stethescope. This is an awesome time.

I finally broke the Sirens' hold...

After three weeks in Krabi, I finally took a long bus ride to the northwestern Thai-Burmese border town of Mae Sot. It took 24 hours of travel, but I am done. The second bus trip from Bangkok to Mae Sot was on a "2nd class bus", which wasn't bad except my air-conditioning vent wasn't working; so I was sweating like a pig for the eight hours up here. In contrast to the "VIP bus" to Bangkok which was filled with "farangs", I was the only foreigner on the bus to Mae Sot. Immigration officials checked my passport at the city limits. The border between Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) and Thailand is sort of a sieve for blackmarket traders. I'm here to volunteer in the Mae Tao Clinic for a couple months. I've paid for a month's accommodation. It's a clean place with a shared bathroom. It's just over $100.
It has been hot in Thailand for the past few weeks. It's probably around 100 F during the daytime.

Besides diving, last week in Krabi, I went to see a Muai Thai boxing match. It was great. They had nine matches with the boxers varying in age from 7 years to 22. The little kids were tough as nails taking and throwing punches without a wimper. I don't know how they do it. Jean Claude van Damme would have had his ass beaten.

The photos can't really show the amount of fish I was surrounded by. I took shot some video with my camera, but I don't know how to post short videos on my site.

A large school of barracuda lurking at the surface chased up a lot of bait fish. It went on for about ten minutes in an ever increasing ring.

At sharkpoint (used to be lots of shark there before they were killed off), I chased this turtle for a minute. It's wierd to be using all the scuba gear to be chasing an animal that is holding its breath effortlessly.

A lobster (clawless, as they usually are found outside of the northeastern United States). Or a langostine...I'm not sure what the difference is.

There are lots of lionfish along with sea urchin.

At anenome reef, there were loads of anenome. This is the clownfish made famous by "Finding Nemo". There were hordes of these critters everywhere ducking in and out of the anenome.

I did a dive at the king cruiser wreck. This was a ferry boat that sank when it struck Anenome Reef. No one died, but the wreck makes for great diving. I went down to 26 meters on this dive. Visibility wasn't great, but there were loads of fish. Here are some fish streaming over a barnacle-encrusted railing on the ship.

A flounder camouflaged in the sandy floor.

I thought these things were dead (or plastic toys), but I was told they sleep like they're dead.

We did a sand dive at Mosquito Island to find some small nearly invisible shrimp and seahorses. This one is pregnant.

A giant moray eel poking its head out.

I went diving a couple times this past week. I got to visit a couple sites around Ko Phi Phi on the first day. It was fantastic diving. I was surrounded by fish. This is a six-foot leopard shark I saw sleeping in the sand at Ko Bida Nai. Eventually, it woke up and swam away.