Both Pearse and I got ear infections from diving in Tioman. Pearse's ear was much worse than mine, and from past experiences with swimmers ear, I knew that neither of us were going to get better without some medical intervention. Even with medical intervention, my last ear infection lasted 5 months so I convinced Pearse to go see a doctor.

Luckily, the resorts at Damai have their own nurse and we were able to see her right away at her clinic at HI Damai Beach. She agreed that Pearse had a bad ear infection and that mine didn't look too good either. She suggested that we see a specialist right away and called up an ENT in Kuching and said we would be there at 3 pm that day. On our way out to see the doctor (we had to hire a car and driver), we realized that the nurse never asked if the doctor had time to see us or squeeze us in around other patients, she just said we'd be there at 3.

We actually got there at 3:15 and, to our dismay, there were a few patients already waiting for the doctor. Surprisingly, though, my name was called within a few minutes and a nurse escorted me into the doctor's office. His exam room was in a tiny corner of his office, most of which was taken up by an enormous desk with lots of paper on it. The doctor greeted me pleasantly and asked me what the problem was. He then said he wanted to look in my good ear first. So far so good. But then the visit took a large detour from the normal doctor visits I've had. And I've had a lot of visits to doctors about my ears.

Dr. L took a long probe with a suction thingy at the end of it, stuck it in my ear and tried to vacuum out all the ear wax. Now, the last specialist I went to admonished me never to remove wax from my ear canal because wax was what protected it from infections and here this specialist was suctioning it all out (of my good ear). Next, he took what looked like a long skinny ice pick and stuck it in my ear to pick out the remaining wax. Didn't his mother ever tell him never to stick anything smaller than his elbow in his ear? Once he removed all the offending wax from my good ear, he turned to my not so good ear and did the same. He said I didn't have an ear infection, that the humidity just made it sore and that he'd give me some antihistamine cream to put in it. I was not impressed and did not know how Pearse was going to handle this man digging around in his sore ear, which hurt so badly that he couldn't even lie on his left side.

Pearse, not knowing that this was a bit of an unusual doctors experience, handled it well. Dr. L expressed more concern about Pearse's good ear because it was full of wax. This man had a personal vendetta against ear wax and spent a good 5 minutes chiseling away at the good ear. I finally had to look away when the nurse started passing back and forth in the 6 inch space between the rolling office chair Pearse was sitting in and the doctor's desk, all the while Dr. L had an ice pick in Pearse's ear just centimeters away from his brain. After he was done and I could look again, the doctor agreed Pearse had an ear infection and gave him antibiotic eye drops to put in his ear. I was significantly underwhelmed by the whole experience but it was fairly cheap; only $50 for the both of us, including medicine. It took a couple of days but eventually Pearse started feeling better and we even managed some swims at the HI Damai Beach.