Bump to baby on the beaten expat track
It’s the end of the rainy season, with a lot of storms north of us, so the rivers are bursting. Tuk tuks and motos are still going, but a lot of them are stalling out. These photos are from yesterday, when you can literally watch the water level rise because it’s happening so fast. And as I type I can hear the pouring rain in the night outside. Wonder what tomorrow will bring, but luckily the health centers where we’re working this week are relatively dry.
Seemed like all restaurants we went to in Ratanakiri will serve any and all types of wild-caught meat. The more endangered it is, the greater the demand. But the most creative menu I found was at a restaurant in Kampot, where threatened species each had its own conservation poster hanging on the wall. Diners point at the posters to order that particular meat dish :-\
Sunset views from the east side of Boeung Kan Siang Lake, in Banlung, Ratanakiri, Cambodia. This side of the lake is where food stalls and mats are set up. It’s beautiful, sitting on the bank eating fertilized duck eggs — such peace and quiet with just the occasional ash wafting by from slash and burn practices (deforestation? shifting cultivation?). Photos by Keith Kelly.
You see the smoke from these burning fields practically everywhere you go in the province. I guess that makes for pretty sunsets..
Photo by Keith A Kelly
CHOOSING THE HOSPITAL
We work and live in Phnom Penh, and wouldn’t feel comfortable with the specialists / facilities here in case of complications during delivery. The nearest city with internationally accredited care is Bangkok, so there we went at 35 weeks 6 days gestation, the latest we’re allowed to board a Thai Airways flight (with a fit-to-fly certificate from the doc).
Most of Bangkok’s well-known private facilities have high quality patient-oriented care and great customer service. They have translators, can take care of extending visas, take the baby’s passport photo (this isn’t easy so do get this done at the hospital!), get the birth certificate officially translated and documented at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and liaise on documentations necessary to register the birth at your particular embassy etc. Many people go to Bumrungrad Hospital; read this post and follow the link to her birth story at Bumrungrad here. This hospital is located in the neighborhood of Sukhumvit where many Arab nationals live, so the third spoken language is Arabic.
The delivery packages she quoted for Bumrungrad are comparable to those at Samitivej:
So I’d heard there is a ~90% c-section rate in private hospitals in Bangkok..? At any rate it’s high, but that’s due to a lot of other factors (including the Asian quest for luck, leading parents to schedule c-sections on the most propitious time and date for birth). [Read more…] about Living in Phnom Penh, Having a baby in Bangkok
Here are scenes from a recent trip to visit a colleague in Kampong Cham, Cambodia. For more photos see Keith Kelly’s flickr.
For some reason, the cloud formations around here are really cool, especially during the rainy season. They get big and puffy like the clouds you liked to think were bunnies or pandas or other cuddly creatures in the sky when you were a kid – cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds is what I think we used to call it in 2nd grade. It makes for dramatic sunsets. Except the rainy season has refused to come to SE Asia so far this year, and any gorgeous sunset is completely lost on our poor melting gray cells.
Looking for a great meal? This coconut oil fried fish from the Two Dragons Restaurant near the town center is THE BEST DISH EVER!! I tell you I think there’s crack in this dish, it’s SOOO GOOD and that is all the descriptive narrative I can sputter about this.
