Beach Hospital

What do a beach and a hospital have in common? They can actually both add comfort to your life. A thought that might disturb the German mind is very true here in Thailand. I've just had the most comfortable, most friendly and quickest medical examination of my life in a hospital right next to the beach where I've chilled the day before. You'd think a clinic with VIP lounges, leather sofas, wide hallways and waiting areas and three nurses per patient would be expensive, especially if you are taking a medical examination for an Australian visa, which here is definately for the privileged. I was told, the place is very expensive. Well, it is not. Not for any European.

Glad to tell, I am in very good health. But let's start from the beginning. Getting up late after our little spontaneous party the whole family went to Bangkok where we spent a rather lazy day. Sunday was planned for a family trip to Pattaya Beach. We switched the Honda for a pickup truck as it wouldn't have fit a party of eight. With an approved hospital in Pattaya able to do my medical examination for my Australian visa I decided to stay in Pattaya for one night to have that done on Monday together with my brother while everyone else returned to Bangkok.

Being on the beach with Thais is mainly one thing, a feast. You get to the beach, rent beach chairs under a battery of umbrellas and start ordering food, preferable seafood. Then you eat and chill and eat and chill. Inbetween you let you twelve-year-old nephew bug the round one by one. Eat and chill is not exiting enough for that age I assume. Under normal circumstances I would probably have been bored myself, but fighting a little cold I felt lazy and just enjoyed resting in the shade.

Just before dark we started organizing a place to sleep. With the place recommended by some friends being more expensive than we had anticipated we looked for a cheap place to stay regardless of its quality. We found a room for a reasonable price, but were suprised to find any quality was missing completely. It must have been the most rundown and shabby place I've ever stayed in. And I have seen some shabby places before.

Once a big and modern hotel, the Marine Beach Hotel had definately seen better days. I wonder what year the "Merry Christmas" banner over the door was from. Besides that banner everything seemed to have been stripped from the place. There might have been decent lights, now replaces by the simples neon lamps. Everything in the bathroom seem to have been removed if possible, but years ago. If I'd leave a bathroom unused for about five years and then clean it I'd imagine it to look like that. The closet had been half taken apart as well. There was parts of it ripped apart, but if you would have had hangers, there was still a rail to hang them. The most important things though, the beds were fine, reasonably clean and the mattress did actually give some resistance. Air con was also working. I would sleep much better than on the floor of the Bangkok house for sure. I like not minding shabby places.

After checking in, taking a shower and hiding our valuables in the seating furniture (that is how much we trusted the place) we went to have a look on the eating options in Pattaya at night. We ended up having a cheeseburger in a hotel restaurant with excellent french fries. What an unexpected and still affordable treat! Stuffed with good food it was time to have a quick look at Pattaya night life. I should note the beach and hotel we had went to were in South Pattaya. That is the quiet part of town, compared to North Pattaya with its many more foreign tourists and much rumoured night life, even though I'd never seen so many Europeans in one place in almost three weeks.

We quickly found a cool bar (8 October) to settle for first drinks. 100 Pipers and Coke. The place was small. A group of eastern Europeans and us was enough to fill it. Tiger, the barkeeper was a very friendly, hippie looking Thai who ran the place. We enjoyed the excellent music and atmosphere for a while and then went wandering around South Pattaya. This lead us through a street filled with only bars and massage parlors. We didn't actually dare to stop while passing by those places as it seemed we would probably be attacked by groups of waiting women that had nothing else in mind than to drag us into their noisy business. With one place like that next to the other the whole street had a noise level that could probably be compared to a big parade or a rock concert. With this seeming to be the towns night life we went back to the hotel.

While I was on the phone with a friend my brother discovered a bar around the corner where we were able to engage in more useful activities. It had a billard table and so we played a couple of pool games before going back to our hotel to sleep. As usual, the plan was to get up quite early in the morning and get the medical examination done.

This time, the plan worked out. We got up around nine and called the hospital. No problem, we were told, we should come as soon as we could. So we had breakfast across the street and wanted start our way to the hospital. The first taxi driver we asked for a price to the hospital made a price of 200 Baht. One way. Even though he immediately went down to 150 Baht after we refused with this pricing we preferred to rent our own scooter for a day for just 200 Baht. That would take us everywhere we wanted.

Fully loaded, my bag in front of the seat and my brother on the back seat we started our way to the hospital. I had taken a short round with the scooter around the corner to get used to it. I've never ridden a scooter and I've probably ridden a bike shortly twice in my entire life. Looking at my driving the lady from the rental shop got a bit worried. My brother managed to calm her by telling, I wasn't used to such small machines, I would only ride bigger bikes at home. What a lie! A bit shaky in the beginning I got used to the scooter quickly. Actually very easy to drive, in Thailand traffic I still didn't feel safe on that thing. Neither did my brother who was at my driving's mercy on the back seat.

We made it safe to the hospital and I only enjoy the examination given the service and friendly staff there. From the moment we entered the building we constantly had some staff to guide is to where we needed to go. The comfortable waiting areas were but large lounges. Quickly I was called from one test to another. Urine and blood samples, blood pressure, weighing, measuring, x-ray. I was through in not much more than an hour. Another hour waiting and all results had already come in. A short visit to the doctor who attested my good health, payment and we were out of the hospital again.

Later that day, after wandering up and down South Pattaya Beach Road, we were picked up by Tuk and now we are back in Bangkok to wait for the container to arrive. I have my application just about complete now and I wonder how long I have to wait for the results. At the moment, I have all the time in the world.