The Leprosy Hospital

15th December
Today we ventured out to the Hospital. We walked a fair distance before finding a taxi that knew what and where we were talking about. Taxi's here are either Tuk-tuks, which I am sure you have all seen in tourist brochures of Thailand. Or they are glorified Utes, where you sit in the back in a covered area on bench seats. Both are quite fun to ride in, the sensation of air rushing past is quite enjoyable, and not having to wear a seatbelt is very liberating. The journey to the hospital took us past many different Thai buildings, from eleborate temples, through to simple thai homes and shop fronts. We also saw some baby elephants which I was able to film quickly while traffic had stopped our taxi. They looked rather forlorn being led through loud busy traffic, they heads down and trunks dropping between their front legs.

The Hospital is set in beautiful grounds, with well kept gardens and old colonial style buildings. We walked a fair way, big fig trees lined the road, and we past more old buildings before finally coming to the main wards where we met Dr Trevor Smith. He's a wonderful man, very well spoken and gentle in his manner. Of the same generation type as Dr Hamlin I suspect. He took us on a ward round. I was surprised with how much I understood as he explained each patients' condition to us. Emily and I were fascinated, amazed and encouraged at some of the procedures and breakthrus that he has made. In appearance the patients ranged from quite crippled and malnourished, to appearing quite 'normal' with maybe only a limb missing. Alot had clawed hands (quite common with leprosy) and of course many had skin legions and cists. I say this all quite matter of factly, but I found quite a few patients difficult to cope with seeing. Em did fine, but it is all new to me, and had I seen more I think it could have brought me tears. Seeing other people suffering with this illness is sad, but there is an encouraging hope that we learned. Admissions to the hospital have dropped dramatically as improvements in the health of the population has risen. Also Dr Smith has made many sucessful operations to fix the clawed hands, and other deformities that affect their movements. Also the hospital has a workshop that creates special shoes for the patients (another encouraging thing we learned). We met Heather, Trever's wife near the end of our ward round and she pulled me aside to talk about teaching work for me. I will hopefully be doing some volunteer work at a school near by.

Walking back along the road we managed to get a lift with a lovely Thai lady, who made great attempts at conversation with us on the drive back to the main area of the city.

In the evening at the invitation of the Smiths we went to a missionary Chirstmas Carol night. It was outdoors under an impressively large tree. There were candles and alot of Carol singing, some great classical songs and then those irritating secular ones like 'Santa Claus is coming' and 'Ruldoph the red nosed reindeer'. They had the different nationality groups get up and do items, we joined the Aussies in a rendition of Waltzing Matilda with Christmas themed words. We didn't stay long after, feeling rather out of place and figuring we'd meet alot of these folk at the church service on Sunday.