Traditional hospital in Ulaanbaatar

When we arrived in Ulaanbaatar, we met some French couch surfeurs who had stayed with Begs, like us and they had been to a traditional hospital that cures different problems in a preventive manner, so here we go...

When we got there, in force (we had recruited 3 other couch surfers), we asked for Nara, begs's aunt who is a doctor in that hospital.

In her office, we try to explain, half in English, half in Russian (Ok more 10% in Russian) that we want the same as the other french guys - a full diagnostic

One after another, in front of her, she takes our wrists in her hand, her eyes closed, she takes our pulse for 2 minutes, while writing down notes on a booklet.

Rather sceptical when we started, we are impressed: she can feel pains and diseases that we have had for a while. Staight away she can see that Thomas has got allergic asthma even if he hasn't got any when she does the diagnostic, his liver is not in a good shape (too much coffee and beer in London ;-) ), she can see that I have stomach pains and my balance is not perfect, but we won't detail more as too many bad things!!

So there we go, ready for an intensive 3 day treatment period (2hrs a day).

On the first day, quite impressive, we are all in a big room, separated by curtains and we start to get different treatments by specilaised nurses (or so we hope!):

Acuponcture, sometimes added with dry herbs at the end of the needle, vaccuums on the body part that has been diagnosed as 'cold', massaging table (very painful according to Tom), vigourous massages that rip off everything (ouch!), bleeding at the end of the fingers to liberate bad energies, etc.

Anyway it was not a great relaxing moment (as the marks can testify in the picture above) but it taught us that we needed to take care of our body - not too many excesses!!! :-)