Siem Reap

Last weekend, 5 fellow clinic-goers and I adventured to Siem Reap. The city is famous for its temples, and some people spend up to a week here visiting them all at great length! We took a night bus and arrived at 6am on Saturday morning. We departed on a bus at 4pm on Sunday, so we had a short but action-packed self-guided tour of the place.

There are two common routes to take: the Grand Tour and the Small Tour. We chose the Small option on the basis of our very short window of time. For the six of us, we hired two tuk tuks for the day, which ended up costing each of us $5 for the day's transportation. We agreed that our goal was to move relatively slowly through them and not be too anxious about finishing the route, especially since the number approaches 50 if you really want to see them all.

The first temple we explored was Angkor Wat, the most famous of them all.

Approaching Angkor Wat.

Some Buddhist monks were touring the place that day too.

Looking out of one building to another in the complex. This was still on the approach to the main building.

Without any lighting, the place was illuminated by the abundance of open doors and windows from room to room.

Some grand architecture. Very impressive to think this was built in the 12th century!

Back to Business

I've blogged a lot about my extracurricular activities, I've noticed, although the majority of my time has been spent at the clinic. Part of the reason for this is out of respect for the patients, I don't want to post a bunch of pictures of all the incredible thing's I'm seeing and doing. My experience at the clinic so far, however, has been remarkable, extremely exciting, very busy, and quite a bit of (enjoyable) work.

The usual sight during rounds: family members peering in the ajar ward windows.

A baby sleeps in a hammock hung between two inpatient beds. A sight I have yet to see around any US hospitals.

With four operating tables in the room, sometimes they nearly butt up against each other.

Note how close the two spotlights, and therefore patients, are to each other.

 - Warning: images of more explicit nature below -

Road Trip to Siem Reap

Tonight some med students, a roommate and I will be hopping on one of these at midnight.

That will hopefully be less miserable than this

But no promises!

to travel northwest to Siem Reap

so I can take my very own pictures of the following things so I won't have to steal them from Google in the future, as I did here.

Ankor Wat

All sources so far have reported that Siem Reap is a cleaner, quieter, prettier version of Phnom Penh. The biggest attraction is the temple of Ankor Wat. There also might be an opportunity or two to eat alligator! Now that my GI issues have subsided a bit, I am feeling a bit more adventurous around food. Watch out, gators!

"I'm Spicy Just Like You Like Me"

The only other blog I've ever been a part of is when Four Amigos took off on a road trip to circumnavigate the United States. In those four weeks, we completely coincidentally ended up in a gay bar in New Orleans, a drag show in Portland, and Pride weekend in Chicago.

It's only fitting that on the way from dinner to a dance club last weekend, my new friends and I happened into Rainbow Bar in Phnom Penh. It was quite the deja vu moment when it took the males of the group much longer than the girls to realize the genre of bar we were enjoying.

There were drag queens dancing on that stage when we arrived.

The menu. I should have also taken a picture of the bathroom with male models plastered floor to ceiling.

We befriended one of the dancers (he befriended us?) as we closed down the place.

Next we moved on to a dance club called Pontoon. And dance we did! At one point during the night, they cleared most of the floor so this English woman could perform. She looks to be about mid-50s, but she put on quite the show!

I call this one, "I'm Spicy Just Like You Like Me." Unsure why she's wearing a Celtics jacket at the beginning...

She was wearing a mask during the show, but we found her uncovered while redoing her makeup in the bathroom.

She tried to conceal her identity in pictures. 

And our identities?

Valentine's Day: the Extended Version

The downside to being >8500 miles from your Valentine is that the closest you come to being with them on Valentine's day is Skype. The upside is that you get to celebrate for 37 hours! I don't know how he did it - and from what I know of Cambodian mail, it must have been a Valentine's Day miracle - but a dozen roses arrived for me at the clinic! 

What a Valentine!!!

I spread the love by distributing a rose to two little girls in the ward. Although Valentine's Day doesn't seem to be quite as big here, everyone knows what it is. I got a lot of knowing looks and twittering as people saw my beautiful flowers. 

