Kota Bharu Malaysia

After a week in the city working away, we took off for a frenzy of outstation patient group meetings. This time we headed to the Northeastern Coastal town of Kota Bharu to the teaching hospital of USM. This is a predominantly muslim region (in fact the weekend is on Friday and Saturday to ensure Friday's Islamic day can be observed). We came in late at night and the physician from the public hospital came to take us out for Nasi Kerabu (a traditional dish from the state of Kelantan). This consists of blue rice (colored from a medicinal herb), dried fish, spring onions, chilis and BBQ chicken. Even my vegetarian version was pretty good. He showed up in a "vintage" car that had no muffler and the bare minimum functionality and it gave me a glimpse into the pay that public physicians receive.

The next day, we welcomed some 100 plus patients for a great meeting. They spoke a regional dialect so even our Malaysian staff had a little difficulty communicating. Most of the people were of extremely low literacy levels so we had to make a lot of our materials photo based. It was overall a successful event and I made great friends with a patient's 5 year old daughter.

After the event, I took a short walk into the peaceful countryside and was quickly surrounded by mature palm trees, whooping birds by the creek and mooing cows. It felt wonderful to return to the simplicity after the hustle of the capital city. I found my self in the middle of a swarm of swallows. Incredibly peaceful and chaotic at the same time. I will try to post the video here. Ok its giving me an error message in Thai, So here's a pic (doesnt really do it justice)

The next day, we transitted through KL, and headed off to the island of Sarawak which Malaysia shares with Indonesia.