Buddha's birthday continued, getting sick

In the evening I went to Wat Chedi Luang to participate in the festivities for Buddha's birthday. Chedi Luang is an ancient temple that has only been partially restored-- the crumbling ruin towered above the worshippers and the golden Buddhas in its niches were lit up and all afire. Just as earlier in the day, worshippers walked around the wat three times, holding an offering of flowers and incense in their hands and also carrying a lit candle. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people. I would estimate that at one point there were 5 to 10 thousand people circling the wat. Huge fires had been lit and smoke poured into the sky. Once again there was chanting from the monks. Spools of cloth were unraveled and passed from hand to hand so that the thread attached hundreds of people. I was so excited to participate in the festival that I probably ended up walking around the wat five or six times with my offerings. I truly felt like I was part of a greater whole.

Later in the evening, I ended up staying up too late talking with an American couple. And in the middle of the night, I woke up sweaty and hot, only to find myself with a fever when I woke up in the morning.

*******

I had been planning to take the bus to Nan or Phrae this morning but those plans were derailed. At home I would have just had some soup and gone back to bed, but traveling alone, I knew I should go to a doctor and get it checked. I started by going to a small nearby clinic that catered mostly to Thais. The doctor was a real crackpot. He took my temperature with one of those forehead bands, which are notoriously inaccurate, and when he tried to convert my temperature to Farenheit he insisted I had a fever of 202 degrees. And after a five minute diagnosis, he said that maybe I had typhoid and that he wanted to prescribe Paramecetol, an antibiotic.

So I ended up going to McCormick Hospital on the outskirts of Chiang Mai, which was started by missionaries. I've heard that Thai health care is like American health care circa the 1950s. That seems to be pretty true, actually. It's not the squalor of Indian hospitals but it's none too impressive. I took a tuk-tuk out, feeling that existential combination of being sick and alone in a strange land. I ended waiting for a couple of hours in a room full of Thais. Again, I was the only farang. My fever was a more manageable 100.3, and they gave me a blood test to check for typhoid. I'd been hearing these horror stories about hospitals using dirty needles and I was prepared to walk out of there, but thankfully that wasn't true.

So apparently I have a viral infection, though the doctor didn't know what the cause was. He did, however, say that he didn't think it was serious, and ruled out dengue fever and malaria, thank god. I had to ask him to write down just about everything he said. It was one of those weird days where all communication breaks down and I felt as if I was on another planet. But now, after sleeping all day and taking some Tylenol, I'm feeling pretty good.

My total hospital bill was 320 baht, just under ten dollars. It seems so strange. Instead of feeling sick I feel like I went on a special cultural field trip.

I'll be in Chiang Mai for at least a couple more days fighting this off. It's good to get some R & R. I've been pushing things pretty hard this past week. If anything, I've been thinking about how such a thing can completely change the flow of my travels. Leaving two days later, the people I meet and the experiences I have will be completely different. Lately I've been feeling a deeper link to the casuality of events around me.