Medical event ends trip

I have a couple more days to wander Kota Kinabalu, then I hope to actually catch the train down to Tenom: the Sabah Rail website is only in Malay, but the combination of Google translate and the Chinese owner of the backpacker (Malay is his third language) tell me trains are running as normal. Thinking this will happen, I skip my flight to Kota Bahru as I’m simply not ready to leave yet. But I will need to leave Malaysia when I get back: after much deliberation and the discovery of a cheap, direct flight, I book to go to Saigon. There’s a cluster of craft breweries: I find a place to stay near them all.

Of course, I pay a visit to my favourite cafés here: Nook first. The first time I found it, I ended up spending all afternoon here, because it decided to rain heavily, and I had no protection. This time round, I stay long enough to have a delicious grilled cheese sandwich and very tomatoey tomato soup (they come as a combination).

October Coffee has gone for a rustic coffee house style - it seems quite popular as a workspace - it’s just along the street from Nook. I should also mention mizimizu, a new discovery for me - a small space just along from the hostel with excellent coffee.

I have the worst meal of the trip in Kota Kinabalu - I know of a seafood place the other side of Asia City where I can sit outside and drink beer. They have a lot of tanks of fish and other aquatic life forms, as well as a picture board with photos of most of them. I think maybe I was to pick something and tell them how to cook it, but instead I pick something from the small menu - Singapore noodles. They come out as a soup, taste weird and the prawns are very dry.

I do much better, accidentally, the next night. An izakaya pops up on the map and looks promising. It’s a fair walk away, up the coast road. When I get there, I find three women on stage, singing to an empty room - not the kind of vibe I want. It happens, however, to be in the Marriot hotel, where they have a very busy café (really a restaurant) called the Lounge. Since it’s raining and I’m hungry, I check it out and have one of the best burgers I’ve had in a long time. The tomato sauce is not, however, tomato - it’s chilli!

Next day (this is Saturday 10 January) I change location - I want to be closer to the railway station, and the local bus station in case that doesn’t work out. On the way, I go to another old favourite - Light Café in Asia City (it’s an older mall, not a whole lot goes on here), which has a couple of unusual seats: there’s even a sign to say sit here at your own risk.

My new digs are the Sarang Hostel, in a fairly new development, Times Square KK, beside the Imago Mall. Times Square is mainly blocks of apartments, five to seven storeys high, with various eateries and retail on the gound floor, including a 7-Eleven, an Orange and an Apple (7-Eleven knock-offs) and a couple of laundries.

The hostel is completely deserted when I get there, but I’m sent the code to get in: it really is a nice place, mostly white. I potter around, dinner, a beer, laundry - then things go a bit wrong.

I’ve just switched my laundry from the washer to the drier and come back to the hostel - but I’m short of breath, I’m cold but sweating, there’s a pain to the left of my chest and my teeth are tingling. I very briefly think of succumbing to it, then try to think what to do. I contact the owners of the hostel, to see if they can organise a doctor or an ambulance. They go one better: one picks me up and drives me to the hospital, the other is already there and helps explain what’s going on. The hospital (Gleneagles), by the way, is in an extenstion of the development I’m staying in, Riverson. I couldn’t be better located to require medical attention - I hate to think what would have happened had I been up the river, as i was just a few days ago.

I arrive at around 11:30 pm - various doctors and nurses cluster around me, stick some telemetry pads on my chest, do otther important tests and confirm what I suspect: it’s a heart attack. The cardiac doctor arrives quickly and by about midnight, I’m being taken upstairs to their cath[eter] lab. I’m told this will cost around 50,000 ringgit ($NZ22,000). Lots of bits of paper are thrust at me to sign, ranging from a weird doscument which seems to list all of the amenities of the hospital to an acknowledgement that if my travel insurance doesn’t pay, I will.

It’s all over by about 1:30 - the doctor has sat behind a screen fiddling with my wrist, calling out instructions like “inflate two” for an hour, and I have (I think) two stents in my heart. The pain when I actually had the heart attack was around a 4 - 5 (I’ve been immobilised by back pain, and this was nowhere as bad) but it actually increased when the stents went in - they said it was as my heart was being re-profused - and they even gave me a little morphine.

