Being Ill in Thailand

I cannot speak for what it is like being ill in other countries except the UK, so you will have to draw your own conclusions.

Being Ill in Thailand

I cannot speak for what it is like being ill in other countries except the UK, so you will have to draw your own conclusions. In the UK, I lived in Barry, a town of then 65,000, situated ten miles from Wales’ capital. In Thailand, I live in a small village eight miles from the nearest town (small) and fifty miles from a city.

If they are ill, people with the money go to the city for their health care and this situation might be true of rural Wales as well for all I know. It would not surprise me.

When I was going blind with cataracts seven years ago, I was diagnosed in the city, but my wife took me to Pattaya (a much bigger city) for the treatment. The service was excellent and so I returned the following year to have the other eye done. (They replaced my human lenses with plastic ones).

So far, all well and good.

About four years ago, I awoke after a party with a swollen, and very painful foot. We went to the nearest city, and I suggested that I had been stung by a scorpion or bitten by a snake. The doctor inspected my foot and said: ‘No lesion, no bite. Infection’.

I wanted to ask how the infection had gotten in there, if there was no hole, but his English was not up to the task. Neither were the tablets he sold me. I have had recurrences of the illness three or four times a year since then and they last a few days.

Some say it’s gout, but no-one really knows. In the village, most people self-diagnose and self-medicate. Some know more than others, but it is not a guarantee that their knowledge is correct. One man set my wife’s broken arm so tight that she almost lost it two days later in hospital.

I am not saying all this to poke fun, but to alert those who may reasonably expect to need medical care of the risks of living in a village in a remote area. Not only in Thailand, but perhaps anywhere in the world.

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All the best,

Owen

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Owen

Owen Jones, Amazon Best-Selling Author from Barry, Wales, has lived in several countries and travelled in many more. While studying Russian in the USSR in the '70's, he hobnobbed with spies on a regular basis; in Suriname, he got caught up in the 1982 coup; and while a company director, he joined the crew of four as the galley slave to sail from Barry to Gibraltar a home-made concrete yacht, which was almost rammed by a Russian oil tanker and an American aircraft carrier.
“I am a Celt, and we are romantic”, he said when asked about his writing style, “and I firmly believe in reincarnation, Karma and Fate, so, sayings like 'Do unto another...', and 'What goes round comes around' are central to my life and reflected in my work. I write about what I see, or think I see, or dream... and, in the end it is all the same really”. He speaks seven languages and is learning Thai, since he lives in Thailand with his Thai wife of fifteen years.
His first novel, Daddy's Hobby is from the seven-part series 'Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya', but his largest collection is 'The Megan Series', twenty-three novelettes on the psychic development of a teenage girl, the subtitle of which, 'A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!' sums them up nicely. He has written fifty novels and novelettes, including: Dead Centre; Andropov's Cuckoo; Fate Twister; The Disallowed (a philosophical comedy); Tiger Lily of Bangkok; and A Night in Annwn (Annwn being the ancient Welsh word for Heaven). Many have been translated into foreign languages and narrated into audio books.
Owen Jones writes stories set in Wales, Spain and Thailand, where he now lives. He is a life-long Spiritualist, and this belief is interwoven, in a very realistic way, into many of his books and storylines. If you like a touch of the 'supernatural', try his books
He sums his life up thus: “Born in the Land of Song, Living in the Land of Smiles”.