By Al Wong This is my experience in Beijing, China in the Summer of 2009. If you came to this webpage first, it's better if you start from the beginning of the story. Sunday, July 19 My Jiuzhaigou Hospital Adventure! 5:02pm I didn`t sleep at all last night. The hotel turned off their a/c and my room was very hot like an oven. Also the mattress was very hard. You couldn`t sleep on your side. We also had a 6:30am wake up call. Because of this, I woke up with a huge headache. Roy was nice enough to supply me with some Motrin again. for the 1.5 hour bus ride to the other hotel. It made my headache better for the first hour. But the last half hour of the ride, my headache came back with a vengeance. When we got to the second hotel, the ChuanZhu Hotel, I decided to blow off seeing the Yellow Dragon Mountain. It`s another hour bus ride one way over there and I knew it would be bad for me. (I was right. I was told the ride was a twisty, turning ride up the mountain again) I checked into the ChuanZhu hotel at 10am and tried to get some sleep which was difficult since it seems the tour buses park outside my window. They just kept coming and going. Also, the mattress in this hotel is really hard too. I got up at 4pm and decided to go see a doctor at the local hospital. I can't afford to be sick so early in the trip and I wanted to be well during FISM. Steve, our tour guide, had previously recommended that I go see them because they should be "experts" in treating altitude sickness. Steve also had previously written out Chinese translations regarding this for me. I took a cab with a bellboy to the hospital. If I had known about the poor conditions at this hospital, I would NOT have gone there and just suffered through my headaches. I have no idea why Steve would recommend me coming to this hospital! When I arrived at the hospital, I didn't see a single patient in the lobby. It looked like they were not expecting walk-in patients at all. There was a lady who claimed to be a "doctor" but did not speak a word of English. (I was told, as part of their education to be a doctor in China, it was mandatory they learn rudimentary English relating to the body and ill symptoms. This "doctor" didn't understand even simple words like "headache", "dizzy", "pain", etc.) I had to call Steve on his cell phone to help me communicate. They`re giving me oxygen now but it doesn`t seem to help. I still have this massive headache. They want to give me an IV of sugar water. We`re waiting for Steve to come over. They evidently need more information from Steve about me. The IV of sugar water helped a little. Still have the headache though. I gather giving oxygen and an IV of sugar water is standard treatment here no matter what sort of sickness you have. Then they just hope you feel better. I was not given any other drugs or medication for my altitude sickness. I took pictures of my hospital room with my Mylo. It was nothing more than a storage room for boxes that were donated to last year`s earthquake victims. Needless to say, the room was not very clean. Here are the pictures takened from the hospital bed. I'm lying on the bed taking the pictures from my left to right. Note these pictures are takened with my Mylo which has a 1.3MP camera so the pictures are not as sharp as with a regular digital camera. They laid me down on a bed to connect me to the oxygen tank and to put in an IV. Then they put some nasty, dirty sheets on me! I'm not kidding. It looked like someone threw up on them! I didn`t realize it until I got up from the bed. I should have taken pictures of the sheets to show how bad it was. But at the time, I was leaving the hospital and wasn't feeling too well. I need to shower thoroughly and I`m going to have to wash the shorts and T-shirt I wore there really well before I wear them again. And my sweater too! I just hope I didn't catch anything from those dirty sheets! 955pm Back in my hotel room. Just took a really good shower. Hopefully, I have washed away any bugs that have landed on my skin from that hospital. (I was wondering why the IV lady always wore a surgical mask when coming into my room!) Hey, my room desk is NOT a free standing table! It`s just a glorified piece of wood placed on top of the TV table and luggage table. I know this because I just knocked it down(!) when I put my luggage on the luggage table This ChuanZhu hotel room sucks almost as bad as the other Gesang hotel. The room is tiny. The bed mattress is still a low lying "block of wood". But the room is cool from the a/c. And there is a floor lady. They have these ladies in Beijing (and in Xi`an as I recall) and they act as a kind of concierge/watchdog for that floor. It`s kind of nice but you do lose your privacy because they know when you come and go. The Next Day China 2009 My Writings Al's Wild Web Page