Another infectious disease

Just spent a few days in a workshop looking at testing for HIV. Now, this infectious disease is one that many people in the area I am working in have, many more do not know they have, and almost everybody is scared of. There are many reasons for this - the culture of silence, the culture of prostitution, the lack of accessible treatment - which we could discuss all day whilst getting nowhere. The bits that we can do are already too big a task to waste time on what we can't do.

However, I would like to make a small protest about my own government's handling of the issue. What follows is completely unsubstantiated, but heard from those in a position to know.

Refugees get tested before being accepted. Given that mandatory testing has no public health benefit, and from my studies of the migration rules last year there is no official requirement for HIV testing (please correct me if you can), I would argue that testing those who are fleeing persecution is ethically dubious and merely cause for further discriminiation. However, if someone feels it must be done then I can at least see their point of view.

What I really object to is mandatorily (?) testing someone and then publishing their positive HIV status as the reason for rejecting their application. Someone who lives a enclosed community of several thousand people already has no privacy. I would have thought that a supposedly enlightened country could find a little more sensitivity. But, I guess our handling of refugee issues isn't exactly known for its sensivity or recognition of human rights.

Bye Bye Birdie

Well, there may be many things to write about, not least my recent clambering over ancient stones, however there's one thing that's got the whole world talking: Bird Flu.

Now, here's a few facts:
It's killed 60 people world-wide
13 were in Thailand
You can't get it from eating cooked chicken or eggs
It's NOT a human epidemic - yet!

However, the line between reasonable precautions and panic is a little unclear. My province of Thailand has been declared an epidemic area, with 2 proven and 3 suspected human cases. Given that I see at least 10 people with fever per day, this is rather few people. People working for other organisations in the country have been told to stock up on 2 weeks of food, for when we're all quarantined indoors. Everybody's getting flu vaccines - which are for a different disease. The whole thing feels a little millenial, really.

But...
if it did jump over, it would be here. Any one of those 10 people could have it. We could watch the health system fall apart around us.

I'm not panicking yet, and to hear about people in New York requesting Tamiflu is ridiculous. But I am asking about contact with dead chickens!

Ahh, Angkor

So, have a limited ability to type at the moment. May have something to do with the momumental last few days. May have something to do with the huge steak and beer I just consumed. May have something to do with the 60 plus kilometres I've ridden in the last 2 days, which oddly enough has affected my hands.

Started my holiday on Friday night. We ventured out into the nightlife of Bangkok - the wierd spaceship thing up the road from the hotel which has intrigued me since my first visit. Looking rather like the ice-skating rink in Oakleigh, it's home to the hottest nightclub in BKK. Being a Farang, they seemed not to recognise that no self-respecting Hottest Nightclub at home would let me in the door, especially in flat shoes, and happily stamped my wrist. What followed was a much-needed boogie until the usual lights-up closing time, all of 1 hour later. 1 am!!! And Bangkok likes to think it's cosmopolitan.

So, still in a dancing mood and end-of-term-holiday spirit, we did our best to keep partying. The next nightclub (normal a little flexible) had had the official closing hours enforced that night. So we ended up at a little table on the footpath, underneath the stairs to the skytrain station, chatting to the owner and the guys selling fake designer belts. This is perhaps where things started to go wrong.

So, both of my holidays in Thailand thus far have started with vomiting. Last time I was an innocent victim of a potentially deadly virus. This time, I have only myself and my poor three-am decision-making to blame. Or perhaps the man who sold us the homebrew palm whisky out of two jerrycans slung on a pole over his shoulders. Either way, 'twasn't pleasant.

So, now fully recovered, I have been marvelling at Angkor. The scale. The carvings. The very persistant kids selling flutes. The trees. The stone faces. My aching legs. If you want to see it, make sure you still have a functioning pair of knees when you visit.

The place is amazing. No photos do it justice. Certainly my decriptions don't. If you have a chance, come and see it. And despite the above, go by bicycle. We drifted back last night through the rice fields, the setting sun lighting up the towers and stone elephants. And we're doing it again tomorrow.

