Five Cities In Three Countries Over 16 Days, Part 2: Vientiane, Laos
In my previous post we were in Kolkata, India for the AIOC 2024 conference and now it was time to commence the second leg of this tour that would have us doing volunteer work in Vientiane, Laos. This wasn’t my first trip to Laos, but it was my first time visiting the nation’s capital so let’s get to it.
Sunday, March 17, 2024
We had boarded our three-hour flight at 11:30pm on Saturday night to the expected mayhem that would bring us to Bangkok, Thailand for a two-and-a-half-hour layover, but it wasn’t as simple as it sounded, because there is a 90-minute time difference between the two cities so it was actually around 4:00am when we landed. It’s difficult to get much, if any, sleep on such a short flight, particularly for Anna on this occasion, because she was nervous about the luggage we had had to check in that was being transferred between flights, going directly from Kolkata to Vientiane, and the odds of it actually arriving at our destination. The craziness kicked into overdrive once we had landed, because a lot of the other passengers also had connecting flights so they wanted to get everything done as fast as possible. As we were exiting the plane some woman kept trying to walk all of the way down the narrow aisle toward the rear of the plane and squeeze past everyone for some reason, making people more impatient, but it was when we had to go through transit security that things got truly out of hand. It was the standard process of having your luggage scanned, taking off your belt, everything out of your pockets, and on this occasion removing your shoes as well, but I mentioned previously about the impatience and distaste for waiting and queueing for a lot of people from where we had departed so many of the passengers weren’t interested in any of that, they just wanted to get through. Despite the fact that everyone had undergone a similar process several hours earlier, many acted like they had never been in an airport before, just walking around the screening equipment and trying to squish through the metal detector with several other people at once, resulting in the Thai security guards having to tell them repeatedly to go back, get in line, put everything in the trays, and wait to come through one by one. Just like when we had tried to get tickets for the Victoria Memorial Hall in Kolkata a couple of days prior, some acted like there was no line, just trying to shove past and reach through the gaps in an effort to put directly into the machine what needed to be screened so Anna and myself had to attempt to make a two-person human wall to keep our place in the line, particularly when it came to a guy in a ridiculous wig and his friend, but eventually we were through and in the lounge, chatting with some of Anna’s colleagues to kill time, all the while me being amused by the shoes of another traveler.
When it was time to depart again we took our seats aboard our next, less hectic flight and an hour later we were touching down in Vientiane:
Vientiane is the capital and largest city of Laos. Comprising the five urban districts of Vientiane Prefecture, the city is located on the banks of the Mekong, right at the border with Thailand. Vientiane was the administrative capital during French rule and, due to economic growth in recent times, is now the economic center of Laos. The city had a population of 1,001,477 as of the 2023 Census.
Vientiane is the home of the most significant national monuments such as Pha That Luang, a national symbol of Laos and an icon of Buddhism in Laos. Other significant Buddhist temples can be found there as well, such as Haw Phra Kaew, which formerly housed the Emerald Buddha.
By the time we had arrived, filled out my visa application for approval at immigration, collected our check-in cases that had thankfully arrived, and then got to the hotel, Capitol Residences, it was about 9:30am and we were doing it all on zero sleep so it was time to hit the hay for a bit.
We woke up at about 2:00pm and Anna had decided to have a massage, while I found a bar down the road, Malibou 22, that was doing happy hour beers at a price of two for ₭15,000 (US$0.71). I decided to boast on Facebook that I was getting draught beers for roughly 3% of the price that I pay for a pint at my local back in Singapore and when one of the staff members realised it was me that had tagged the bar, she brought over another one for free! I think I’m going to like it here.
Anna joined me for a couple more drinks after her massage and these volunteer trips are her passion project so later we met up with some of the other organisers and sponsors, Alan Lim and Phillip Tay, at a bar owned by Jason Lim, the local lead for the project, for dinner and to go over some details. We were truly running on fumes at this point, which wan’t a bad thing as we had early mornings for the next week, so I can’t really recall much of the day, but here is some of what I caught with my phone:
Monday, March 18, 2024
As would be the case for the rest of the week, I was up at 6:30am sharp in order to shower and have a coffee before it was time to go to the hospital at 7:15am. All of the the doctors and nurses from Singapore would be staying in the same hotel, but they hadn’t all arrived yet and some, Anna included, instead had to fly to Savannakhet that morning to organise future mission trips and would be returning the following day.
When everybody had eaten we loaded up some cars with equipment and hit the road, one that got extremely bumpy and full of potholes the further we got from the city en route to the Ministry of Health Ophthalmology Centre. This was one of the first volunteer trips that had been organised since Covid and although I had been on previous missions, I would be a lot busier this time than in the past. Obviously I’m not a surgeon so Anna particularly wanted me there to film what was going on and conduct first-person interviews with patients and doctors via an interpreter in order to create a short film so while some of the photos used in this post are mine, others weren’t taken by me or are just screenshots from what I had filmed. However, there’s always something else that needs doing on these mission trips so I’d have a lot more to keep me occupied, I’d even been given some basic training a week before we had left to do vision testing and report the results.
