Trip to Thai village

It was an amazing trip to the Huai Biong village this past weekend. There is more than I can possibly tell on this short blog. This village is about 4 hours west of Chiang Mai. It does have power now but is still very primitive. Our first stop was to a mission supported school for the poor children that are too far from a public school to attend. The team included Dr. Bjorn Nilson, Dr. Mark Royer, Rick Astone, Brian Zeider, Bob Bowling(Media and photo), Sumsak his wife and brother as Liaison, Beepal as driver and interpreter. The kids are relatively in good health but we were surprised to see the most complaints about teeth. It turns out only half of them even have a toothbrush. We did a lot of educating and check ups. There were a few moments of excitement when Dr. Royer got to do a tooth extraction and drain an abscess in two of our adult patients. Rick Astone(Physical Therapist) did a lot of education on arthritis and why antibiotics do not help that kind of knee pain. Dr. Nilson took pleasure in not only helping the local children and adults but also educating our medical team on the various things we came across throughout the weekend.

This is one of the many children with severely bad teeth.

Most of the children in the school are just getting over the chicken pox. This is something you will no longer see in the USA.

After the school we went to the village where we stayed the night in Sumsak's family's home. They still cook over an open flame inside the home! This answered a few questions we had about some of our severe eye and sinus allergy patients we saw earlier.Oh ya, no chairs in the home! You sit and eat on the floor. The only toilet is outside in an outhouse. We ate wild bore one of the men of the house killed while hunting that day.

Mark, Brian, and Bjorn sitting around discussing the amazing day after dinner.

One of the women of the house doing a little weaving before bed.

And that was just Saturday! More tomorrow.