I also got a lovely valentine from my new friend, Claire, and candies from Trish.

No Boys Allowed fancy New York Steakhouse Valentine's Day dinner.

A Lenten Gift

I just got back from my first Cambodian mass, and WOW! It was the most rejuvenating mass I've been to in a while.

First, it is an amazing feeling to go to the other side of the world and be able to participate in mass because all the responses are the same. I've appreciated that in South America and Europe, but it's an amazing feeling every time. Plus, since I'm abroad by myself for the first time, it's incredible how much God's house can feel like home. Sounds cheesy, but I don't know how else to explain the goosebumps I got when I got to sing along with the Gloria because it was one I recognized.

Second, the music was awesome! As I mentioned in an earlier post, my family used to spend a lot of time in the San Diego/La Jolla area on family vacation. We went to a young life mass at a church called Mary, Star of the Sea. They had an incredibly vibrant band and everyone was singing. It has become the mass to which all others are compared, and we still talk about it from time to time. I think St. Joseph's of Phnom Penh is the closest I've come to that mass, or at least makes the Top 5 list.

I did get a bit confused when I arrived, as the small chapel I found the other weekend turned out to not be the chapel where they hold mass at all. The very apparent service going on was the outdoor one below.

This is only about half of the crowd.

It was obviously a Catholic mass and very well attended... but it was in Khmer. I ended up taking a seat, ready to take in the experience anyway, until I saw some foreigner-looking people heading up a flight of stairs. I followed them up and found myself in a place where I could understand the service.

The place was almost entirely full during mass.

I'll be looking forward to returning each week. Plus, coffee and cookie reception after mass next week: BONUS!?!?!? : )

Taco Tuesdays

Last weekend marked my emergence from the cocoon as a social butterfly in Phnom Penh. Thanks to my new med student friends at the clinic, I was given a beginner's course in the cuisine and nightlife of the city. They so generously took me under their wing and let me join in their busy adventuring schedule.

Tuesday nights was their weekly dinner at a Mexican restaurant called Taqueria Corona. Now that the American (me) showed up, it's been re-dubbed "Taco Tuesday." This week, however, it got moved to Monday since we got invited to a BBQ at The Boss' house (my original host). I ordered the carne asada tacos on soft corn tortillas, which were really awesome. This place was allegedly started by a Californian, so the food is typically considered to be a California-style Mexican restaurant. Maybe that's why I loved it so much! I'll try to remember to take pictures next week, but here's about what my experience looked like.

Not pictured are the chips that were much more flauta-style than I've tasted before, pico de gallo, HOT SAUCE!, and some delicious pitchers of margaritas. It was such a fun night with great food and lots of laughter. 

I can't wait to go back next Tuesday! The four med students at the clinic when I arrived are finishing up their time here, so I will have to rally the next crew to keep this tradition alive. 

Weekending, Part 1

The Russian Market is an indoor/outdoor shopping jungle. Most shops are contained within a labyrinth of shops cramped so close together that you can barely move past another person. The goods vary from Beats by Dre and DVDs to clothing, kitchenwares, purses and bags, and figurines - the options are endless! *Note: the following two pictures are not mine. I really need to remember to take more pictures!

Looks rather innocuous from the outside.

Deep in the belly of the jungle.

Many items are Chinese knock-offs (Beats are $12, North Face backpacks are $9), and bartering is expected. 

$2 shades. For lookin' coo-oo-oo-oo-ool purposes.

$7 duffel about the size of a microwave. I love the shape of the outside pocket!

This past weekend, at least half the shops were closed due to Chinese New Year. It is widely observed in Cambodia, although many people leave the city to go home to their families in the provinces, so there wasn't as much action in Phnom Penh as I expected.

I also tried to go to the Royal Palace, but it is not fully open to the public yet after the King Father funeral. I'll head back there later when I can get the full experience. I could try to fit it in next weekend, but we are going to have a small, casual pool party of sorts with a few friends from the clinic. Here's a preview.

This was taken by my roommate, Sophie. Those are my feet on the left!