We arrived at the hospital a bit before 8:00am and there were already hundreds of people waiting outside in what would soon be 38°C (100°F) heat. They had traveled from all over Vientiane Provence and further and as I entered the building I realised I had made the terrible mistake of wearing shoes. Every time I entered the building I would need to take them off and then put them back on again when I exited, something I would be doing many times and it got to the point where after a while I chose just to walk around on any paved surface in a pair of socks, ones that would be an orange-brown colour by the end of the day.
The morning thus far:
With the sheer amount of people that had shown up first thing in the morning there was plenty that needed to be done around the place, most importantly finding more seats and moving the current arrangements around to accommodate the new ones. At the same time some of the patients had been registered so it was now time for the eye-screening and consultations to begin. The main location for this to take place was in the outdoor area where 10 different stations had been set up so doctors and nurses could conduct the testing. I had been trained two weeks earlier, but to my relief I wasn’t called up to help with this part of the process, because although I had reread the guide on how to do it, recording the results still wasn’t all that fresh in my mind, but of course if called upon I would definitely oblige and that could soon become a reality as this time-lapse clip I took over the course of an hour that morning featuring just a tiny portion of that testing station shows:
That video was taken by putting my phone in the window as I was multitasking, filing paperwork for the for the consultations after testing, while simultaneously guiding people who I was unable to verbally communicate with and could not see my hand gestures particularly well to where they needed to wait, and also removing what were becoming piles of shoes left in the doorway by the visually impaired. By 1:30pm 280 patients had been registered and there were still plenty more waiting as the process continued throughout the day and at the end that number had swelled to over 500 people, many others needing to be turned away and told to return the following day, as well as some minor procedures having been completed.
The heat was unrelenting the entire day with trucks full of water spraying down the dirt road out the front every few hours to prevent the dust rising and by the time we were done everyone was drained so at the suggestion of some of the locally-based organisers we went to a place called Kong View for some drinks and a bite to eat. This bar and restaurant got its name from the fact that it sits on the Mekong, looking directly across the river into Thailand so everyone just took the chance to get off their feet, relax with a drink and a snack, and reflect on a hectic day as well as focusing on what to expect to come over a frenetic week, all while listening to a band playing some live music.
This only lasted for an hour or two before everyone felt the need to retire back to the hotel, but I knew that if I were to do that too, based on the lack of sleep from the previous two nights and the early start I’d had, I’d fall asleep immediately and would more than likely be awake at about 4:00am so I decided to soldier on. A friend of mine, Tim Howard, has a band in Thailand called Uluvus and they had played at WINd-WEST just before Christmas, a bar which just happened to be down the road from our hotel so that’s where I decided to close out my night, taking in some more live music until it seemed like a more appropriate time to turn in.
More scenes from a hectic first day of volunteering, Kong View, and WINd-WEST:
Tuesday, March 19, 2024
We were up bright and early to tackle another day at the hospital and this time I was smart enough not to wear actual shoes, instead opting for a pair of thongs that I could just easily slip on whenever I needed to leave the building.
Tuesday would be a more or less similar day to the previous and I would finally be able to meet and spend time with some of the administration staff to whom I had been giving online English lessons for the past several months so that was a lot of fun. The available surgeons would begin doing cataract operations and there was one other significant event; there would also be the screening and prescribing of glasses to 19 youth at risk of developing diabetic retinopathy, one of the leading causes of non-traumatic blindness, as a result of type 2 diabetes:
Diabetic retinopathy, caused by alterations in retinal microcirculation, leading to the growth of friable and poor-quality new blood vessels in the retina or capillary closure which causes ischemia or extravasation of intravascular content, causing edema (swelling of the macula). Retinopathy is the most common cause of blindness among non-elderly adults in the developed world.