Mind goggling

I made a discovery a few days ago. Well, made a discovery in the way Captain Cook did: plenty of other people knew it was out there, but I'll claim it anyway.

How cool is Google Earth?

You can see the tree outside my bedroom window at my last house. You can see the two bridges in Sangkhla. You can see the streets in our villages (if you know where to look!).

As if I needed another internet addiction.

Conveniently sized

The most medically exciting thing I did this week was remove a blue plastic bead from the left nostril of the 2 year-old daughter of our pharmacist. The nanny had excitedly called the office to tell of the emergency, and when her mother arrived home the little princess anounced that she'd thought about testing a larger bead but that would have caused too many problems. After wrapping her in a sheet and having 2 people hold her down, I levered it out in a very satifying now-you-don't-see-it-now-you-do manner, which somehow felt like it should have had an associated popping sound.

Seems that this is a childhood right of passage. My collague tried it with a nut from a tree. A person who happens to share much of my genetic material, when scolded by a friend's mother for picking his nose, annouced indignantly, "I'm not, I'm trying to get the sultana out!" And I've heard a story of the angelic-looking tot who over a period of several weeks got more and more smelly. When no amount of scrubbing had any effect, her desperate parents took her to the doctor - who removed a piece of rotting meat from her nose.

Said local 2 year-old has now been nick-named "Pearl". And when I saw her today, hiding in her house, she refused to come out because she's "not finished being angry yet". Ah, saving the world ain't easy.

Discovered a patch of eucalypts whilst walking to a waterfall last week. Climbing the muddy hill with the noise of the falls in the background, I felt strangely at home. It was only when my French companions pointed out the smell in the air that I realised why. Gum trees!!! I spent a little while trying to identify the species (a rather futile task given my limited knowledge, as anyone who has read the majestic Eucalyptus will know) and settled on something like a scribbly gums, without the traditional scribbles. However, some humans must have known what was missing...

Jiggety jig

Home again!

And it appears that I can type!

And my desk is covered in piles of referrals, bills (not mine personally) and pharmaceuticals (not mine personally either)!

Took the plane back carrying more than a livable Aussie yearly salary worth of tricky thermometers and malaria drugs. Put them in my carry-on for fear of the bag mysteriously disappearing during the 50 minute trip. Did the guys who scanned the bag even bat an eyelid to see a foreigner carting around random drugs? Would I be asking this question if they did?

If you want to catch up on what I was doing before that, see July 17. They appear to not have malaria there (well, I diagnosed the first case in 2 months, an honour to be sure). Hence the mulish behaviour.

Reconnected

Hello...
Well, the answer to the previous post is that I went to one of the most internet connected places in the world, where everybody in the train is checking their email on their phones: Japan. And, forgive me, I did not blog.

I spent 4 days in Ciba and one in Tokyo and managed to see the inside of a grand total of 6 buildings (train stations excluded). Outside... well, if 1.2 km of city streets count. I went for training that I was supposed to do in Sydney before leaving, and perhaps would have been a little more relaxed had it been run by Aussies than Japanese people (ie more than 20 minutes for lunch). But our hosts were wonderful and we ate a LOT of sashimi and drank an only slightly smaller amount of sake, so I guess overall it was a reasonably authentic Japanese experience.

We had been considering extending our stay for a couple of days, but a little thing called Typhoon Nadi suggested we return to Bangkok.

To go from a bamboo clinic to Tokyo was a little surreal, but to go back to a refugee camp is more so. Am now visiting another project where several thousand people are camped at the side of the road, and the clinic is a school room partitioned with cardboard boxes. Yesterday buffeting winds took some of the plastic sheeting they use to roof the huts, and sent many of the (also plastic sheeting) latrines flying. I held onto the frame when I was using one, which may have just resulted in more of a surprise for everyone else if it had been carried off with me dangling underneath! Not sure when I'll be heading "home" yet, but in the mean time can add "hello" in a further 3 languages to my repertoire.