Hopefully I get some fun pictures with my underwater camera!

My Life in Video Form

Here's some videos that I've taken that I've had saved up, for your perusal.

The crowd gathered to take pictures of the King Father's cremation pyre.

Walking on the riverfront with chanting from the King Father's funeral in the background.

Dancing on the Riverfront. This is an effort to promote exercise in the city. Anyone can walk up and join in the dance. It looks fun and it definitely gets people moving!

Puppies I found outside the clinic! I wanted to take them home so badly. Look at those little tails wagging!

View from the apartment balcony. Sorry if it's too dark! I will try to remember to take a daylight one sometime.

Home, Sweet, Home

Late last week, we moved into our new apartment! Here's some pics of the pad.

Walking in the front door. 

How cool is this bar?

I wish I was going to be here longer so I could fill this with cool bottles and glassware!

Making my room feel more like home.

View from my bedroom door.

First day at the Clinic

For a first day, it went very smoothly!

The morning meeting starts at 8am when all the scheduled cases for the day are reviewed. Dr. Jim runs them and most cases turn into some kind of discussion or debate about the gross anatomy or physiology of the procedure, the planned approach, and/or potential complications and prognosis. Sometimes surgeries are postponed or canceled to make sure the quality of care stays as high as possible.

Piled in for morning meeting.

Rounds are next, so a sizable group of doctors, nurses, and the med students shuffle in to review each inpatient in a single-room ward with 20 beds (not all occupied at this time). Many are receiving physical therapy after surgery, an incredibly important part of the process. In many cases, if the PT is omitted, the surgery can be rendered useless. Other patients are in traction in preparation for future surgery. Still others are fighting infections, usually due to open fractures that were not treated (or treated incorrectly through traditional medicine, etc.) at the time of the trauma. Self-treatment of antibiotics is very common in Cambodia, and antibiotics resistance has become a big problem. There are quite a few cases of osteomyelitis in particular, so that might become something I look into while I'm here.

Claire charming a young patient to get a patient history. BT translates between English and Khmer.

There's a little lag time between the end of rounds and when the surgeries start while they prep the patients, so I use that time to research or review parts of the cases that I either don't know or don't remember. The earliest cases (started during the morning meeting and finished up by about the time rounds end) are cleft palate/cleft lip cases. It's amazing seeing the before and after of those. The triangular incisions that interlock like a puzzle to make a natural-looking lip is really interesting. I still need to read up on that one more...

Into the OR, where there are four operating tables in the room. Makes it very easy to observe multiple surgeries at the same time! More on the surgeries later, but next is lunch at the canteen. 50 cents for lunch and a nice break outside in the sun and heat (not that heat is ever lacking here).

In the afternoon, if all the surgeries are done, there's time for research, working on various projects, or sitting in on the eyes pre-op meeting and surgeries.

Leif interviewing a patient for some research he's conducting.

I spent the first week getting my feet on the ground and figuring out the flow of the clinic. I'm looking forward to getting deeper into projects in the coming weeks!

Back in the Game

Sorry for the radio silence! Had some technical difficulties including my computer charger dying (still working that one out), and the internet going out for a while.

Posts to come later today!

Monday Teaser

I had some slight technical difficulties with my computer charger cord deciding to quit on me, so sorry for the lag here. I'm going to speed through a couple days. Otherwise I'll be behind for the rest of the trip!

My hosts got back from their weekend in Kep early because there was a fire in one of the buildings at the clinic! Thankfully no one was hurt, and it wasn't one of their main buildings, but it did house a LOT of supplies and machines that were all lost. Very sad and disappointing.

Shelves that stored supplies for the clinic, including most of their stockpile of sutures.

These flowers managed to survive the fire somehow.

Then I got to go shopping at the market with some of my hosts!

Monkeys climbing on the wires is not a sight you see everyday in US!

Fish jerky. A bit smelly.

So many dried shrimp! There were all different sizes.

BBQ squid on a stick!!

My hosts buying squid on a stick for dinner. Yum!

Next post: my first day at the clinic!