Allen S., Australia

There are many things which almost instantly come to mind whenever we think of Thailand: Phuket is one, decent people is another, Bangkok and great shopping is yet another; but, if truth be told, when it comes to plastic surgery, how many of us think of Thailand before we think of any other country? If you answered, "not many," you may still be in the majority, but not for long I hope, because apart from relating my recent happy experience there, I am also keen to change that undeserved and seemingly ossified opinion which many have formed about Thailand, since it is there that I recently got myself a brand-new, super good-looking nose.THE COMPANY: Lotus Medical International is one of a seemingly endless number of companies which these days offer medical services to people. I prefer to use the term, "medical services," to "medical tourism," as I find something cheap, disingenuous even, whenever I see a company put the noun tourism after whatever it is that they offer - like wildlife tourism, archaeology tourism, or even religious tourism. Well, there are no cheap claims or disingenuousness of any kind to be found at Lotus Medical, that's for sure, since only a few interactions with them quickly reveal them to be beyond any shallowness or affectation whatsoever.As one of the triumvirs, they are your first point of contact, after which things will roll with undisturbed ease. It is run by a lady named Grainne Farrell, a woman whose look and unobtrusiveness conceal a great talent for business, and under whom a small but wonderful army of staff and assistants quickly make certain to begin a process which ultimately ends in a better-looking you. Emails are answered promptly; fees, costs, and other charges are made known early; and their other efficiencies and transparencies quickly show them to be, even to the more apprehensive and suspecting of us, a no-nonsense crew that is hands-on and matter-of-fact about what they do, and one whose procurement of your business is never just that, but rather is a joint investment and a common journey, whose ultimate end is crowned with success for all the parties involved.Once you arrive in Thailand, (in some cases before you arrive), you will be supplied with the details of a local contact - in my case, an endearing Ms. Sirirat, an employee of the clinic - and another from Lotus itself, who will be your main points of contact whilst you're in Thailand. As I said, mine was a new nose; yours could be a pair of breasts, or brand-new buttocks - who knows; but one thing that is beyond any doubt is their promise and ability to deliver. And there is good reason to believe that they have been doing this long and well enough to secure them the genuine trust and affection which many of their patients express in various forums, since a woman friend of mine was able to link-up with a few of them through social media, and the candidness and the way in which they spoke to her about Lotus Medical betrayed in them no hint of falsity. In my case, the result is so good, as to almost give me the feeling that it was foreseen! People tend to forget that the success of a surgery often depends upon factors and elements which have nothing to do neither with those who organize it, like Lotus Medical, nor with those who perform it, like the doctors, factors and elements such as, how well we have slept the night before, whether or not we smoke, drink, or use narcotics, how prepared psychologically we are, and whether we do or do not adhere to the pre- and post-surgery regime, to name but a few, because everything is connected, you see, and a weakness in one part of the body may lie buried and unfelt for years, until pressure from another and seemingly unrelated part of the body exposes it with double strength. And so, provided you do not forget that you are about to embark on a journey - not a mere trip, but an important journey - which of necessity imposes some serious cares and responsibilities on you, then you will find that the sooner and the better you adhere to them, the more likely you yourself will contribute to the success of that journey. Probatum est.THE SURGEON: The Bonnie Clinic - it being the second and critical part of the triumvirate - sits at the corner of an ordinary street, in an out-of-the-way suburb of Bangkok, brought into form and held into shape seemingly by an architecture wholly its own, and if someone were to tell you that within those walls is to be found a surgeon whose hands transform lives, you would think the claim an exaggeration. It isn't. On their website, Lotus Medical describes Dr. Boonchai Taweerattanasil as, "...one of our most popular surgeons," a title, an epithet, a description - call it what you will - which one could almost swear the man was born with! Neat in appearance, soft in speech, supremely polite and cultivated in manners, and completely free and uncluttered of those ostentatious displays of scholarship and knowledge which one often comes across when dealing with doctors and lawyers, which scholarship and knowledge instantly dismisses in one the possibility of raising a single, solitary doubt against them, apart from being gifted with a pair of solidly good hands, his other talent lies in being able to