Clouds, monkeys and dinner

Who is joining for dinner? Two weeks ago we followed a Thai cooking class, and we made lots and lots of food (7 courses, which weren't small courses), after which we ate lots and lots of food. Seriously, you just kept on eating as it was just so good. The food is either sweetened or spicy (or both), and there was quite an amount of coconut milk in the dishes. My stomach wasn't too happy because of the amount and spiciness of the food I ate, but it was definitely a cool experience! I've uploaded a few pictures that give an impression of what it looked like. :)

The life of a medical student is really not as exciting as many people think. Over the last month I've mainly practised my chair-sitting skills and I was quite good at that. I've spend a lot of time figuring out where I had to be and what was going on, as I changed department every single week and the Obstetrics and Gynaecology department is spread out over a few buildings and floors. It is very different in the hospital. Not so much in a technical aspect, the main procedures seem to be quite good and very similar to the Belgian hospitals. It's more in the communication aspect, where the doctor is more important than the patient. Patients don't ask any questions, the doctor just tells them what to do, though they hardly explain themselves. Even though you can buy almost any drugs over the counter, at the hospital patients often get 4 different kind of drugs, where one would be sufficient. And when you ask 'why' kind of questions, they either start explaining basic medical principles, pretend they don't understand you, or just give you a Thai smile.

The Thai smile. At first you think: 'Oh, the people are so nice and friendly here!' Yes, they are really friendly, but it doesn't take long before you realise you have absolutely no idea what that smile means. It might mean: 'I think your crazy', 'I'm annoyed at you and am not planning on doing this', or just a simply plain Dutch 'No'. So I've come to the stage I try to read the different types of smile, and learning to just smile back when people ask me things I don't understand.

As a part of my medical training I have to write quite a few assignments, one is to write a report about a delivery I have seen. The files of the patients are normally half in Thai and half in English, so I could understand more or less what was going on, but spend quite some time decoding it. I figured the Thai don't really use spaces between words so every sentence looks like one big word. But then of course, you have your good friend Google translate, which can help you out in any language problem. Even though I had only pictures of Thai writing, it promised me, to translate this into English. Well, these are the secrets the page contained:

'Oh cloudy globe. Cloudy, cloudy, cloudy. Dark forest, dark o the year. Cloudy, 'nice cloudy. The monkey fart patiently. Just as bungalows.' etc. (I left out a few more clouds, random numbers, signs and random sentences..) I think I'll just use the English part for my report..

Another brilliant experience was going to the cinema. Just the previews are completely worth it to go see any film. It's a mixture of English trailers, Thai adverts, suddenly a stop for the national anthem with pictures of the royal family where every one stands up, then more Thai adverts and English trailers. The commercials are a story on it's own, can almost bring you to tears displaying a sad story while advertising for random things. (toilets, insurance companies) Oh, and then of course, cell phones are to switched off. One video is stronger than a thousand words, go and watch it yourself, it's completely worth it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW3yrgOyi7Q

Today we are exactly halfway the time we will be spending in Thailand, it flies by really quickly! I'd also love to hear about what's going on back home (or wherever your home is). I'd be happy to hear from you.