When Lady Luck turns away

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We arrived to Pakse in the early afternoon. The city itself is one of the largest in the country with over 70.000 residents. But that doesnt mean its anything special. In fact, we found it quite boring and uninspiring. Still we decided to spend another day there, since we wanted to check out the local market, supposedly the biggest in southern Laos, and the nearby weaving village of Ban Sapphai. The market was truly big, but not much different from others weve seen on the trip. Ban Sapphai was a dissapointment. I expected to see lots of locals weaving and selling famed textiles but none of that happened.
On Tuesday evening we were having our last meal at the Nazim restaurant, a branch of the "Nazim Empire" of Indian restaurants with cheap and quality Indian food. We were talking through the plan of leaving for Vientiane the next morning. At that time we didnt yet know we were in for a rollercoaster ride, as we were about to face our first serious challenge.
What happened next was Andrej waking up in the middle of the night. He couldnt sleep and was complaining of having some issues with his stomach. By the morning he developed a fever and diarrhoea. Our plan to leave Pakse was immediately abandoned. Instead, at 7.30 AM I set out on a quest to find the holy grail - a thermometer that could tell us how serious Andrejs fever really was. It took almost an hour to find one. After visiting two pharmacies, a dentist, the local hospital and finally the chemist that kept it. Btw, how do you explain a Lao clerk, who doesnt speak a word English, that you wanna buy a thermometer? By using body language, hands and making yourself look real stupid. But it works. The Japanese device told us Andrejs body temperature has passed 39 degrees celsius, sign for alarm. So we took a jumbo (three-wheeled motorised taxi) to the hospital. The institution deserves special recognition, Ill tell you about it a bit later. At the hospital we were the main attraction, it looked as if we were a famous circus show coming into town and all the kids (patients and staff) were drooling and giggling around us. The doctor found out Andrej has a fever (no shit, Sherlock), gave him a bunch of pills (that he had to pay for) and told him to go back to the hotel and rest. So we did. While I was bored, unsuccessfully trying to find any kind of newspaper (I guess Lao people dont read much), Andrej was resting. Since his condition didnt get any better, he went back to the hospital to spend the night there. We were suspecting he has contracted dengue fever, a tropical desease with similar symptoms. After being blood tested for it next morning we felt relief - it was "just" food poisoning demanding rest.
Now about the hospital. First thing I found interesting was that everybody was paying for all their dealings with the hospital, be it drugs, paying for blood tests or for spending the night there. Guess they never heard of medical insurance. The next thing was pretty basic. Since Andrej was being held in the "infections" room, one would expect they at least had a normal toilet. Wrong. They had a hole in the floor one. Oh, did I mention cats walk freely in and around the hospital? Sterile - dont think they ever heard of that word. And the last beauty? Well, you probably heard malaria is one of the deadly diseases that affects tropical parts of the earth. Its spread by mosquitoes and the best way to prevent it is to avoid the insects bites. Usually they do that with mosquitoe nets. And Pakse hospital? After sunset, the windows of the patients rooms are opened with the lights turned on. Seems like they dont really care about mosquitoes.
In the afternoon Andrej left the hospital and later the same day we jumped on the night bus to Vientiane. But it wasnt just a regular bus. It was a VIP bed bus with beds to sleep in, TVs, toilet and a (male, unfortunately) hostess. The ride wouldve been even better if they werent playing karaoke on all TVs for the first two hours.
At 5.30 AM we arrived to Vientiane, the sleepy capital of Lao Peoples Democratic Republic.


In Memoriam: It is with great sadness that I have to inform you that we managed to lose our camera in Vientiane. Unfortunately that means that, until we get a new one, there wont be too many photos on here. Maybe I find some on the web to keep the blog at least a bit more visual.

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