Bumrungrad Hospital Visit in Bangkok

Travel Day 1136 – Bangkok, THAILAND

While I had really enjoyed my stay in Sri Lanka, unfortunately I had left the country with a little souvenir I never wanted, an infected wound on my foot…

My infected Food before Treatment

This infected wound had started pretty harmlessly as a simple scratch back in Anuradhapura and over time it had become continuously worse. Initially I had actually two scratches, one on my food and one on my leg but the one on my leg healed off after two days, while the wound on the food didn’t seem to care much about my iodine treatment or anything else I tried to do. Eventually, what had been a simple surface scratch turned into a deep wound full of puss and a hardened, infected area under the skin around it…

The first serious medical attention I seeked was then in a co-op hospital in Galle, but to no avail. Luckily the treatment itself had been rather cheap, meaning 200 rupees or 1.5 USD, but no serious attention was actually paid to my needs. The doctor simply ordered a bunch of giggling nurses in white little dresses, white hats and white shoes to clean my wound with iodine and put a band-aid on top. Since this was exactly the treatment that hadn’t brought any results and since the nurses were rather interested in my name and what I was doing than anything else, I realized that I would have to wait until Bangkok before I could get any sort of sophisticated medical attention…

Welcome Area of Bumrungrad Hospital

So after asking around which would be the best hospital to go to in Bangkok, everyone seemed to agree that Bumrungrad International Hospital was, even if expensive, the best choice in town and quite likely even the best hospital in all of Southern Asia. Since I wasn’t keen on another experience with giggling nurses, the best hospital in town seemed good enough for my purpose and worth a visit. Even if the hospital was located at the outskirts of the red light district and tucked away behind the embassy of Pakistan, once I had left all the dildos and other sex-toys on the streets behind and found the entrance, Bumrungrad turned out to be extremely sophisticated…

Appearing rather like a nice 5 star resort hotel than an actual hospital with guts and blood, Bumrungrad which was named as the leading medical tourist destination by the world press, must have been one of the fanciest hospitals I had ever seen in my life. From the reception trough the welcome area, I was led along lofty spaces, coffee shops and comfortable reading places, all the way to the proper floor of my treatment. Along the way, I had to register with what looked like my private bank teller and receive my photo ID card for further use…

All Equipment provided by Bumrungrad

The treatment itself was then also quite different and a whole lot more professional than the one I had received in Sri Lanka. The doctor himself showed me how to properly clean and dress the wound and when I was done he made sure I received an entire package from the pick-up counter, including antibiotics and a whole set with all necessary supplies for me to clean and re-dress the wound for the coming two weeks. The final point the doctor stressed when I was leaving was that the wound under no circumstances was allowed to get wet…

Keeping the feet dry during the rainy season in Bangkok seemed a bit of a challenge, but as soon as I arrived back at the hostel, I did what I should have done a long time ago: I traded my open sandals for my closed hiking shoes. Obviously hiking shoes were not the kind of attire one would like to wear in the extreme humidity of Bangkok, but the pure fact that I received proper instructions and a good care package from the fancy Bumrungrad Hospital made me feel very hopeful that I was finally on the right track and that things would get better very soon…