Cambodia 26-30 July 2007

Singapore-Siem Reap-Phnom Penh-Singapore

26th July 2007 : realli sianz thing to be post-call (TTSH gen med call at that too..) and to wake up in the early morning for a flight to Siem Reap .. thank god i insisted on silkair rather than jetstar asia where i heard from tianrong that we would need to have our balls under continous positive pressure for 4 hours to taipei. flight to siem reap was uneventful .. was given some unedible scrambled eggs that tasted like fluimucil powder in Hartmann's solution.

the taxi-ride out of siem reap airport was just simply audacious. the driver just wouldn't pushing his stupid tour guide services even though we said we weren't interested. in the end when we chose another tour guide to start our tour, he called us 'stupid idiots'. welcome to cambodia.


The enigmatic faces of Bayon, of whom the half-smiles are almost similar to a certain respi. consultant in KK..

Half-way up the horrendous stairs of Angkor wat ..
The horrenous stairs of Angkor Wat up close.. definitely not for the osteoarthritic or the faint-hearted.
The trail leading into the Bayon complex and a thousand indistinguishable shrines/temples/etc.

Still orientating myself within the faces of Bayon .. thank god for Lonely Planet.

Ok I must admit i was really tired at this point .. 50% point of temple overload.

Street-kids pestering kossie to buy everything from apsaras to bayon relics to cambodian undies..
the mysterious temple of ta-phrom.. really love this place.. the perfect place to diurese your temple overload. it's distinctly different from all the other sites in siem reap. great place to explore if you have the time , which we did.
bad move i did - unless you fancy red ants on your ding-dong.
since we all LOOOOVED the concept of jungle in a temple like in ta-phrom, we decided to follow our lonely planet's gospel advice to go to this lesser known site : Bang Melea .. it's more like a temple in a jungle. as kossie shows, survival is only possible with a can of DEET.
it wasn't easy getting this shot. carefully treading through those treacheous blocks does it.


the abandoned library of bang melea...
ok the start of a reallllllllllllllly horrenous boat trip from siem reap to phnom penh .. on top of the fast craft with little to prevent you from rolling over into the mekong and far less to protect you from the elements..
yes, we were lying like refugees for 5-6 yrs exposed to every ray of light.
crazy ang-mohs awaiting their melanomas to grow. it was like 5 hrs when i decided enough was enough. when we entered the cabin, the sudden still air made us realise we were THOROUGHLY burnt through and through.
me being in a state of depression.
at phnom penh tuol sleng genocide museum : a very gruesome and chilling peek into one of cambodia's darkest moments.. minimal photos taken here, needless to say.
i felt that this picture could be photostated and given to some of my patients on my night-calls.

My M5 Experience ..

I was asked to write my M5 experience in the capacity of the final year class representative, with my photo in the class yearbook.. better keep a copy here just in case my computer explodes again ..

"Hihi=) I am James Huang the class representative for the final year. It is indeed my pleasure to ink out what my experience for the final year has been like.

All in all this year went past helter-skelter, with postings flying past us like flower-pots in a maelstrom. Like our seniors promised, the final year was indeed a mentally exhausting and challenging time for all of us. It was a very sharp contrast from the generally relaxing pace of Year 4 (save the O&G posting but that’s another story :P) and the wonderful elective period. Even as much of Year 5 decayed by, there was still this perpetual feeling of insecurity surrounding me – somehow there seemed to be no humanly possible way to engulf all that knowledge tutors expected us to know. For instance, from knowing the colours of different asthmatic inhalers and INR/lipid/blood pressure targets in Medicine, to the crazy myriad of developmental age markers and Greek labyrinthine-like flowcharts on the management of vesicoureteric reflux; to the billions of classification systems in Orthopaedics, it was just this gigantic snowball of latin names/dosages/landmarks/figures rolling after your behind.

The road had always been somewhat long and tough, especially in the clinical years. Unlike the pre-clinicals where lectures and lecture-notes were neatly placed in front of you, the clinical years were a lot more unpredictable. Roaming throughout the wards aimlessly like wandering spirits looking for the elusive patient with Eisenmenger’s syndrome who had sought permanent asylum in the dayroom ; begging and assuring patients that the physical examination would be “very fast one” or “just one time then no more ok?” when there were 10 other students cleverly camouflaging themselves behind the curtains. Such were the pains of clinical work. While tutors were incessantly urging us to maximize our time in the wards, we, as seasoned clinical year students, knew that it was more of striking a fine balance between ward-work and mugging.

As SIP interns, we were either very heavily involved in ensuring the patients had their daily hematomas on their arms and their beds fashionably spotted with an ecletic mix of blood/chlorhexidine/povidone-iodine ; or on the other extreme, acting as phantoms of the surgical ward that somehow made the curtains draw and temperature charts/IMR magically appear. I also remember the elderly lady (and her banshee scream of course) who dug her Wolverine-like nails into my arm, as I struggled with my ABG at 3 am in the morning. I also remember another delirous patient who clawed and cussed at me while I tried to hold her into a fetal postion for a lumbar puncture. Athletics were also part of the curriculum – a compulsory fast march ahead of the consultants/registrars in the ward round to reach the next patient before they do; a 4 x 10m shuttle run to and from the nurse’s station to fetch peak flow meters, X-rays, swab sticks or whatever your team fancies. Last but not least, coaxing nurses, who were clutching onto the IMRs/temperature charts a la Gollum and his “precious”, to allow us to conduct our mini-ward round before the consultants arrived. All in all, it was a sheer tiring experience, but a lot of us indeed came out much more oriented to the expectations of housemanship ( at least for the Medicine SIP hehe=) )

Yet, it is heartening to see that all of us had matured together as a batch, from naive students fresh out of army/junior college in year 1 , to aspiring physicians and surgeons. The future seems even more exciting as we branch off into our various specialities come housemanship. I really cannot imagine how funny it will be to see which one of us will become the next terror of medical students during end-of-posting tests or say, the next top cosmetic surgeon . Come the last paper of our MBBS, only the sky’s the limit for us and a universe of possibilities await. Cliched yeah.. but that’s all I can think of haha.. "

Commencement 2007!!

My mentor Dr. Lee Kim En !!
Makan buddies : Val and Henry!!
(from L-->R) CheeKwang , Guanhao , me , Kunda , Shengyong
Tianrong ...
Guanhao , me , Peiling , Alvin ...

Money shot with the voluptious peiling..
With my dearest sister ..
The monster twins ..
Last but not least , with my dearest parents ..