There was going to be one minor issue and that was that the flight back from Savannakhet carrying the other doctors and surgeons was due back at around noon, however, it was going to be delayed as the plane had broken down and the next one wasn’t scheduled until later that evening so that meant we would be slightly understaffed when it came to testing the kids that would be arriving at 2:00pm. Fortunately we received a message a little later from Anna saying that there was now a flight scheduled for 1:30pm so although the others wouldn’t be there for the bulk of the screening, they would still be able to make it to the hospital while the children were there:
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
This was the day the real work kicked in as all of the surgeons would be trying to remove as many cataracts as possible, but only one from each patient in order to be able to benefit as many people as they could, however, due to torrential rain, getting to the hospital would prove slow and difficult, especially with even more potholes opening up, but fortunately that wouldn’t hamper plans too much. A team of students from a local high school had been attending during the week to act as interpreters for the patients so that helped things go a bit more smoothly, but due to budget restraints and the lack of equipment all of the cataracts had to be removed manually with a scalpel, as opposed to via ultrasound. The were a couple of issues for me that day as I was asked to film inside the operating theatre so that would require me to wear scrubs, something that aren’t often available in Southeast Asia for a person my size so when I found a pair, they were almost as tight as a wetsuit that didn’t reach my ankles. Another reason it was a little challenging is me not being a big fan of medical situations. It is has gotten far better over the years, I had no problem being in the hospital and around recovering patients, in fact it really only seems to bother me when Anna or myself are the patients, however, this was going to be my first time in an actual operating theatre without it being myself under the scalpel. I was using a tripod so as long as that was set up I could just look the other way while everyone was doing their thing and me having a big nose helped with that, because if I shut one eye it would just block the other from being subjected to the unpleasantness.
That day got so busy that as well as filming I was also needed to try and magically find reams of paper for printing out post-surgical care instructions for the patients, as well as spending over an hour helping put together many more baggies of eye drops, medications, and instruction sheets, because far more surgeries had been, and would be, completed than anticipated over the course of the week. It was a long, hard day, but after about 12 hours in the hospital we were finally done and we had a bite to eat at at a restaurant owned by Phillip Tay.
A few scenes from day number three:
Thursday, March 21, 2024
This would mark my fifth straight day operating on little sleep so I was absolutely exhausted by this point, which makes me very nervous as that is when I’m most prone to having seizures. There were several moments where I felt a bit of lightheadedness, however, it wasn’t too much like the regular aura I feel so when it happened I’d just sit down and hope for the best and fortunately I was fine each time.
I couldn’t really complain though, because the nurses that had come with us were already packed and on their way to the hospital at 6:45am! Thursday was going to be very similar to Wednesday so I’d be able to take it relatively easy when it came to the recordings. Besides filming a few beaming smiles on faces from patients who were there for their post-op followup examinations, I’d also be collaborating with Harshini Suresh, an academic who was going to be working with an interpreter to do some interviews, but those would have to wait until later, because there were going to be some speeches and presentations first. The one I was looking forward to was Anna’s lengthy speech and although the mood was somewhat altered by a neighbouring construction site’s sudden need to use an angle grinder almost immediately after she began speaking, she still nailed it. After speeches by some of the main delegates and the Singapore Ambassador to Laos she then received an award on behalf of Global Ophthalmology and watched as some of the country’s global health leaders removed the eye dressings of patients, all of which was posted on the Facebook page of the Singapore Embassy in Vientiane.
After lunch came the interviews for which we were responsible. Harshini had preprepared some questions to ask, the only problem now was finding a relatively quiet place to conduct them and the first that came to mind was the break room from the day before, which would require me to don the micro-scrubs again. We were interviewing a medical resident first, followed by a first-year eye doctor who had taken a 16-hour bus ride to volunteer, but the room we were in probably wasn’t the best choice, because there was the constant background noise of a machine sterilising medical equipment, as well as people needing to occasionally enter, not knowing we were recording in there. There was also another interesting person that was suggested and he was originally brought in with the high school students as an interpreter. He was a Korean-born 17-year old and his family had moved to Laos for his father’s work. He had always wanted to be a surgeon, mainly cardio-thoracic, as he liked the idea of saving lives, however, after viewing ophthalmology procedures he claimed that it had “changed his philosophy” and now believes improving people’s quality of life might be his new passion.
After a far less hectic day we were out of the hospital relatively early so after dinner at a surprisingly good pizza place a few of us headed out to WINd WEST again for a nightcap:
Friday, March 22, 2024
The last major day of the mission trip was here, but the bulk of it would consist of followup examinations of patients and showing appreciation to all of those that had lent their services. One thing high on the list for Harshini and myself was to find a patient for an interview and when we came across a middle age woman who was willing to, she just broke down in tears as soon as a student translated the first question due to how happy she was, simply because she never thought she would see clearly again.
Chairs were being stacked and certificates of appreciation presented to all who had helped out and once the day was done it was back to the hotel to get changed and then out to dinner at Fu Man Lou restaurant with prospective donors for similar future missions, followed by the ones with any fuel left in the tank continuing on to a speakeasy rooftop bar to celebrate a very successful mission later into the night:
On Saturday it was time to tie up some loose ends, donate some of the remaining medication to the hospital, and then the work in Vientiane was done. It was an absolutely exhausting trip, one in which over 500 patients were screened and more than 160 cataract surgeries completed manually so it was definitely worth it and it wouldn’t have been possible without all of the organisers, sponsors, and the incredible team of nurses and allied health staff.
The entire Singapore crew
Stay tuned for the next part of this crazy adventure as we spend a week recovering while on holiday in Japan.
Those scrubs are so tight, you’re practically performing surgery on yourself!!