Bangkok and beyond

We waved a sad goodbye to Vietnam, and jetted South to Bangkok, to spend one quiet night there before travelling on to the islands for some hard work! We decided to head up to the huge mall on the outskirts of Bangkok for a bit of window shopping. The effects of the flooding are quite evident here - it's raining a LOT, and all the shops and hotels have sandbags which we had to climb over to get anywhere off the streets! After a few hours, not quite window shopping, we headed back to the Khao San Road, exhausted. The quiet night that we had planned didn't quite go to plan! First off, I met up with Laura, a friend I met whilst working at a street dog charity in Nepal, who is now teaching in Bangkok. We were just heading for dinner when I heard my name, and turned to see Katya and Will, two of my university friends running down the Khao San Road after us! It is a small small world! We all went for some dinner and decided that one Chang (the local beer) tower couldn't hurt. But we all had so much catching up to do, and one turned into three, and before we knew it we were being roped into a visit to an infamous Bangkok Ping Pong show! After a short walk through a decidedly dodgy part of Bangkok, we arrived at the Ping Pong show. I won't go into details about the show itself, but it was an experience probably not to repeat! The tuktuk journey back to the Khao San Road was almost as memorable as the show itself - with four of us piled into a 2 person seat, and our driver intent on racing any other vehicles on the road! We made in back safely, with two hours to go before our early morning flight to Koh Samui!
We landed at Samui airport - if you can call it an airport - it is more a collection of beach huts, with a few small propeller planes and avery short runway. The view coming into land was beautiful - we have finally found some sun and there is no better place to be in the sun than a Thai island! A short ferry ride later, we arrived on Koh Phangan, our home for the next week. Our resort is right on the beach, surrounded by coconut palms and hammocks. Unfortunately though, I am not here to relax, and even on the journey to the resort it was clear how much work needs to be done - there are stray dogs and cats everywhere, and very few of them seem to neutered, so the problem is just increasing week by week! After settling in to our beach hut, we went to find PAC (Phagnan Animal Centre). It's a little off the beaten track, but the clinic itself is huge, and very well equipped compared to other charity clinics that I have worked at. I met the team, including the many clinic dogs and cats (a high proportion of whom seem to have less than an average number of legs or tails!) There is a Maltese vet also volunteering for the time that I am here, but unfortunately all of the permanent clinical staff were off for the first few days for various reasons. It was lucky for the clinic that there were two vets, so that we could keep things running, but from our point of view, it was quite unnerving using new (and unusual) drugs, techniques and protocols without anyone who was familiar with them! We got straight on with some bitch spays - the clinic staff have recently discovered about 30 dogs and puppies living on a dump not far away from the centre, and we wanted to make a good start on them. The dogs were all collected by Jamie, the practice manager on a motorbike and trailer, and we set about getting to know the anaesthetic protocols. If any of you at Farthings are reading this, you would be both impressed (by how much I have learnt from you nurses, and my clip patches!) and appalled (by the anaesthetics that we use here - euthatal for induction, no light in theatre (luckily I have a head torch!) and no way of keeping dogs flat on their backs - resulting in a moving target for surgery!!)

Anyway, we adjusted a few things - like the minimal pain relief in the premed, and started with our long list of surgeries. It took a while to get used to, and we were essentially monitoring our own anaesthetics whilst both of us operated on the same table at the same time! Most of the dogs here have blood borne parasites that cause excessive bleeding, so most of the surgeries was obscured by blood the entire time! Sterility is actually relatively good compared to other clinics I have seen, but there are a few differences to Farthings! Everything is autoclaved in a toaster, packaged in tin foil...and when I first picked up the hand brush to scrub up, a baby gecko ran up my arm from it! Other than that though, everything is pretty similar, except for the numbers of spays that we were doing each day!
It was hot and very sweaty work, and by the end of the day we were pretty tired, and perhaps less than enthusiastic about the flood of consults that appeared from locals and ex-pats who don't trust the local vets! Again, as there were no permanent staff there, this involved me doing a consult as normal (though often in very broken English or sign language) and then rummaging around in boxes full of random drugs trying to find any appropriate treatment. It's scary but strangely refreshing having absolutely no diagnostic tests and having to depend solely on my own clinical judgement!
Anyway, by about 7.30pm I had worked through all the sick animals, seen to the inpatients and was ready to get back to the beach! Will and Katya came to join us on Koh Phangan, so after a drink on the beach we went to a local restaurant that Astrid and I had already discovered, called Rambutans. It's a small Thai place, and the man that runs it is the loveliest man ever!! We went there for most of our meals on the island, and on our last night, he gave us each a postcard to say thank you and good luck for our travels!
After a few beers on the beach, we went to bed - thinking we were in for a good night's sleep after all our travels! Unfortunately it was not to be! At about midnight, there was a banging on the door of our bungalow - and Tracy, one of the clinic volunteers was there in a panic, with her kitten who was fitting. Unfortunately she had been licking permethrin, a flea treatment for dogs that is very toxic to cats, from Tracy's puppy. We rushed to the clinic on the bikes, and spent the next four hours trying to save her, but sadly she didn't make it. It was very sad, but at least we were able to try. There's no permanent vet on the island so they depend on volunteers and any emergencies like this usually don't get to see a vet.
The rest of the week was fairly similar - with lots of bitch spays, a few cat spays and a few cases of distemper, parvovirus and various other diseases that we don't see at home thanks to vaccination.
The Thursday night was the notorious Half Moon party on Koh Phangnan - a world famous trance festival in the jungle. We decided to head up and see what all the fuss is about.


All of the drinks are served in buckets, the whole venue is lit with UV light, and everyone wears neon clothing and face paint. We met up with a few people that we'd met at the resort and some of the clinic staff and all headed up to the jungle for the party. It was a night to remember (if only we could!!) - and I'm only glad I had the next day off work!
We decided to head over to Koh Tao for the weekend, as we had no inpatients at the clinic and fancied trying out the diving. The four of us headed over on the ferry, and booked into the dive resort. I have never dived before, so did an introductory dive and then a deeper dive. It was great fun- I have really bad ears so was worried I wouldn't be able to but despite some problems coming back up, I managed it ok! We saw loads of fish, a couple of huge moray eels and some very large trigger fish, and kept a close eye out for sharks, but unfortunately didn't see any!
After the dive, we had a lovely chilled out night at the beach bars, watching the fire dancers and chatting to the other divers.
Now to head back to the clinic for some more surgery next week!