I spend until 4 in the afternoon in the ICU, mainly in the care of one nurse. It’s quite hard to get any sleep, because I have a line in one arm, a blood pressure thing attached to the other and about a dozen telemetry stickers to monitor my heart rate - sleeping on my side isn’t really possible. My only diversion is watching the staff - they do a lot of laughing and joking with each other, obviously enjoy their jobs. One fellow comes through mid-afternoon - my nurse hassles him for being chicken (she explains to me that he’s single but won’t ask anyone out (completely the opposite to Shortland Street!)). Weirdly, she does a detailed handover to a new nurse at 3, who then has to repeat it for the nurse from the ward who has come to collect me.

I have Sunday and Monday nights in a private room in the ward: every shift change, the whole new team comes in to tell me they are the new team. Food comes in every few hours - it’s much better than the ICU food, fresher and I’ve had a chance to choose it. Lots of fish and rice, an omelette, pancakes with noodles for breakfast, light lunches, fruit, orange juice. As a first taste of geriatric care, it’s not bad! The TV has a couple of English channels and I have wifi, so it’s not hard to keep myself busy.

I end up staying most of Tuesday as well: they give me a six minute walking test in the morning, to see how far and fast I can walk. The doctor comes in after lunch, and says he’ll give me a week’s worth of drugs - but since, I’m not allowed to fly until a week after the attack, he ups it to two weeks. When the pharmacist delivers them, I actually have a three week supply. Of course, I can’t actually see my own doctor until mid-February, but I’ve discovered that there are online places to get temporary prescriptions.

A couple of people want to know if I want to contact people back home - I don’t really see the point. I’m not likely to be here long and there’s little anyone can actually do for me, so it would just cause needless worry: I am pretty used to toughing things out on my own.

The hospital quotes me a very precise figure for the total cost (51,000 odd ringgit) and tries to arrange a guarantee letter from my insurer: I am a little sceptical, since I’m sure they’ll want to make an assessment. I’m asked not to leave (possibly can’t leave0 while they do this. Eventually, early evening, they give me the bill and ask me to pay it - interestingly, 20% less then the earlier amount. Thankfully, I do have access to that kind of money - I have no idea what would have happened had this been in, say, the USA or the event had been much worse. I do hit problems, however, with transaction limits and end up taking three days to make complete payment. The hospital is reluctant to let me go, to the point I do feel restrained, but when they know I can’t fly for several days, that I’m staying nearby (the even contact the people at the hostel) and i sign another document agreeing to pay, I can finally go.

I spend four more nights in Times Square, the first two back at the hostel, then at a cheap hotel. Apart from a couple of visits to the mall and to the hospital, I don’t leave Times Square - there’s a really good coffee shop, Crack Inc (with a small sun bear installation in one corner) and plenty of food, although it’s a bit mid: the best is the Borneo rice and chicken place, where the chicken comes out warm and still jucy. I try to remember to walk slowly and breathe deeply.

This is the block of buildings containing the hostel - I am standing in front of a similar one which has the hotel I stay in. Below it is the main collection of eateries in a covered walkway in Riverson - the hospital is on the other side of the buildings to the right.

My last night in Malaysia, I move out to Tanjung Aru beach - I’d normally walk, but instead blow $3.50 on a Grab. There’s a bustling night market and a beautiful sunset to be had, which seems to be a fitting way to end my trip. Unfortunately, the weather doesn’t co-operate: it’s cloudy and a bit damp, so no sun. I go along mid-afternoon to check things out - there’s an array of dogs asleep on the footpath: one wakes up and they form a semi circle to challenge my progress. I return at night for dinner: the no sunset and dampness means no one at the night market - I get hassled at avery food stall, they’re so keen to sell something, but that puts me off. I remember a bar along the beach where I can get dinner (not beer, obviously) but I either don’t find it, it has closed or I should never have been there, because the only bar I find is a private yacht club.

My dinner turns out to be a not so great burger with a weird pea flower syrup flavoured “lemonade” at the high end Shangri La hotel - it’s a very pleasant spot, right on the water’s edge.

So - that’s my trip ended: I am actually in Sydney airport at the moment, had an early morning flight from Kota Kinabalu to Kuala Lumpur, then an overnight flight here. I fly to the Gold Coast tonight and home on the direct flight to Dunedin on Tuesday afternoon.

Cheers!