Guess...

...where I'm going for the weekend?

My sticky keyboard issues of the last month have boiled down to one rather appropriate letter.

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Language barrier

Today, on the way to the clinic, the Thai radio ran a news bulletin, which clearly included "Australia" twice. It was repeated on the way home.

Asking the driver (who's a natural Thai and Mon speaker, and has basic English) what it was, he was only able to say, "Yes, Australia. Aaah - Police. Australia. Aaah, hmm".

This was not so reassuring.

So, as soon as we got back, I put on BBC world: the Gaza pullout and Slobodan Milosevic. BBC online: extradition trial in Italy. ABC online: bombs in Bangladesh. Asia Today: reduction of Bali sentences and the sale of Telstra.

Can anyone fill me in? What happened in Australia today (that may or may not have involved the police) that was so significant as to have made it to the Thai news, but not the ABC? Sonehow I think it wasn't Telstra.

(News need not involve acutal facts).

Mmmmmm...

The noodle-soup-with-everything seller we got lunch from at the Floating Market (we asked him to leave out the liver). Behind him, barbecued chicken and buckets of black Grass Jelly for sale.

I’ve been inspired by some of the luscious foodbloggers out there. Now, I’m not going to go all gourmet on you, but please indulge me for a while.

One of the things I miss when I’m away is food. The French people here crave French food. I’m more creative.

When I was in Manila, it was lamb souvlaki. In Zambia, it was fruit cake and shortbread (it was Christmas). In London, fresh fruit that didn’t come individually shrink-wrapped and zapped with ethylene or something.

Now, it’s couscous, prawn rice paper rolls, palak paneer, gyoza, and olive & fetta sourdough bread. Specifically, it’s Timbale, Mecca Bar, Pellegrini’s, the market on Saturday mornings near my old house in Richmond (which is still my picture of “home”, even though someone else is living there…), Thy Thy (no, it’s not Thai), Crust pizza, Soulmama...

Really, I’m not quite as down as I sound. I eat noodle soup with pork crackling for lunch, I have a pomelo waiting to be peeled, I can get green curry anytime I like (despite many “mai pet!”s, it still usual sets my sinuses on fire) and the fantastically named “pad ka pao”. I spent Sunday eating awesome fish curry and helping assemble flat breads with the neighbours and 4 local kids, and regularly get fed fantastic Mon food by wonderful colleagues. I can get great tomatoes, limes, pumpkin, sticky rice with mango, fresh lychee & mint shakes and the Instant Artery Clogger “pancake” – roti bread with generous slurpings of sugar, condensed milk AND chocolate sauce.

But I still have those cravings. And, already being a blog addict, I have discovered a way to accentuate and satisfy those cravings at the same time. Introduced to the genre thanks to augustusgloop, I now am a regular visitor to several sites that rave about food, with amazing photos and a local touch that have me going, Yes, I love that shop too! If only it didn’t take several minutes to download them…

One of the things that I’m sure most people knew already and I’ve only recently caught up on is the importance of good ingredients. Now, when a visitor from Bangkok asks if I want anything, I have a list waiting that goes beyond the usual wine, cheese and chocolate (although these are all still there). With my recent additions of olive oil, a pepper grinder, garam marsala and brown sugar, I’ve been having fun.

So, in what I expect to be my only venture into the world of food blogging, here’s my recipe of the day:

Homesick Friday Night Macaroni Cheese - well ,Thursday, but it’s a long weekend. Cooking time – about 8 minutes.

Boil water & cook macaroni (from the local minimart, with the St Bernard and puppy, and the sullen teenage daughter watching Thai soaps as she types into the register).

Heat small splash of olive oil (Tesco Lotus superstore extravaganza, Kanchanaburi) and gently fry 2 cloves of finely-chopped garlic (freebie from laughing heavily-pregnant fruit seller at the market, as I only ever buy one cluster of garlic, not a kilo like normal people).

