Laos visa run


Since we were in Thailand on a 30 day tourist visa, we had to leave the country to extend our visa to "non-immigrant O" status which is a visa of 3 months duration. We tried to figure this all out before leaving the states, but long story short we didn't get it all figured out, so alas, a visit to Laos it is. We made a quick stopover in Bangkok for a night to visit with Chris' brother Tyler who was in the country for work, and then made our way to Vientiane.
Bangkok skyline

Vientiane is a much more manageable city than Bangkok, which can be completely overwhelming with millions of people, cars, smells, and consumerism everywhere. We were excited to get to Vientiane where we heard there was great food (PIZZA!) and good beer (in Thailand we'd only tried Singha and Chang once and were deeply disappointed...). 


Sadly though Chris came down with a vicious fever/GI bug our first night there and we spent a lot of our time watching movies and playing Catan in our wonderful hotel room, which also wasn't terrible. 
TRAVEL CATAN!!

Despite this we successfully were approved for our three month visas, and Chris even worked up the energy to bike around town a little bit (which proved to be quite treacherous at times...). 

We arrived back home in Huay Malai last night after a ~6 hour minibus ride from Bangkok. We were surprisingly happy to be back in our comfy little jungle home, especially after acquiring some essentials from the city: double stuff oreos, Jif peanut butter, tomato sauce, and CHOCOLATE!

Now back to the grind...


Drs Jen and Thew performing an open diagnostic laparotomy on a female patient who presented with severe LLQ pain with concern for torsion. She was found to have some slight hemoperitoneum likely secondary to a ruptured hemorrhagic ovarian cyst.

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