Diarrhea in a monks squatting toilet

We went to Chaing Dao in the northern part of Thailand for the last couple of days. There is tons of AIDS cases here 1000 and there are only 70,000 people.We went with the hospital education committee to a buddhist temple to teach the community about AIDS, give free tests and talk about tuberculosis. It was great because the whole town came out and we kneeled in the temple and talked.I had my traditional traveler's diarrhea for the trip and it had to hit me with in the middle of this talk. I had to go ask the monks in the wat to use thier toilet. It turns out that you have to squat on the toilet in order to go. I thought that it was going to be awful that my legs would go numb. However, maybe it was the pain was relieved or the monks chanting in the background, but I felt very relaxed and I think that it might be the way to go. I got back to the talk and enjoyed the rest of the night. It has been plain rice and coke for me for the last couple of daysThe next day we talked to the director of the hospital who talked about the situation with AIDS in the community. He talked about how they are solving AIDS with the volunteer health workers and the free once a year tests or you can get one at the hospital. Thailand has started makin thier own antivirals to treat AIDS and treatment is only about twenty bucks a month in comparison to the $2000 in the US a month. They use US antiretrovirals after they show drug resistance to the Thai drugs. We also went on a tour of the hospital where we got to see the dentists office. Their was a monk getting work done by a woman, which is pretty ironic because women aren't allowed to touch them.We asked why she could do this, the dentist said that he had no choice. Most dentist in Thailand are women.We then went to the AIDS orphanage where we met the Thai catholic nun who takes care of over 50 kids whose parents died of AIDS. Families usually take care of the orphans however, because of the cost of AIDS medications they can't afford to have the kids. So they leave them at the orphanage. Sometimes ,for some strange reason, the kids after recieving care don't present with the AIDS virus after a couple of months. They are then adopted by foreign families. Unfortunately this is pretty rare, and they usually take antivirals for the rest of their lives. They lost a 6 year old last month. The nun was still very distraught because of it and she kept asking if we heard about new drugs and our opinion about antivirals on the market. We then went to see the kids at school. These kids because of the stigmas of AIDS have to go to their own school. It was great to see them that they are as hyper as regular kids and were very happy. They are kind of aware of their disease because they have education about their disease since they are 4 years old. Many of these kids go on to get degrees.We went to the elephant hospital today. And we went on another elephant ride and saw another elephant show. THis was a show of elephants not able to work any more. They also had paper for sale made out of elephant dung.We are now in the city of Lam Pang for all of you Thail geography wizardsI'll update you later