Beautiful Temples and Foiled Blood Donations
Well, we had a lovely time in Thailand. Lounging around the pool in Phuket for a week was just what we needed!
After our rejuvinating experience in Phuket, we flew to Bangkok and spend an interesting couple of days wandering around the city. While the Palace Complex was certainly gorgeous and very, very ornate, I acutally found the descriptions of Bangkok quite exagerated. Bangkok, as per the song, is supposed to make the tough guys tumble...but it's actually not that whacked out.
The traffic is busy but not nuts; the infrastructure is very well developed with smooth highways, a great train system, and cheap flights to all the key cities that can be booked anywhere from a month to an hour before the flight! Khao San Road was neat, but it wasn't crazy; very busy with tourists from all over the world, but the bars were pretty tame and the only harsh moment we had was a 30 second shouting match with a vendor over some flag patches. The touts are practically polite compared to Egypt and India. The moral here is that Thailand is great for an easy vacation; the people are happy and friendly and the country is really, really easy to travel around.
So after a fun couple of days in Bangkok, we met up with our group to cross the border into Cambodia, where we are now. We spend a very, very memorable 3 days in Siem Reap looking at the Ankor Temples. Ankor Wat is the most famous of the temples in Siem Reap. The construction was begun in the 11th century by a Hindu king, and completed in the 12th century by a Buddhist king. Words cannot describe how amazing this temple is, so the below photos will have to speak for themselves. The coolest thing about Ankor Wat is that, as tourism, is still relatively new here, the temple and the grounds are entirely free to wander around. We were climbing all over the temple; up staircases that were practically veritcal, into and out of worship chambers, all over and there were no signs saying 'don't go there' or 'don't touch that'! It is definitely the most interactive attractions we have seen any where in the world.
Ankor Wat is not the only amazing place in Siem Reap, however. Literally dozens of temples were built around the 11th and 12th centuries by the Hindus and Buddhists living the area and they are all stunning. Again, enjoy the pics!
One of the people in our group had found out, before she left England, that there is a free hospital in Siem Reap that often requires blood donations. After she mentioned it to us a group of 6 of us decided to be all noble and stuff and go donate. I felt particularly good about myself for doing this as the first, last, and only time I have ever tried to donate blood in the past resulted in the nurse knocking the needle out of my vien, causing much blood to spill everywhere, a lot of people in the line up to walk away, and a massive bruise on my arm that lasted for 3 weeks. But I digress. Off us 6 noble folks toddled to the hospital. It was clean, sterile and all quite pleasant. Except when it was my turn. The very competent nurse got the needle in my arm, poked around for a while looking for the vein, and after having no success, pronounced that I am a freak and have no blood in my veins. Yes, I'm exagerating. She did not call me a freak (although I'm quite sure that's what she was thinking) she merely said that I have very thin veins. She tried my left arm; no luck. So, I am 0 for 2 in the blood donation world. Humpf. Nevertheless, the hospital did succeed in getting donations from the other 5 nice folks (who are not veinless freaks), so the trip was certainly not wasted.
After the donation, we went to watch a concert that the founder of the hospital puts on every Saturday. Wow! What an experience. Dude's name is Beat Richner and he is an incredible person. He is Swiss and came to work in Cambodia in the 1960s. He was forced to leave during the Pol Pot regime, but came back in the 1980s and had since founded 4 childrens' hospitals; 3 in Phnom Phen and 1 in Siem Reap. It costs $17 million per year to run the hospitals: funding comes from the Swiss government (10%), the Cambodian government (10%), and private donations (80%). As 95% of the population cannot afford to pay for medical care, the hospitals are totally free for patients. The most amazing thing is that he runs the hospitals as though they were in the West; he uses modern diagnosis equipment, modern drugs, and properly trained staff. This is particularly interesting, because as he explained at the concert (he plays the cello) members of the international health community, including the WHO and NGOs like Save the Children, argue that the health infrastructure should match 'the economic reality of the country'. As he argued, the problem is that the 'economic reality' of Cambodia is that it is non-existent and why should a poor country have to use sub-par drugs and 50 year old diagnosis machines. He made his point very clear when he stated that representatives from WHO come to Siem Reap to see his hospital, stay at the $340/night Sofitel hotel next door and critique him for using processes too modern and too sophisticated for a third world country like Cambodia. He then pointed out that the cost for one of his hospitals to treat a child for 5 days for Dengue Fever is $170. Total. Makes you wonder how the bureaucrats sleep at night, eh?
Kay, I'll let the photos complete this blog entry. The next one will be the rough stuff about this whacked out country.
