5-star service

A week ago, I arrived at the building by motorcycle taxi, a thrilling thing to do in Bangkok. It wiggles through all the traffic jams. Three men with umbrellas came up and shaded me from the sun and escorted me through the automatic door. The lobby smelled like lavender.

Is this Mandarin Oriental? Nope. It's a hospital. I never thought I would smile going to a hospital. I went for a routine procedure. In New York, I would have to set an appointment 1-2 months ahead of time. Here, I called the day before, and I went in the next day. All the staff were in clean and neat uniforms and smiled at me. I checked in at the front desk, just liking checking into a hotel. When I got to the destination, someone came up and smiled and asked what I was there for.

I have no insurance, and have to pay out of my own pocket. The procedure cost less than $90, and the doctor's fee was $17, less than my co-pay in NY. In NY, they would send a thousands of dollars bill to the insurance company, to cover everything plus the doctor's insurance against lawsuits. And the doctor informed me that I would know the result in one hour (vs. a week in NY), and they have a cafeteria downstairs. I was guided by a nurse's assistant to where I could see the escalator to the cafeteria. There are shops and bookstore along the way. The cafeteria had healthy salad or burgers for the farangs (foreigners), and noodles, curries etc.

My result was questionable, so the doctor had her nurse check the schedule of the specialist. I got an appointment for that day, at 6:15pm.

I never thought I could smile going in and out of the hospital, but I did.

My cousin's wife's parents lived in California. Her father came down with liver cancer and passed away within weeks. She was going to bring him to Bangkok for treatment, (her mother always comes to Bangkok for medical treatment) but he deteriorated so fast that they didn't have a chance. He stayed in Stanford Hospital, and the daily rate was $6K+. If not for medicare, he couldn't even receive morphine in the end of his life.

What about the poor people here? I heard they can go for free care in public hospitals. The wait is a bit long, at least they will be treated. No wonder people take their king so seriously here. He is a respectable man and visits remote places where no other officials would remember. Before any movie or show starts, people stand up to a song that's written for the king.

In China, a continuation of the story of the maid's son - he is in that good province level high school and is working hard. He gets up at 5 am every morning, and when his mother called him one night at 11, he still had an hour to go, and he needed to do his laundry. By hand of course, no washing machine in the dorms. I hope he gets into university...

Picture time - this is sunset at the end of monsoon from our window.

Hello Bangkok!

We left Hong Kong on a very "peaceful" note. We packed and repacked out luggage and weighted and calculated carefully which ones to check in. We were able to fly without paying any penalty! I love Hong Kong every time I go there. Good food, polite people, endless shopping... even though I hate shopping.

We have been staying at my aunt and uncle's house and received numerous generosity from them and cousins. We spent the last four days searching for an apartment. They said we could stay in the house for as long as we want. It is a big house but it is in the outskirt and if you don't know what traffic jam is until you come here. Last night, we saw the biggest monsoon in our lives. It poured and poured and didn't stop till 11 am this morning. Brent went out for a walk (I didn't like walking in dirty flooded streets, I mean really dirty as tons of street dogs roam around), and at one point of the street, it was connecting to the swamp and flooded and fish were swimming on the street river. Anyway come back to the traffic - we had dinner with two friends (will talk about them next) and one offered us a ride home as it was pouring and he lives 10 minutes away. It's usually a 30 minute drive, it took us over 90 minutes to get home.

Back to the apartment search. The house we are staying in is a big old house, and no internet (I'm in an internet cafe in THE MALL) and it has a yard like a tropical jungle. I stood in front of the door talking to my uncle for two minutes, and got a mosquito bite on my toe! I put repellent on mind you. Dangee fever is bad right now and the mosquitoes carry them feed during the day too...

OK, apartment. Since the dollar has devalued to the Baht, the rent here is more expensive than before, to Americans. We looked at so many apartments and our head spinned. Nice ones are expensive, even the ones that are not cheap would have roaches or crumbs on mattress. Ha, shows us that we don't have kids. Or some are in sleazy streets with tons of bar-girls hanging out. We received quite a bit of help from my cousins and their friends, as we don't speak Thai and less people than foreigners think speak English to a level that can understand our needs (such as wired high speed internet, not wireless etc). One friend Sam took us across the river to the building he used to live in. And then my cousin's wife called two days ago and said Sam mentioned a friend Ray in their church has two apartments for rent, though they are far from public transit, he would rent them out to us for cheap. Ray wasn't around till yesterday to show us the apartments. One of them was a penthouse unit with great view. He would rent it to us at less than 1/3 of market price which meets our budget! It's more than what we could have imagined or asked for. God is good!

Ray is a business man and used to be very superstitious (in his own words). When he heard about any new pretty temple coming up, he would go to pay respect. Then something happened to his family two years ago and he became a Christian. He sees now that all his possessions are gifts from God, and he gives them out generously and doesn't hold back. So we hope our friends come to visit and stay with us, that we can spread this grace around.

Goodbye China, hello and goodbye Hong Kong

It was a whirl wind of two weeks of traveling in China and then HK. Went to the "river south" of China and saw many beautiful things. Also got giant mosquito bites. They had to eat too. I was "glad" to contribute to their reproduction.

Felt good to leave China, only because the girl at the airline counter would give us a break, and we got a luggage overweight penalty that amounted to half of my plane ticket! I kept on telling people, please please don't give me anything, I can't carry it. Everyone said, oh, just a little something, then it added up and they charge by the kilo!

HK is much more organized and civilized. I hate to be singing praises to the Queen but we don't need to worry about being hit by a car any more crossing the street. The cars actually stop for the lights.

Miss China for its prices. HK is much more expensive.

People think it's so "cool" and romantic to travel around for a year. Actually it's a lot more pain then we realized. We thought we carefully picked out what is needed for a year, but since we weren't sure where we'd really be (though Thailand preferred, but there has been visa difficulties to the foreigners), we had to pack up quite a bit. Then there's weight limits. In Asia, you can only check in 20kg! (a little over 40 lbs) It's not easy task, but when I see how Americans pack their cars to the rim to travel, I wonder if they can survive this. There's something to be said about minimumlism (I made up that word).

Leaving very early AM tomorrow for Bangkok. Now Thailand doesn't allow anyone going in without a plane ticket leaving the country, I had to scramble to buy tickets going to Penang, Malaysia in 4 weeks. The joy and challenge of this trip!