Vietnam

My first reaction when my parents announced that we were going to Vietnam for a holiday trip was .....'Huh? Why Vietnam of all places? Why can't we go to Korea or Japan instead?'
I wasn't really looking forward to going to the country, to tell the truth.

The first thing I noticed upon arrival in the country- the traffic. Oh my gosh. More than half of the vehicle population over there are motorbikes. And I always complain about motorbikes swerving right in front of me when I'm driving. Imagine the entire road of motorbikes. Very few traffic lights. Traffic moving freely about, cutting into each others lanes. I am so not driving in Vietnam!

The place we stayed in was a budget hotel, more like rooms rented out to tourists. It has all the basic facilities such as aircon, TV, comfortable beds and ensuite, and it's cheap, so I can't complain. There are plenty of these type of hotels over there.

I realized that there are many tourists in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). The city is such a popular tourist destination, you can see tourists everywhere! As a result, you can see bars, souvenir shops, and English books everywhere.

The Vietnamese people, they are very friendly. They have smiles on their faces, and they are a cheerful lot. They can speak conversational English, although it's hard to understand their English at times. I heard they can speak some French too, although I didn't hear the language being spoken among the locals.

We went on a tour around the city on the second day- where we were brought to the War Musuem, The Reunification Palace, and the market. The following day, we followed the Mekong river tour, where we met two nice Vietnamese girls and one Malaysian girl from Batu Pahat.
Actually, most of the stuff we saw in the second day- can be found in Malaysia too. :p

Anyways, it was a memorable trip. I enjoyed bargaining with the locals, walking along the streets of Vietnam and making friends with the local girls. :)

Semester 6

Half a year ago, I was totally dreading it. The start of clinical school. I even went to the extent of saying that it was my 'death sentence'. I imagined pure torture, no life whatsforever.

Now, half a year later, I'm still alive and well, thank you. Clinical school is certainly not as bad as I originally expected. Sure, there might be some busy times, but I can cope with it.
My housemates and I still have the time to go out for neals together and movies during the weekends. Workload....not so bad, we only have on call once a week (not including covering ward for case presentations). Lecturers, most of them are fine, some lecturers are nice even! The most they would say is 'What have you been learning for the past 2.5 years?'

My first posting was Surgery. We were thrown into the wards the very first day itself. So of course we were a bit aimless for the first couple of weeks. Clerking surgery patients, witnessing endoscopy and surgeries....learning about the entire GI system, breasts and thyroid. The only lecturer to watch out for....he's not that bad actually. We learn a lot from him.

Second posting....Internal Medicine. A bit more busy compared to surgery, as we have to make it a point to clerk patient's daily. Case presentations almost every day. But IMO, we learn the most from this posting. The lecturers taughts us every single system, and many common diseases. And we were taught how to perform thorough physical examination of every system in the body.
Most of my friends I know enjoy this posting the most. It is fun to come up with differential diagnoses for a patient, because one single symptom can lead to many different possibilities. Some lecturers in this posting are nice too.

Third posting....Family Medicine. The supposedly most relaxing posting of all. Well, the first four weeks were certainly not that relaxing, we had to follow the lecturers clinics. But this posting is the most planned and structured posting of all 3. I wish I had started with this posting first, because this lecturer made it a point to lead and guide us along the way, so we wouldn't be lost. If only we had this sort of guidance for the other postings....
Anyways, I enjoyed this posting a lot. I loved sitting in the lecturers air-conditioned clinics, I loved observing how the lecturers deal with patients. I love how in the primary healthcare system, the patient is looked as a whole, and not as a disease. I think that prevention is better than cure. Maybe, just maybe, I would become a GP in the future, we'll see. ;) And yes, like I mentioned in my previous post...I recall fondly the Kampung Angkat project, the school health visit, the MCH and MO clinics....
And of course, during this posting, I had the time for other things as well. The trip to Malacca, the eating out, the Gala dinner, the trips down to KL.....

Yes, so now I've officially completed one semester of clinical school. :) 4 more to go, I graduate and real torture begins!