Ko Tao and Ko Samui, Thailand: A Saga (Post #90)
Hi…Michele here…
In the last blog I wrote about going to our tuk-tuk driver’s house (actually a hut) in Siem Reap, Cambodia to have dinner. I talked about how we drank from dirty glasses, how everyone ate off the same plate, how the meat was from the market (where it probably hung from a wooden cart all day or for several days) and how the guy serving the beer was using his bare hands to put ice in our glasses. (This is potentially a problem because there is no running water and certainly no toilet paper used in the village.)
The morning after this dinner, we flew to Bangkok, Thailand. We stayed there for two days…..which brings me to the end of the last blog (#89) where I wrote, “On February 7th we flew from Bangkok, Thailand to Ko Samui, Thailand (an island off the east coast of Thailand). From Ko Samui, we took a ferry to Ko Tao (another island) where things did not go as planned. Read the next blog for more on that.”
This is that blog.
While in Bangkok, I developed a fever. In addition to that, to put it bluntly, the toilet was my new best friend. I figured this wasn’t a big problem and that it would eventually go away after a day or two. By the time we got to Ko Tao, I was having terrible pains in my abdoman. It felt like someone was digging their fingernails into my intestines. Meanwhile…
Mike and I had gone to the small island of Ko Tao in the Gulf of Thailand for one reason – to take a scuba diving course and get our PADI Open Water dive certification. Ko Tao has beautiful beaches with crystal clear water, some of the best diving in Thailand, and it is one of the cheapest places in the world to get an Open Water dive certification. For $230 each, we were going to stay 5 nights at the dive resort and take the 4 day dive course (that included 4 dives). Here are a few pictures of Ko Tao:
When we arrived there the first thing we had to do was fill out a medical questionnaire. Mike answered yes to the question on whether or not he was taking any prescription medicine. Five months earlier, Mike had experienced an irregular heart beat while in Turkey and he was told by two doctors there that he needed to take prescription medicine for 6 months.
Once Mike told the dive place that he was taking prescription medication they immediately told him that he needed to see a doctor to get the o.k. to take the course and dive. Here is where the saga begins…
[Note: This is truly a saga and if you are short on time or you are very sleepy, perhaps you should read this later.]
Our instructor tells us that we can just go to see the doctor at the clinic up the street from the dive shop. The doctor speaks very little English and isn’t familiar with the medicine Mike is taking so she won’t approve him for diving.
Next, our dive instructor calls the European physicians who work on the island, and they also say they don’t know anything about the medicine Mike is taking and they tell the dive shop that Mike shouldn’t be approved for diving. They suggest we go to Ko Samui (the bigger neighboring island) to get a physician at a hospital to look at Mike’s heart and give him the o.k. for diving.
In the meantime, I am still getting severe pains in my abdoman and finally decide to start reading about travelers’ illnesses in our Southeast Asia guide book. I diagnose myself with bacteria-related diarhea because the symptoms for this include severe cramps (and remember that dinner in Cambodia…). The book says that if you have bacterial diarhea the way to get rid of it is by taking an antibiotic such as ciprofloxin. We knew one of us would have this problem some day so while we were in Turkey we stocked up on all sorts of prescription medicines since anyone can simply walk into a pharmacy in Turkey and buy any kind of medicine.
Back to Mike’s issue…Mike calls Ko Samui and talks to a hospital administrator at the largest hospital on the island. He tells the administrator that he needs to see a cardiologist in order to be able to dive. The administrator tells Mike that he needs to see a Dr. Donya at a different hospital. Mike calls the second hospital on Ko Samui and is told that Dr. Donya is there between 8:00am and 4:00pm and that all he has to do is stop by during those times and she can see him. Great!
Next we decide it would be a good idea to have a place to stay on Ko Samui so that we can just drop our stuff off at a guesthouse near the hospital and then immediately go to the hospital. It’s possible, that if Mike gets the o.k. to dive that we will turn around the next day and take the boat back to Ko Tao. We look on a map of Ko Samui, find where the hospital is and then find a guesthouse close by. We call and make a reservation for one night. O.k., so that’s done.
Next we decide that we should print out information on Mike’s medicine since this has been such an issue. We go to the internet and print out everything we can on it. Then we have an idea. Since we have information on the medicine, we decide to take the information to a bigger clinic on Ko Tao and talk to a doctor there. So, we go to the bigger clinic and Mike, armed with the information he printed out on the internet, sees a doctor there. The doctor approves him. We think,
“Whew! What a relief! This is great! We don’t have to take the 2.5 hour boat ride back to Ko Samui, and we don’t have to deal with doctors or hospitals there, and we don’t have to go through any of that hassle because we got the approval of a doctor once we were armed with information on the medicine.” Yea, well…
We go back to the dive place and show them the medical “o.k.” from the doctor. The manager of the dive place says,
“That doctor will give the o.k. to anyone who goes there. He’s a terrible doctor and we don’t believe him. Besides the doctors at SSS [the European doctors] said you couldn’t dive and they are the ones we listen to. If you really want to get the o.k., you should go see them – but they close in 15 minutes so you’ll have to take a taxi.”
