What kind of person goes to Thailand for cosmetic surgery? Twenty years ago, you might have said: a foolhardy person. Thailand is the Third World. You can’t trust the drinking water, let alone the hospitals.
Things have changed: the kind of person who goes to Thailand for surgery these days is likely to be a perfectly ordinary person, who simply can’t afford what it costs in Australia to have perfectly ordinary, and often very necessary work done.
It can cost $40,000 to get a new set of teeth in Perth or Sydney, for example, compared to around $7000 for the same teeth in Bangkok. Or it can cost $22,000 to get a flash new set of boobs, and a flat belly – something some women crave, especially after they’ve had a few kids, or lost a lot of weight through bariatric surgery – compared to $13,000 in a private hospital in Thailand.
Sounds good, but is it safe? Are the surgeons properly trained? And what happens if something goes wrong? In an effort to find out, The Weekly last month joined a tour of Thailand’s biggest private hospitals.
Our hosts couldn’t have been more different: first, there was Mr. Biravij Suwanpradhes, of the Thai consulate in Sydney, who wanted to stress the quality of both the facilities and the medical care; and then there was Daniela Pratico, a former beautician, who is now director of Medi Makeovers, a company that organises cheap and cheerful trips to Thailand for cosmetic surgery.
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“I got into this basically because when I was a beautician, I had clients asking me, what can I do about my saggy skin? What can I do about my boobs? But there are some things that you just can’t fix, by rubbing on a cream,” Daniela says.
“You’ve got women with saggy boobs, and people who have lost a lot of weight, and their skin is hanging everywhere. You can exercise, or you can rub a cream on that, but it’s not going to do anything.
“So I would say, you need surgery for that. But it’s so expensive in Australia. It just made sense to look overseas. And the service here in Thailand is just as good, but half the price.
“And the women I see are very normal. A lot of them have never travelled before. They’ll be Mums who look down at their bodies and think, yuck. But they can’t justify spending what it would cost to do something about it in Australia.”
Two examples: sisters Kyla Galbraith and Angela Stewart, who travelled to Thailand earlier this year, to get new boobs and bellies. The Weekly caught up with them about three months post-surgery, and two nicer, more normal people you could not meet.
“We spent 20 years being wives and mothers, and then we both ended up single at the same time,” says Kyla, 41.
“My bust-up was horrific. I’d been with my husband since I was 16. Then it was over, and I had four kids, and saggy boobs.”
Angela, 45, says her partner was working FIFO in the mines, “and I had the four kids. Then he lost his job and yeah, it was like, everything came crashing down. We had to sell everything. And then he moved out. And my life was just smashed.”
It was a while before either sister was ready to try dating again, and it was Kyla who decided that if she was going to get back on the horse, she wanted a new body.
“I’ve had four caesareans,” she says.
“I would look down at my body, and it was disgusting, or it was to me. But I wouldn’t have done anything about it – not when I was married. I couldn’t have justified the cost.”
Angela agrees.
“I didn’t even have boobs, I had empty socks,” she says.
“And my stomach was basically a big flap hanging over my pants. But when you’re married you always think, no, I can’t spend that money on myself.”
Kyla investigated the cost of surgery in Australia, and baulked.
“It was tens of thousands of dollars, but then I looked up Thailand and it was half the price.
“I had my settlement money from the divorce, and I thought, if I don’t go now, I never will. And I knew Angela wanted new boobs, so I said, if you want to come with me, I’ll lend you the money until your divorce settlement comes through.”
The sisters chose Thailand because it was cheap (about $17,000 for boob lift, boob implants, tummy tuck, eye-lift, airfares, and accommodation). Like most of Daniela’s client, they had surgery at the Bangpakok9 International Hospital in Thailand, where their surgeon, if you can believe this, was Dr Titty. (Okay, it’s not actually ‘Dr Titty.’ It’s Dr Thiti Chaovanalikit, but all the Australians call him Dr Titty.)
