How old are you?

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Another beautiful day in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The view of the large rolling mountains gets me every time. The weather was cool, but not cold like it had been a few days ago. For breakfast I had bunny bunny (the stuff that tastes like funnel cake), a banana, some rice, and cabbage stir-fry. The first place everyone visited today was the community clinic hospital. I was expecting the hospital to be run down and look similar to Nakonping hospital, but i was so wrong. This community hospital was beautiful! The atmosphere was peaceful and the people were friendly. The layout of the hospital was open and it incorporated a lot of nature. This hospital is a primary care facility, meaning if people need to see a doctor or get a check up, they come here. People with medical emergencies go to a government or private hospital, not a community one. Each day of the week there’s a different clinic that meets. Today happened to be the day for HTN. The approach of this hospital is honestly so beautiful. They heavily value the community and strive to better it. They buy and use natural resources from the community. Most of their staff are volunteers and individuals they trained from the community. They survey the community to find out what vulnerable populations there are, and what the needs of the people are. Some of these vulnerable populations include the disabled, bedridden, and elderly. The volunteers are then sent out into the community to help these vulnerable populations. Some of the staff at the hospital are even individuals with disabilities. I have a soft spot for individuals with disabilities, so this melted my heart! I was overwhelmed by the environment of this facility! Their passion for bettering the community is inspiring. I really wish we had a center like this back in America. This hospital is funded by the ministry of the internal, which provides more money than being funded by the ministry of public health (government funding). This allows the hospital to thrive and get more resources. One section of the hospital was dedicated to alternative medicine. I never realized how popular alternative medicine is in Thai culture, or Asian culture for that matter. Its really neat, and definitely something I need to look into more. I love the concept of using natural herbs and oils to promote healing. Of course that doesn’t replace the need for antibiotics for an infection or surgery for a broken leg. I just love the health promotion properties these herbs have. The area where the massages took place were so peaceful. You could sign in, go sit outside and drink complimentary hot tea until your massage. There were little water fountains and plants everywhere. The rooms where the massages are done were dimly lit and smelled of herbs and essential oils. I could have sat in one of those rooms for hours. After touring the facility we watched some community members make herbal compresses. I bought one of the dried herbal compresses to take home. I’m so excited to use it! Everything they used was organic and from their community. It smelled really good too!



Our next stop after the community clinic/hospital was a cute little hotel/restaurant nestled in the middle of the city, called “The Nest”. The place was surrounded by tree’s and greenery, so you had no idea you were in the heart of Chiang Mai. For lunch I got American fried rice, which I figured was a safe bet. This dish was defiantly not what I had imagined it to be. It had a dippy egg on top, raisins in the rice, sliced hot dog on the side, two slices of tomato, and two chicken wings. How random is that? It was good, but kind of strange! I had a strawberry smoothies as my drink, which was very refreshing. After of little lunchtime getaway we headed to the Bangkok-Chiang Mai hospital, which is a private hospital. This was a complete 360 from any of the other hospitals we’ve seen so far in Thailand. It was even nicer than some of the hospitals we have in America. This hospital is all about international business and reaching foreigners. 30% of their patients are foreigners, and they are hoping to make it 50% in the future. The hospital has translators for many languages including Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Burmese, and french. The hospital opened in 2014, so it is pretty new. It’s also a pretty small hospital. We didn’t see that many patients while we were there, but we did see quite a few staff. This was confusing because the man speaking with us said they have a nurse/staff shortage. Taking about the man who spoke to us, he was interesting. He was the director of international affairs, and he was basically trying to hire all of us. He had served in the US army for 20 years, so he knew a lot about Americans. He was pretty funny, but some times he made “jokes” about America and Trump that we didn’t find funny. He also questioned me if i had graduated high school in front of everyone. I get that type of comment a lot, so I wasn’t too shocked. After learning about the hospital we had the opportunity to ask questions. I feel like we grilled him with a ton of questions. One question I asked pertained to their community engagement. Since they are so focused on foreigners I wanted know what they did to better the Thai community they live in. Overall going from a community oriented hospital to a business driven foreigner focused hospital was a hard transition for me. I had difficulty seeing the lack of community in the Bangkok hospital. It made me think of how important outreach and community is to me. I want my future employer to have the same type if mentality, which is important to consider. I also struggled a lot with seeing the sheer difference between Nakonping and Bangkok hospital. The fact that Bangkok has so many resources and Nakonping has so little was frustrating to me. Why don’t they help one another out to better the whole community? I guess for Bangkok its all about being number one, while Nakonping cares for the poor and does what they can with what they are given. Its completely different mindsets for such a short distance between them.





Anyways, after our hospital visit we had the evening off to do homework and relax. A few of us exercised at the gym which was nice. At dinner I was asked yet again how old i was. That’s twice in one day. I mean come on, Thai people look so young and yet they’re asking me how old i am? I guess it just frustrates me at times because I have to work much harder than the average person to gain peoples respect. Everyone thinks I’m younger than i really am, so they misjudge my capabilities. Well, I can’t change anything about that I guess, other than continue to work hard proving to people that looks don’t always matter. Alright, well i could probably keep writing but I’ve already written way too much! Goodnight world

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