Travelogue: In a Thai pharmacy

Before the bus ride, we went with our expert to a pharmacy; he was feeling feverish. The pharmacy was pretty much similar to what we have in India even in terms of the pharmacist turning doctor! This is how the conversation went.

“Fever?”

“Yes.”

“Ok ok. Here,” and he took a tablet strip and cut it. “Throat?”

“Yes.”

“Ok ok. Here, take this,” and he cut another strip and put it in a small cover.

“Cough?”

Expert almost said yes but seeing the hurry with which the pseudo-doc was cutting strips he said, “No no no.”

“Cough?” another attempt.

“No no,” and he signaled with his hands as well.

I guess in our Asian side, pharmacies are quite similar – you can even get antibiotics without a prescription unlike the West where they are really strict about it.

Pickpocket?

Returning back to our bus ride; it was a pleasant ride – not as packed as what we are used to back home; enough space to stand. The elderly English man showed me the stop to get off. And the first thing that happened when we got off and tried to cross the road was an unknown Thai man warning, “Here…here…,” he pointed at the main road and said, “Morning…accident.”

Wow, what a way to start. Anyhow, a couple of us crossed the road midway while the other two didn’t because there was no zebra crossing. It was the middle of the road and we weren’t sure if it’s ok like back home to cross anywhere or not; interestingly in Dubai, a pedestrian can be fined for crossing in the middle of the road (and there have been cases where a person used the road instead of the overhead bridge for crossing and got caught!) We finally used the pedestrian crossing but noticed that things were more like back home and not strict.

As we neared the Grand Palace we could see the size of crowds increasing. As we moved along with the crowd, our expert exclaimed, “My sunglasses are missing.”

“Pickpocket?”

It surely wasn’t from his pocket and it was hard to believe that someone would have pulled it from his face or t-shirt! But our expert didn’t remember what he did with his glasses – a guess was that perhaps he left it in the pharmacy; perhaps. Or perhaps we were struck by some pick-pocketing gang and all of us double checked our wallets and belongings – all seemed well but not an auspicious start!