Dr Thiti is an experienced surgeon who trained in Bangkok, and is certified by the Thai Board of Plastic Surgery. Like all the doctors The Weekly met, he spoke reasonably good English; and had done some training overseas (all were also at pains to say that training in Thailand is of an international standard.) He told The Weekly that tummy tucks are popular with Australians but “most of the Aussie women, they want a boob job. They want the new tummy, yes, they want an eyelift, or the mid-face lift, but the boob job, that is what they want, mainly. Ha ha ha! Now you can meet one woman patient.”
He disappeared from the room, and returned with a patient from Brisbane, who wanted to be known only as Petrina, who’d had facelift two days earlier.
“My husband just left me after 28 years,” Petrina said.
“I came here because I wanted a bit of a boost in my confidence.”
Was she happy with the result?
“Very happy,” she said (Petrina was nodding, but not really smiling, maybe because her skin was still so tight.)
Dr Thiti says Australian patients are attracted to his clinic “because of the low cost. We can do cheaper here. But also nicer. Ha-ha-ha. Also, we have the good service. The nurse to give you a smile.”
The Thai service is definitely part of the appeal for Australian patients: The Bangpakok 9 – and every other hospital we visited, including the Bangkok Hospital in Bangkok and the Bangkok Hospital Phuket, offer a five-star service for foreign patients.
You get picked up from the airport in an air-conditioned limousine; a fast-track through customs; a private room with en-suite; plus they’ll build your accommodation and other services into your package, and help you plan trips, and change money. The private room alone is enough for many patients, who can’t believe what they have to pay to share a room in Australia, when having a knee reconstruction done, for example.
“We are seeing 60 Australian patients each month,” says Mrs Chareong Chandrakamol who is both an owner and a manager of the Bangpakok9, “and we would like to see more, and not just for cosmetic surgery. We understand that in Australia, you have Medicare but it does not pay for everything, and often you have to wait. But we can do these things (knees, hips, teeth) for you, not so expensive. And you do not have to wait! You can come tomorrow.”
Besides being fancy, most the hospitals we toured were clean (the exception was Bangkok Hospital in Bangkok, where the walls were scuffed, and there was a foul smell hanging in the corridors.) Surgeons were on hand to show off their qualifications – many have trained aboard, as well as in Thailand – and to answer the most comment questions, such as: can you fly long-haul after having surgery?
“That’s not a problem,” says Mrs. Chandrakamol, “they check you for DVT (deep vein thrombosis) and if they think it’s risky they won’t let you fly.”
What about the risk of infection, particularly in the sticky heat?
Mrs Chandrakamol shakes her head.
“Infection not from heat,” she says, “infection is from the patient, they don’t take care. They smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol and go on holiday after surgery and don’t take care of the wound. Here in Bangkok, same as Australia: don’t go in the swimming pool. Don’t go in the sun. You are a patient.”
Another common question is: what happens if something goes wrong with your surgery, and you’re back in Australia, and can’t just go and see your surgeon?
“But you’re not going to have access to your surgeon in Australia, either,” says Daniela.
“If you developed a problem a 10 o’clock at night, you wouldn’t call your surgeon. You’d go to emergency, and if it’s not an emergency, you’d go to your GP, and it’s the same with having had the surgery done in Thailand.”
This probably goes without saying, but Australian Medical Association president Dr Steven Hambleton isn’t quite as enthusiastic.
“I would never tell a patient to go to Thailand,” he says.
“And I don’t know many doctors who would. You’re taking quite a risk with your patient. If I refer a patient to a surgeon in Australia, it’s because I know that surgeon is properly trained, because we have a rigorous system here. Our view is, you get what you pay for, and they don’t have the same systems that we do, that the sterilizers work, and so forth. And we’ve had some very bad outcomes, where surgery is done overseas and joints have failed, or there has been bleeding inside a joint or a wound, and we’ve had to deal with that.”
Few of the patients that The Weekly met in Thailand were worried about complications. They were simply rapt with their results. There was a 22-year-old receptionist from Perth who wanted double-D breasts.
“They’re only putting in what my baby daughter took away,” she laughed.
