Hospitals

One of Mandalay Hospitals – Nan Taw Palace General Hospital – is located on 71st Street and 29Th Street.

This is our experience of this hospital on our last evening in Mandalay.
At 8 pm we need to see a doctor for a blocked ear . Hmmmm …. this could be a problem. So we ask the Bagan King Hotel staff and are told one of the tourist hospitals in Mandalay – The Palace General Hospital – is only 2 blocks from our hotel and open 24/7. We decide to walk the night is warm and its not far.We find it easily and go through the main doors of the hospital not knowing what to expect.

A nurse and an English speaking doctor greet us and we’re seated in the emergency room. The room is full of people with a calm and welcoming atmosphere. The woman seated next to us talks to us in broken english and asks us what we are there for. She tells us of her son. ‘Motorbike crash’ she says ‘I wait for doctor to fix arm, broken, no good.’ Her son appears soon with his arm in a sling. ‘Not broken’. She smiles at us and together they walk off into the night. ‘Good luck take care’ she says to us. ‘Good luck’ we reply.

The nurse hands us a small school notebook, we write down our details for her … this is to be our patient records we keep and can bring back later if needed. Meanwhile I’m calculating in my head how much we will have to claim back from our trip insurance and how I can do that easily ! !

But our wait is short and we are shown to the doctors rooms. The doctor also speaks English. He’s really helpful, checks us, advises us on the problem, and writes us a prescription. His nurse shows us out, and we are off round to the pharmacy in the next corridor to pick up the prescription.
Our patient records are signed and noted and we leave with records, prescriptions, and warm feelings of the Burmese hospitality and kindness.
All at a cost of 13,000kyat ($9.50 USD) for the doctor and 40,000 kyat ($30 USD) for the 4 medicines prescribed, we feel very fortunate. No insurance claim needed then.
We stop at the Ginki Mandalay Cafe on the way back to the Bagan King Hotel to celebrate our cool experience with a mango lassie. I wish we had found this great cafe earlier.

Pharmacy

Pharmacies are plentiful in Mandalay. We had a local pharmacy near the Bagan King Hotel, so when we ran out of paracetamol and antacid tablets and needed some electrolyte mix we went off down there to try our luck at finding these things.
There is also a pharmacy next to the Nan Taw Palace Hospital.

I had forgotten to pack some electrolytes. As a glass of electrolyte solution each day is the best thing for balancing the body salt and rehydrating when in the tropical heat we probably need some, the dose is 1 daily between us or 1 each.
There are already a few people waiting at the pharmacy and not one speaks English. And of course they don’t have the same medicines as we have. Problem? Not really.

We set out with sign language and smiles, and together lay everything out on the counter that looks the same. Comparing notes we choose what we need. Simple, that was easy.

The pharmacy shop had everything you could ever want…
Soon we had the Mandalay version of:
Electrolytes = Oral Rehydration Salts … 450 kyat per pack
Antacid tablets = Enzyplex Digestive Enzymes …1,000 kyat per sheet
and Panadol = Para-Denk 500 … 350 kyat a card
Perfect !!!!

Bagan Hospital

We have no personal experience with hospitals in Bagan, so we asked our taxi driver.
Our taxi driver who we hired for our 6 days in Bagan recommended Royal Bagan Clinic in Nyaung-U for tourists and english is spoken. It is located on Kaukpadaung Rd in New Bagan Nyaung-U.
A pharmacy in also located on the main street of New Bagan and is helpful.

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