That’s exactly what we do. We get a taxi to take us to the European doctor’s office. We bring all the information we have on the medicine. Part of the information we have includes a list of what this medicine is called in 40 different countries. Mike shows it to the attending physician. The physician, from Australia, doesn’t know what this medicine is. He decides to call a dive physician (a doctor that specializes in medicine related to scuba diving injuries and illnesses). The dive physician is on Phuket island. This island is not close to Ko Tao or Ko Samui. (Ko Tao and Ko Samui are in the Gulf of Thailand off the east coast of Thailand while Phuket is in the Adaman Sea off the west coast.) Still, the Australian doctor calls the dive doctor on Phuket island and gives him the information on the medicine Mike is taking. The dive doctor on Phuket says he can’t say whether Mike should dive or not because he doesn’t have enough background information on Mike. The Australian doctor hands Mike the phone and Mike talks to him for about 10 minutes. After he gets off the phone with the Phuket doctor (Dr. Luba Matic), I ask Mike, “What did the doctor say?” Mike says, “The doctor said it was up to me.” Huh? What kind of answer is that!?
Not a good enough one for the Australian doctor who is sitting there listening to the conversation. So, we go back to the dive place and tell them we are checking out tomorrow and going to Ko Samui where we will be seeing a cardiologist who will look at Mike’s heart and tell him whether or not he can dive. We also tell them that if he can dive, we’ll be coming back to Ko Tao.
The next morning we take a horrid 2.5 hour boat ride from Ko Tao to Ko Samui. (I didn’t get sick but it was close a few times. I ended up standing up on the back deck of the boat with other sick looking people.) Once we get to Ko Samui we take a taxi to the guest house where we had reservations. It’s sort of depressing looking place but it’s cheap. We drop our backpacks in the room and get a taxi to the hospital. We both get really excited when we see Dr. Donya’s name on the list of doctors. I think, “Yes! This is actually going to happen! Mike is going to get his heart looked at! Finally!” When we got up to the sign I took a closer look at Dr. Donya’s name. Underneath is said, PEDIATRICIAN. My heart sank. I pointed this out to Mike and his heart sank too. Obviously there had been some kind of miscommunication. We asked the administrator if there was a cardiologist on the island. She said there was a cardiologist that came to the island once a week from Bangkok and he would be on the island in 5 days. Now what were we going to do? Sigh.
We sat in the waiting room of the hospital and talked about it for a while. We decided we would try to get a flight to Phuket to see the dive doctor that Mike had spoke to on the phone. We went to a travel agency and found out that all the flights were booked for the next 5 days to Phuket. So, we were stuck in Ko Samui. We really didn’t want to be on the island of Samui. The main beach area is very expensive and although we had secured a guest house room close to the beach, accessing the beach was nearly impossible. All of the high end resorts are built right on Chawang beach so public access is very limited. After two nights in our little, somewhat depressing guest house and virtually no access to the beach, we moved north to another beach called Choeng Mon.
We got a beach front room at Choeng Mon for the outrageous price of $37 – this is very expensive for Thailand. The beach was very small and it didn’t have the typical white sand and clear water that Thailand is famous for. It also had several topless Europeans including a 60-year old lady that chose to sunbath in front of our patio area (very educational!) There was also a massage service set up in front of our beach front room so we got to see many heavily oiled European men in teeny tiny speedos (yuk!) Despite these drawbacks, I was happy to have the beachfront patio especially when it started pouring rain. I enjoyed sitting on the patio and looking out at the downpour in the sea. We also were fortunate enough to see a couple of lizard fights. The fights between lizards (geckos actually) could have been on the National Geographic Channel and were spectacular. In one case, both competitors whipped their tails around quite a bit before the real fight began. They ended up biting each other and then falling from the ceiling to the patio floor. Anyway, we stayed 2 nights at Choeng Mon beach and most of the time it was raining and/or storming (which, as I mentioned, was pretty cool to watch).
On Monday, Feb 13th, our 5th day in Ko Samui, we flew to Phuket island in hopes of seeing the dive doctor. My illness had subsided by this time so I guess I diagnosed myself correctly.
The next blog (#91) goes into detail on our 7 day Phuket island (Thailand) stay.
Tags: Category #20: Thailand
Michele Harmon
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