quickly plumb the depths of a matter, to see the essence, so to speak, and will in no time tell you what you need, what he will do to you, and how he will do it. For this psychologically crucial part of your interaction with him, technology of the most innovative, extraordinary, and enduring nature is brought fully to bear: pen, and paper. "Here," he will say to you, "this is what your nose looks like right now…," and a few moments later, once his good brain and deft hands have agreed and conveyed to each other their joint wish to combine their secret talents and produce an elegant and more refined version of you, hands and brain which, it must here be added, are in no way inferior to those of Tiziano or Dürer, he will again turn to you, and this time unequivocally declare, "...And here, this is how your nose will look after the surgery. Are you happy?" Simplex, sigillum veri! Well, I don't know about you, but as for me, I would much rather have a surgeon who can draw me a good nose than one who can merely airbrush me one, since this last even I can do, and I can't even draw a straight line! His only caveat to you being that a sense of realism must pervade in you; in other words, that you must be realistic in your expectation of results. After that, a quick rundown of the degree of the complexity of your particular case will be explained to you, something which, if you are excessively delicate, may induce the imagination into producing distant phantoms of bleak despair, which time will only inflame, and sleeplessness will only aggravate, as well as the surgery and its after-effects, and soon you are left with the feeling that even in those moments during the consultation when you had not expressed your deeper thoughts and secret apprehensions about the whole damn thing, that his quick intelligence and avuncular nature has indeed perceived them, and has factored them in in your process of surgery and post-surgery, an early proof of his powers of comprehension, and the clearest sign yet why many patients become irrecoverably enamoured of him. Thus, thinking that you have gone there to evaluate and discover his worth and competence as a surgeon, you leave his good company quietly aware that it was you and not him who all along was being elegantly deciphered as a patient. True, "popular" may be one way of describing this man, but I find the description too general, vague even, since really, all it tells us is that many people like him, and that's not enough. "Outstandingly competent, and numinously comforting" would be another, more specific and fitting one, for not only is it truer still, and not only are competence and comfort two forms of good that are universally liked, but they are also more poignant, and, insofar as we and the results of our surgery are concerned, infinitely more pertinent too. It may sound as if I am propagating a medical and spiritual wonder here, I know, but I am not, for his tenderness with his patients, and the results of his good handiwork, really do show him to be an outstanding human being and a great surgeon, and if such a description of him may not legally be prefixed to his revered title of Doctor, know that it will consciously or otherwise, eternally and always sweetly, be contained in your memory of him. You will always have fond memories of Dr. Boonchai, sometimes, perhaps, to the neglect of other doctors who have done you good in life, and will always want to amplify the effect, to extend the duration, and to increase the frequency of those warm remembrances of him, because despite the brevity of your contact with him, ultimately and at a deeper level, one requires no prolonged and frequent acquaintance with a man to be able to judge his quality and worth; all that is needed is the ability to feel him. You will feel Dr. Boonchai, I promise you.Such, then, in brief, are my slender remarks and quick observations of that gentle man, which remarks and observations, it must be said, furnish but a minor adornment and meagre embellishment to the remaining and unsketched parts of his undoubtedly inexpugnable character, the man who can be found within the walls of that ordinary building, in the corner of that ordinary street, in one of those out-of-the-way suburbs of Bangkok, quietly transacting thoughts and advice with his patients, and the very man who gave me a new nose, and who, to my own slight embarrassment now, has made me, a man of 49 years of age, and one who is not entirely unaware of the costs, the emptiness, and the perils of vanity, suddenly attractive to my own self! For he does not merely augment an organ, Dr. Boonchai, he reforms your person; and if happy feelings about yourself have been so long absent from you as to have attenuated beyond the remotest hope of resuscitating them, don't worry, as he will create new and better ones for you, a rare skill indeed whose excellence many surgeons in Australia and other western abroads are light-years away from attaining, despite their arrogant and loud blowing of their own trumpets, and shameless and open disparaging of their fellow surgeons of Thailand, as if the former were gods, and the latter a species of monkeys! Nothing undissembles a falsehood quicker and more certainly than its inherent and