Ok ok, so nothing major happened to me that prompted me to go to the hospital. I just needed to see an eye doctor. While there are plenty of eyeglass stores around town, none of them really provide a thorough eye exam.
A little background story, I’ve been wearing glasses since I was about 6 years old. I started wearing contact lenses when I turned 13. So I know what to expect from an eye exam.
Before I decided to go to a hospital, of course, I did a little research and asked my Thai colleagues where to go. One of them suggested an eye doctor in town. I checked out their office but because of the lack of English speaking people, I wasn’t sure if their clinic would provide a certain test that I wanted done to my eyes. So, since I needed to go to Chiang Mai for a health check for my work permit, I decided to also go to an eye doctor in the city.
Now, I went to McCormick Hospital in Chiang Mai to get the testing done for the work permit. They do have an eye clinic, but they only treat certain eye diseases and are not equipped to provide annual check-ups. So the doctor at this hospital told me to go to was Sriphat Hospital which was across town.
After eating lunch I hopped into an Uber (back when Thailand had Uber, now we only use Grab) to go to Sriphat Hospital. After being dropped off, at what looked like a college campus, I went into the closest building and figured out where to check in to see a doctor. They will always ask for your passport and if you have insurance and have you fill out forms. After that, they make copies of everything and give you a slip of paper that says why you’re at the hospital. Of course, this is all in Thai so I can’t read any of it. I spent about 15-20 minutes lost in the hospital because there are no English signs and I wasn’t sure which floor to go to. Somehow I found the food court and showed the guy at the counter my form and he was pointed to a number on the form which I took as the floor number.
I headed to that floor and handed the woman at the counter the slip of paper and took a seat. Now, I did not expect to be waiting for a long time so I didn’t bring anything to do. Bad idea. There appeared to be only one doctor on duty and a ton of nurses. I saw people in and out of the exam room and at one point, no one was being seen. It was like the doctor just took a break. The nurses would do the basic eye test where you cover one eye and read the letter and then bring up to a machine where a puff of air tests your eye pressure.
I entered the hospital at about 12:30 pm. No one called my name until about 3:15 pm. That is a solid three hours of waiting with nothing to do. When my name was called the nurses did those two basic tests and then I waited again for about 10 minutes. I finally get in to see the doctor and give her my records from my American doctor. All the doctors are able to speak English so there weren’t any communication problems. I was taken to another room to test my vision with another machine. This one was automated where you just look into the machine, staring at a green dot and it measures your eye refraction. Totally different from that big machine in America where you look through different lenses and read off letters and numbers.
The machine prints off the refraction from your eyes and that is given to the doctor to fit you for lenses to try. There was no dilation of your eye (which just for the record I hate that test), and no testing for the health behind your eye, which is what I really wanted to be done. So after all that waiting I still didn’t get what I wanted. The doctor wrote my new prescription on a piece of paper that did not have any reference to her name, the hospital, or contact information. This is completely unheard of in America where prescription pads are taken very seriously. But I guess here in Thailand this is the norm. I had to ask three times to have some sort of document that has the hospital name, doctor’s name and contact information because I was planning on ordering more contact lenses online from the US.
I left the hospital at about 4:30 pm after paying about $32 for the whole thing. Would I do it again? Probably not. It’s best to get eye care done in a Western country.
