Trans News > Sexual Minorities
The International Herald Tribune The New York Times
The all-purpose Thai vacation: sun, sea and
surgery
Seth Mydans The New York Times
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
BANGKOK Thailand, the land of temples, floating
markets and elephant rides, has begun promoting
a new attraction for tourists - root canals.
Having put just about everything else it
has on the market for foreign visitors, Thailand
has turned to what it calls medical tourism,
offering services as varied as dental care
and cancer treatments.
The attractions for a visitor are top-quality
medical care, extremely low cost and a side
trip to the beach.
"We thought, listen, we have really
excellent medical facilities here and we
have excellent holidays," said Teerapol
Chotichanapibal, director of Royal Orchid
Holidays. "If you can come and get a
clean bill of health and then go and enjoy
your holiday, what could be better?"
So, in Royal Orchid's glossy "Discover
Thailand" brochure, a traveler can choose
from options that include a performance of
classical dance, a visit to the River Kwai,
a Thai cooking class or a seven-hour "Comprehensive
Health Examination for Women or Men."
The key to this new promotion is the high
level of medical care that has emerged here
in the last decade or two. The top private
hospitals in Bangkok boast foreign-trained
and certified doctors and modern medical
equipment.
They offer an inexpensive alternative to
visitors who may need procedures not covered
by health insurance or who live in countries
with long waiting lists for national health
care.
"They'll come for hip replacement or
knee replacement or cataracts and, yup, while
they're here they'll take a vacation,"
said Ruben Toral, director of international
programs at Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok.
"They get their cosmetic surgery or
their dental work and, boom, they're off
to the beach."
Katty Anderson, of Carmel, California, opted
for a physical exam while on a visit to Thailand
and says, "I tell the story of my experience
to everyone, which I thought was fabulous,
the efficiency and the speed. I came out
saying, you see, it can be done."
When she tells people she had medical care
in Thailand, she says, "They roll their
eyes up in their heads and say, 'I can imagine.'
And I say, 'No, you can't.'"
Thailand made its name as a medical destination
in the 1970s with one of its specialties,
sex-change operations, known more formally
as gender reassignment surgery, or GRS.
On its Web site, Bumrungrad describes the
procedures it offers, then adds: "Many
Bangkok GRS Center patients extend their
visits to include the many sites of Thailand
including Bangkok, the northern hill tribe
areas of Chiang Mai/$ Chiang Rai and the
beautiful southern islands of Phuket and
Koh Samui."
Or it is possible to go directly to Phuket,
one of Thailand's premier beach resorts,
and check in to the Phuket International
Hospital, which advertises, "Bright
sun, blue sea, cosmetic surgery."
Price is also an attraction. It is still
possible to save money in Asia on ready-made
suits or gemstones, but some of the best
bargains now seem to be things like open-heart
surgery, which goes for about $7,000 at Bumrungrad,
rather than the tens of thousands of dollars
it may cost in the United States. An outpatient
consultation is generally less than $10.
A complete cardiac examination, including
a full range of tests, costs about $100.
The average hospital bed costs $50 a night.
The hospitals' efficiency and personal attention
also come as a culture shock to many Western
visitors.
"Someone dressed in a beautiful Armani
suit with little high-heeled shoes simply
took me around from appointment to appointment
and they immediately did all these tests,
one after another," Anderson said. "I
went down and had lunch at the Starbucks
in the lobby of the hospital, came back up
and the doctor had on his desk the most beautiful
file, all bound with tabs and everything,
with all the results of the tests that they
had done.
"Something like that, as you know, is
impossible in America," she added. "I
mean, it's inconceivable."
Curtis Schroeder, an American who is Bumrungrad's
chief executive officer, said 225,000 foreigners
visited the hospital last year, about half
of whom live in Thailand. Americans made
up 29,000 of the outpatients and more than
30,000 of the inpatients, he said.
With its 554 beds, air of luxury and aggressive
marketing, Bumrungrad now dominates Thailand's
medical tourism industry and has almost single-handedly
shifted the regional hub for medical care
from Singapore.
Though two-thirds of its patients are Thais,
the hospital caters to foreigners with a
concierge service that handles things like
airport transportation, bank transactions,
visas and airline tickets.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, Schroeder said, there
has been a flood of Middle Eastern patients
who now avoid the United States for fear
of discrimination. In response, the hospital
has hired extra Arabic interpreters, stocked
up on Muslim prayer rugs and opened a kitchen
serving religiously acceptable halal food.
Copyright c 2002 The International Herald
Tribune