reckless ambition to convince. Lauda finem, Dr. Boonchai, lauda finem indeed!THE HOSPITAL: Which brings us to the final cog of this wonderful machine consisting of three parts, and here I'll be brief. My surgery took place at the Camillian Hospital in Thong Lor, otherwise a cool district of Bangkok. I am not sure if this is the only hospital Lotus use, but I doubt it, as they also offer packages in Phuket, and the Camillian is not in Phuket. To call the staff of this hospital polite, efficient, and organized is to under-describe them; to describe them as the human version of a Breguet watch would be fairer, I think - so smooth does the whole body of them move. The building itself is of an older type, but is in no way inferior to a newer one, and so sweet is the charm it exudes, and so unaffectedly adorned are their walls and corners, that it is easy to forget that, essentially, one is inside a house of pain, though it must be added that the deaconess-style caps of their nurses and the touching allusion to their religion do contribute much towards that charm. The equipment and technology they use in their operating theatres are ultra-modern, and so unbelievably clean are the operating rooms, the floors, and the corridors that lead to them, that I swear I could've licked my way all the way to there! After the surgery you'll be kept in a recovery room for a few hours until you come to, after which you'll be taken to a room of your own, and spend the rest of the day and night there, during which soup and rice chicken will be offered to you. Hourly checks on you are conducted by the nurses throughout your stay. Morning time means that you have recovered enough to leave, and a staff member from the Bonnie Clinic will be there to assist you, just as she was there from the moment you arrived. I find this detail deeply important, as there is something inherently sad in watching a man enter a hospital alone, where he waits alone, worries alone, goes up to the surgery alone, and recovers and leaves that heavy place with the same solitary company as the one with which he had entered it. All forms of expression, and all types of appearances can be manufactured, except that of care and kindness, and without belabouring the point, not only were kindness, constancy, company, and the care of the Camillian Hospital staff genuine, but, what is more, they seemed as if they would be happy even if they had offered them to you and you had rejected them. Manus in Mano should be their motto, because really that's how you get your health back whilst under their care, hand in hand - you clasp theirs, and they gently yours.CONCLUSION: An injured reputation bears no resemblance to an injured nose, for example, since the latter, though not always painless and without its attendant complications, can somehow, anyhow, be mended back into place; but how does one improve others' beliefs and opinion about us, especially when we know that there are entities out there who actively propagate various evil fictions against us, however subtly and however unsuspectingly, and this for no other reason than their wish to cause us harm? An ill-defined enemy will have more than a piece of us any time of day, I say! Unfortunately, unless we wish to lessen the gravity of this serious problem and reduce its poignancy and ubiquity by supplementing it with nice language, much as I wish to I cannot provide the answer to that question, but if the wisdom of the ancients may serve as a guide, and if we agree with them that, all that is excellent and noble in life begins and ends with truth, then our attempt to tackle this problem suddenly no longer appears impossible, since everything I have said here regarding my recent experience in Bangkok is based, is infused, is surrounded, and is thoroughly and completely, wholly and absolutely, enveloped in truth; and if, then, it is true that it is natural for a man to love that which is excellent and noble, can't it also be said that it is none other than truth itself that conquers all, including a bad reputation?! It can. Therefore, don't let yourself be dissuaded, whether by doctors or others alike, from seeking surgery or medical treatment in Thailand, since the country contains neither less, nor more, crooked operatives and outright medical criminals than does any other western, or eastern, or southern, or northern country on earth. But not here, you see, not at Lotus Medical International, or at The Bonnie Clinic, with whom Lotus is closely associated. Therefore, put all your prejudices aside, conquer all your fears, and confirm yet another ancient dictum that says, very often in life we end how we begin. Well, by simply being here, at Lotus Medical International website, know that you have begun supremely well. Keep walking now, don't stop, as a large part of a long-suppressed you is desperately waiting on the other side to be freed. Go, free it, help it get back on its feet, and then, like an Oriental lily, watch the beautiful flower called You unfurl its stunning petals, for not only is this the best flower you have ever seen and are likely ever to see, but it is also the richest, the deepest, and the most attractive fragrance the Almighty Alchemist has ever made. With respect and gratitude