There was a 48-year-old woman whose dentures were so old and loose that she constantly spat her food. She had been quoted $40,000 to have dental implants done in Australia “and here, I paid $12,000.”
Then there was a young Mum who had her saddlebags – “ugly lumps of fat on the top of my thighs” – removed with liposuction.
“We’d been saving up to get the house painted,” she said.
“And then we go, let’s renovate Mummy instead.”
She was still swollen but thrilled with the way her old clothes fit over her new body.
“But the best bit about coming to Thailand has been staying in this nice hotel,” she said.
“My husband has to look after the kids, and he rang me the other day, and I said, ‘How are you going?’ And he said, ‘They follow me around the house! I can’t even go to the toilet in peace!’ And was like, no, really?’”
She laughed, and her laughter bounced around the table, from one Mum to the next.
Not everyone is ecstatic. Three days after I got back from Thailand, I received this email:
“My name is — and I believe that you were in Bangkok a few weeks ago to do a story on Plastic Surgery Makeovers in Thailand. I was with Medi Makovers and having surgery done myself. There is another side to the happy stories and perfect results they want you to write about … ’
The email led us to Elizabeth Schutz a Brisbane mother of three. She had weight loss surgery in Australia 18 months ago, and quickly lost 60 kilograms.
“I had a lot of hanging skin, and I wanted to get my boobs lifted,” she says.
She booked to go to Thailand with Medi Makeovers.
Elizabeth says the first sign that things had not gone well was when she woke up in intensive care, “in excruciating pain from the reflux I get since I had the bariatric surgery. I asked for my medication … they could not understand a word I was saying … I kept saying I need my medication, and they were saying: ‘We give you painkiller!’ and I had to say no, no, and I actually had to swing my legs off the bed, trying to get my medication.”
The gentle nurses, in their pastel cottons and face masks, shied away from her.
Then, two days after surgery, the stitches under one of her breasts came apart.
“They tried to tell me it was because of my smoking,” Elizabeth says.
“And fair enough, I was smoking but the surgeon told me, no, that wasn’t what caused it, it was because the compression garment they give me didn’t fit.”
Elizabeth says she tried to put the complications to one side, “and at the start, I was actually pretty happy – everything looked good, and I thought when the swelling goes down, I will look great. But now, I just feel my body has been disfigured. I can lift up two, three handfuls of skin off my tummy. It’s supposed to be dead flat. My boobs … what I have are two breasts that are different sizes. My right nipple is sitting higher than my left nipple – they are facing out toward my arms. They’re supposed to be up, and be firm, and not jiggle … but I can grab them, and twist them around. I really feel that people should know that it might not work out how they want.”
Elizabeth is now negotiating with Dr Thiti to have her boobs re-done, but it’s taken months, over email, in disjointed English, and the hospital has still not agreed to cover the cost.
Back in Perth, sisters Kyla and Angela are prepping for their Weekly photo shoot. From the sexy way they move in their new clothes, it’s obvious that they could not be happier.
“When you’ve got body issues like I had, and you get them fixed, it’s like, wow,” says Kyla, turning to admire the dress we’ve bought along.
I ask Angela if she’d mind flashing her new boobs, so we can all have a look.
“Sure!” she says, opening her bra to show off two nice, round boobs, with forward-facing nipples.
“I wanted a very natural look,” she says.
“And compared to what I had before – flat skin, hanging down – it’s just so much better. But…” she says, suddenly laughing, “what I really love is this!”
She pulls the top of her pants down, and points at her belly button.
“The first time I met Dr Titty, we talked about boobs and my eyes and my tummy tuck, and I was halfway down the hall when I realised I’d forgotten something.
“I ran back to his rooms, saying: ‘I’m sorry, I forgot to ask, when I get the tummy tuck, can you give me a belly button?” and he laughed and said, of course I give you a belly button! Because before this, I couldn’t find the end of it,” she says.
“I would put my finger in there, and it was just a deep dark hole. And now look! I’ve got a proper belly-button. And I’m just rapt.”
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