Mix cooked macaroni with oil / garlic and grate in generous amount of Vintage Cheddar (Foodland, Sukhumvit. Didn’t survive the trip back from Bangkok so well but is still very edible). Add freshly ground black pepper (also Foodland, my regular last stop before I head for the bus).

Mix a gin & tonic and eat whilst watching pirated Sex & The City dvds. As my colleagues determinedly speaking in English would say, good appetite!

Unwise wais

The "wai" is the guesture involving putting the hands together in a prayer position and bobbing the head, used in many Asian countries. Depending on who you listen to, it's a polite greeting, a sign of respect or a demonstration of inferiority and worship of the other. When accompanied by touching the head on the ground, it's a form of subection, used for monks, and it disturbs me when parents try to get their 3 year-old kids to do it to me.

Some of the people I see form day-to-day use it, and some do not. This can be because they are of a particular ethnic group, Christian, think that I will not recognise it or are rude. I have developed the habit, particularly as when meeting a new person (ie a patient) I cannot tell until they speak what language they will use, and although I can now say Hello in Thai, Mon and one type of Karen, I don't want to use the wrong one.

So I wai.

The other use of the wai is to Buddha images. People will wai at the"spirit houses" along the sides of roads as they pass (the houses of local deities, which are called, in a rather let's-play-a-joke-on-this-foreigner way, "nuts" - although probably not spelled like that!), and to the golden spires of temples that poke above the trees.

Today, we brought back an energetic 9 year-old boy to his home in the jungle. It was with some surprise that I saw him wai towards a spot where I've never seen anyone do it before. Looking around, his mother and I discovered the place worthy of such respect, and burst into peals of laughter.

It was the new telecommunications tower.

Piano Man

Most of you may have heard about this already. Since he hasn't been arrested in connection with the London bombings, it hasn't made it to BBC international.

It intrigues me...

Is it a fake?
Why would he do it? And how would he not say anything?

Is he autistic?
Surely he would have family, carer etc who realised he was missing?

Why was he wearing a suit?
Why was he in the water in a suit?

Perhaps it's a case for Thursday Next.

Irrelevant observation

The snails here curl the other way.

That is, horizontally. To look at the shell, its looks from above like the shells of Aussie snails do from the side.

Either way, it's still creepy when you step on one with bare feet.

More reading material

- Isn't it coming down? Simply pelting!

- Oh, this isn't real rain. You wait until July. The whole Bay of Bengal is going to pour itself on us, by installments.


I'm having one of my book frenzies at the moment. It may have been because I discovered a second-hand bookshop with excellent coffee in Bangkok last weekend, or perhaps because I'm in the house by myself.

Anyway, I just finished George Orwell's Burmese Days. It's got some wonderful passages (see above) but I'm not sure what to do with a book that's fairly insulting to Burmese people, even though overall it's against racism, colonisation and the English themselves.

Admittedly, it was written in 1934, and was probably revolutionary for its time. But now... those little incidental details stick, and make it a bit difficult to read. I'm not sure I want to bookcross it, but to discard Orwell seems wrong.

Any suggestions?

On the daily two-hour commute to work, it's pretty cool to meet an elephant now and then.

I got electrocuted yesterday.

I was unplugging my computer from the 4-days-post-brand-new power board. There was a flash of light, a loud buzz and a searing pain up my arm.

Now, this wasn't just a "zut" and a head throb, like when you hold an electric fence. this was a full second (zzzz one, one thousand zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz) of the Thai mains power running through my body.

I have entry and exit wounds.

Thankfully, they're only 1.5cm apart, so it basically went directly through my finger, resulting in a shreik and frantic hopping around the lounge room. Rather like my centipede experience, really. This time, being home alone, I didn't have an audience, but given that this also means there was no-one to resuscitate me should my heart have been stunned, I've thrown out the power board.

The view from Hellfire Pass Museum, with Peace Bowl. Have now gone in daylight. Would love to go back and do the walk along the track (about 4 hours) but the logistics of this are a challenge. 

Derek with part of Large Gold Object, in Vientiane.