This was published 14 years ago
Dream job becomes nightmare in Koh Samui
Laid back ... an ideal lifestyle as a scuba instructor in Koh Samui turned into a nightmare.Credit: AFP
The 44-year-old Sydneysider - we'll call him D - had one of the world's great jobs. A Thai resident for eight years, D worked on the island of Koh Samui, taking tourists on underwater adventures as a dive master and scuba-diving instructor.
Danger was never far away; of Koh Samui's population of 50,000, about 700 people die each year in motorcycle accidents alone. Despite its idyllic reputation, Koh Samui is "an incredibly dangerous place," D says.
One day, about a year ago, D woke up urinating blood. Nothing could have prepared him for the nightmare he says followed.
The hospital on Samui sent him home with a suspected urinary tract infection. Several days later he returned to hospital, collapsed and was admitted to intensive care with what would be diagnosed as a rare blood disorder known by the abbreviation TTP - a condition where the blood starts clotting and requires extensive transfusions. Until the 1980s, there was no known treatment and it was fatal in about 90 per cent of cases.
But the bigger danger, as it transpired, was that D's travel insurance had expired shortly beforehand. After two days at the hospital in Samui (the bill, roughly $10,870 at last year's exchange rate, is still being disputed), D was evacuated to a private hospital in Bangkok in a charter flight that cost about $13,000 - nearly three times the original quote.
The hospital accountant appeared in my room with four burly Thai hospital security guards.
After 10 days in intensive care and four days in a ward, D was billed for 2 million baht (about $86,950 at March 2009 exchange rates).
According to D, the bill included items such as water and chemist's supplies for 10 times the going street rate. D queried the most extreme price mark-ups.
The hospital agreed to deduct 500,000 baht. But then, "as I was preparing to leave, the hospital accountant appeared in my room with four burly Thai hospital security guards and told me I could not leave until I had discharged my bill in full".
"They knew I had a plane to catch and was still very ill [he had to spend another five weeks in hospital in Australia and undergo three months of outpatient treatment] and having given them all my credit cards, from which they took in excess of $30,000 (maxing them all out), my efforts to try and contract to pay the rest in monthly instalments from Australia proved futile.
"I had to contact my parents and they ended up giving their credit card details over the phone, which led to another $25,000 being deducted. The accountant said if I could not discharge my bill the police would be called and I would go to Thai prison. He was fully aware of my medical condition and knew without further treatment I would die."
D says the hospital staff had been made aware of his lack of medical insurance from the start, had not transferred him to a cheaper hospital as he requested and he says he was underquoted for the cost of treatment.
D asked for identity to be withheld so he can return to Thailand. "The hospitals are incredibly powerful and have a hell of a lot of clout with the police, local authorities, immigration," he says.
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