Bangkok Lessons

24 hours into my five day trip to Bangkok. I'm here meeting with colleagues from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE International) to learn more about the Thai health system and their initiatives to increase access to health. It's quite impressive, actually; whereas out-of-pocket pay for healthcare in India is somewhere between 80-90%, in Thailand, it's less than 20%. Now the focus is on improving the quality of care.

Needless to say, what has struck me most was the view from the plane flying into Bangkok. Hundreds of miles of flooded fields; incredible that the floods were so visible from up in the air. One of my colleagues from the UK said she even saw the old airport flooded, with water halfway covering the planes themselves.

Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK), where I landed, was completely dry. This fact was reinforced by the thousands of cars I saw just parked at the airport itself, and lining the highway in refuge from the flooding. Coming from India, I was shocked that the four-lane highway actually had a shoulder lane, enabling cars to park along the elevated highway for miles. Quite a sight.

All talk at lunch today centered around the floods. As we sat eating outside, helicopters appeared overhead, bringing evacuees to the hospitals in the capital.

Interestingly, a Japanese-Thai businessman noted that these floods hit the Japanese economy much harder than the tsunami in Japan itself, as many Japanese factories across automative and computer industries were in Thailand, and particularly in Ayuthaya.

I was completely heart-broken to hear that most of the elephants in Ayuthaya (the ancient capital of Thailand and one of the worst hit by the floods) had died. Clearly this is a very American thing to say (hence, the famous quote that what Darfur needed was more dying puppies, to garner American attention), but I'm just stating truth. I have such happy recollections of riding a beautiful elephant through the ancient ruins and around the temples.

Yet despite the devastation that the floods have wrought, all the Thais I've spoken to are in such incredible spirits, laughing and making jokes about the situation (like fearing for crocodiles lurking outside.. and how expensive our lunch is because of the huge price hike in bottled water).

One of our meetings was with a delegation of policymakers, who literally took a makeshift boat to cross the flooded areas and make it to our meeting... Then they apologized that they were thirty minutes late and all wearing backpacks with extra clothes and provisions!

I spoke to one woman whose house was completely flooded, yet she was smiling and laughing during our entire conversation. "There's nothing we can do! So you just have to smile." When I spoke to the director of another organization of the floods reaching his house, he too, just smiled. "I'm just grateful," he said. "Other parts of the country are so much worse. We have nothing to complain about."

It's a humbling experience, speaking to people whose possessions have been washed away, who speak of this with smiles, laughter, and gratefulness. Seems like a good lesson for all of us.