Phil's Worldwide travel in 2023/2024

  I just can't get over how massive the mall was in Dubai. Not only that but the malls in UAE contain some pretty high level restaurants. It also contains a hockey rink, an aquarium, a massive arcade place, lots of VR, a haunted house with actors, fancy gelato and coffee spots every few blocks. It's as almost as if  the king visited a mall in the US, and just went nuts!  Abu Dhabi's mall, Yaz mall, has some amazing restaurants/cafe, replicates from the best all over the world. It truly feels like you can find ANYTHING you want here. Given how massive, there is also never any really crowds, I do wonder if they actually turn a profit. In the evening I visited the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, there was.. you guest it, a mall below, the walk way underground to get there is about 10 minutes. Tesr

I've been having a blast in Dubai, my wallet is hurting as everything is pretty pricy. There are lots of tours to take you to key spots, I've actually done two of the old city, nothing about it looks old, it reminds me a lot of turkey. A few interesting facts about Dubai, 3.6 million people, 75% are expats. Everyone is an expat is working, if you don't work, you have to leave! There are no homeless people, NONE.  To get a passport is extremely difficult as a foreigner, reserved for celerities, people who have invested A LOT of money in the city, and women who marry a local AND have a child. There is virtually no crime here, especially if an expat were to steal - they would simply get deported very quickly. People will tell you there is no concerns walking alone at any time of day, man or women.  It reminds me of a classier Vegas, even more over the top, every building here could be a featured building in most cities in the world. I visited the frame, which costed 43.6 milli...

I've finished up my 2 week course in Uganda. Overall it was pretty fun, having done several courses before I felt content was not too high yield but given the wide background of students (many who are not infectious diseases), I think some of the content was more new/useful to them. Although Mulago is a referral centre, it was sad to see just how resource limited it is. At times very limited medicines, equipment (including syringes). When walking the streets, I found many signs from "traditional healers" claiming to treat everything. When we toured the cancer centre, the doctor explained how many patients with their cancer, would see a healer for many months before they got a proper diagnosis. This makes sense, when you're poor and someone promises to cure everything and the price is much lower... it would seem very tempting. On the last day we visited the Zika forrest and huge research lab there. The forrest is still used to study mosquitos, viruses and some of the i...

Course has been going quite well, I have officially adjusted to the time here but it has not been easy. Over the weekend we went Chimp trekking, which was really cool, the food was awful but somewhat comically because they were all dressed up, but served (what seemed like) frozen people heated up and an attempt at a fancy presentation. I continue to study Japanese quite intensely but ultimately need to work with a tutor, but the wifi has been so bad everywhere it has not been possible. Plans for Japan are starting to come together but prices are starting to sky rocket because the word is out, it is the place to be. I finally found a nice accommodation in Dubai and am excited to book some tours and restaurants. I also think I'm gonna go to Sri Lanka after Dubai, before my Thailand boot camp. I am hopeful I can get some pics up one day.

So I've arrived in Kampala, Uganda Jan 14th. I've been really struggling with jet lag sleeping some strange hours, but hopefully to be adjusted shortly.  I am doing a two week East African Clinical Tropical Medicine Course that is affiliated with the University of Minnesota. (https://med.umn.edu/dom/education/global-medicine/courses-certificates/in-person/east-africa). So far the course has been great. The class consists of a variety of doctors (ID, MD/PHD, family docs, emergency docs, med/peds, and peds). One of the speakers and lab organizers is Dr. Bobby Pritt, she has a parasite blog that I discovered back in 2016 during my infectious disease fellowship, she works at Mayo Clinic and is awesome! (https://parasitewonders.blogspot.com/). About 1/3 of the class contains local doctors from Uganda which is also very interesting to hear about the type of patient's they see, challenges, and how they practice.  The internet has been painfully slow so hard to upload pics and so I...