TK
Photos:
- Sunrise at Angkor Wat
After our rejuvinating experience in Phuket, we flew to Bangkok and spend an interesting couple of days wandering around the city. While the Palace Complex was certainly gorgeous and very, very ornate, I acutally found the descriptions of Bangkok quite exagerated. Bangkok, as per the song, is supposed to make the tough guys tumble...but it's actually not that whacked out.
The traffic is busy but not nuts; the infrastructure is very well developed with smooth highways, a great train system, and cheap flights to all the key cities that can be booked anywhere from a month to an hour before the flight! Khao San Road was neat, but it wasn't crazy; very busy with tourists from all over the world, but the bars were pretty tame and the only harsh moment we had was a 30 second shouting match with a vendor over some flag patches. The touts are practically polite compared to Egypt and India. The moral here is that Thailand is great for an easy vacation; the people are happy and friendly and the country is really, really easy to travel around.
So after a fun couple of days in Bangkok, we met up with our group to cross the border into Cambodia, where we are now. We spend a very, very memorable 3 days in Siem Reap looking at the Ankor Temples. Ankor Wat is the most famous of the temples in Siem Reap. The construction was begun in the 11th century by a Hindu king, and completed in the 12th century by a Buddhist king. Words cannot describe how amazing this temple is, so the below photos will have to speak for themselves. The coolest thing about Ankor Wat is that, as tourism, is still relatively new here, the temple and the grounds are entirely free to wander around. We were climbing all over the temple; up staircases that were practically veritcal, into and out of worship chambers, all over and there were no signs saying 'don't go there' or 'don't touch that'! It is definitely the most interactive attractions we have seen any where in the world.
Ankor Wat is not the only amazing place in Siem Reap, however. Literally dozens of temples were built around the 11th and 12th centuries by the Hindus and Buddhists living the area and they are all stunning. Again, enjoy the pics!
One of the people in our group had found out, before she left England, that there is a free hospital in Siem Reap that often requires blood donations. After she mentioned it to us a group of 6 of us decided to be all noble and stuff and go donate. I felt particularly good about myself for doing this as the first, last, and only time I have ever tried to donate blood in the past resulted in the nurse knocking the needle out of my vien, causing much blood to spill everywhere, a lot of people in the line up to walk away, and a massive bruise on my arm that lasted for 3 weeks. But I digress. Off us 6 noble folks toddled to the hospital. It was clean, sterile and all quite pleasant. Except when it was my turn. The very competent nurse got the needle in my arm, poked around for a while looking for the vein, and after having no success, pronounced that I am a freak and have no blood in my veins. Yes, I'm exagerating. She did not call me a freak (although I'm quite sure that's what she was thinking) she merely said that I have very thin veins. She tried my left arm; no luck. So, I am 0 for 2 in the blood donation world. Humpf. Nevertheless, the hospital did succeed in getting donations from the other 5 nice folks (who are not veinless freaks), so the trip was certainly not wasted.
After the donation, we went to watch a concert that the founder of the hospital puts on every Saturday. Wow! What an experience. Dude's name is Beat Richner and he is an incredible person. He is Swiss and came to work in Cambodia in the 1960s. He was forced to leave during the Pol Pot regime, but came back in the 1980s and had since founded 4 childrens' hospitals; 3 in Phnom Phen and 1 in Siem Reap. It costs $17 million per year to run the hospitals: funding comes from the Swiss government (10%), the Cambodian government (10%), and private donations (80%). As 95% of the population cannot afford to pay for medical care, the hospitals are totally free for patients. The most amazing thing is that he runs the hospitals as though they were in the West; he uses modern diagnosis equipment, modern drugs, and properly trained staff. This is particularly interesting, because as he explained at the concert (he plays the cello) members of the international health community, including the WHO and NGOs like Save the Children, argue that the health infrastructure should match 'the economic reality of the country'. As he argued, the problem is that the 'economic reality' of Cambodia is that it is non-existent and why should a poor country have to use sub-par drugs and 50 year old diagnosis machines. He made his point very clear when he stated that representatives from WHO come to Siem Reap to see his hospital, stay at the $340/night Sofitel hotel next door and critique him for using processes too modern and too sophisticated for a third world country like Cambodia. He then pointed out that the cost for one of his hospitals to treat a child for 5 days for Dengue Fever is $170. Total. Makes you wonder how the bureaucrats sleep at night, eh?
Kay, I'll let the photos complete this blog entry. The next one will be the rough stuff about this whacked out country.
TK
Photos:
- Sunrise at Angkor Wat
posted by TK at 3:01 AM
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