Lab tests in Pattaya

[newatthis]

Earlier this year I took a LB to the PIC Hospital for a blood panel for HIV & hepatitis A,B,&C. I thought it was relatively expensive. On a friend's reccommendation I tried this lab recently and HIV testing was 300b and they sent me the results via SMS. I went with her and that took the worry out of the LB paying someone to fake her results.

You may want to try it out. It is a private medical lab & most tests can be performed and are resonably priced. It looked clean and I would not worry about testing there myself.

It is called "Pattaya Clincal Laboratory" and it is located on Naklua Rd across from Soi 10. If you are coming from the traffic circle it is down past the school on the right & past the walkover bridge. It's next to a Krrungthai bank on the right. You can try calling 038-367-326 for directions. The medical tech that runs it seemed like a competent guy and speaks good english.

[PigDogg]

I started a thread about testing and most board members felt it was insulting to ask a girl to take a test.

Many said it would open a can of worm if she tests positive which is true but at the same time that can of worms is better than having sex with a condom with an HIV+ person. And better the girl finds out as early as possible assuming she doesn't already know.

Others said that a good test result doesn't mean she's OK, which is true but it reduces the odds and you're wearing a condom anyway.

Others said if you're worried about HIV stay home but maybe some people don't want to stay home.

There are many labs around town and 400 baht seems a standard price for HIV testing. But if one is going to have a girl tested it makes sense to get the HEP panel too.

Welcome to the Forum! Now they can flame me instead of a new poster.

[Torurot]

Perfect summary of all the issues Pigdogg.

Way I see it is if YOU want to get tested fine, if your going long term "girlfriend" fine, otherwise just wrap it up and forget about it. The downstream problems are not worth it on the short term visit.

[qwerty]

how wonderful it would be if someone would combine a short-time hotel with a competent medical clinic!
while youre waiting for the ever busy rooms, your girl and or you are taken back room where you get a quick test and quick results... then you can slurp without worry!
i know its full of faults or difficulties, but its a great idea on some fronts... sure it takes some of the buzz out of the sportfuck, but that is compensated with a different benefit of no worry...

[D33]

(newatthis @ Jun. 06 2008,09:49) Earlier this year I took a LB to the PIC Hospital for a blood panel for HIV & hepatitis A,B,&C. I thought it was relatively expensive. On a friend's reccommendation I tried this lab recently and HIV testing was 300b and they sent me the results via SMS. I went with her and that took the worry out of the LB paying someone to fake her results.

You may want to try it out. It is a private medical lab & most tests can be performed and are resonably priced. It looked clean and I would not worry about testing there myself.

It is called "Pattaya Clincal Laboratory" and it is located on Naklua Rd across from Soi 10. If you are coming from the traffic circle it is down past the school on the right & past the walkover bridge. It's next to a Krrungthai bank on the right. You can try calling 038-367-326 for directions. The medical tech that runs it seemed like a competent guy and speaks good english.

I don't want to burst your bubble, but I've yet to find a "clinic" that does anything other than rapid testing, which is known to be very faulty. At 300b, it for sure sounds like a rapid test. The cheapest I have seen a true Elisa test in Thailand was 700b. Usually they are 800 - 1000b.

If they have a real lab where they do a true Elisa test, I would be really shocked at that price. I'm not saying it's impossible, but 300b is even cheap for rapid tests.

Go to the HOSPITAL or you can expect false results, in either direction.

The people who work the clinics will give you some BS that the tests are 98% accurate, but do your own homework on rapid testing. Only 2 of them were FDA approved to sell into America and one of those STILL had to be sent to the lab, it only allowed you to collect the blood and ship it to the lab. The only is only sold to medical personal and these are not the cheap tests sold in Thailand.

Real doctors will tell you the rapid tests don't work. I suppose it works by giving people a false sense of relief, but I would not bet my life on them. Like everything else you buy in Thailand, if it's made here, it's shit. Those tests are shit.

[Otho]

I went to the big hospital on Soi 4 - sorry I forget the name, but you could hardly miss it, it's massive - takes up half the street on the left hand side.

I'm also a bit of a klutz with money and can rarely remember exactly how much I paid, but I seem to remember it was just over 1000 - like a 1K baht note then some smaller notes - maybe 1140 or something.

I have no idea how reliable the test was. There's no way of knowing if you're not experienced or qualified. All I can say is, it seemed thoroughly professional and the doctor seemed to know his stuff. He said the test is over 99% accurate. For a place so big and so reputable, I can't imagine that they'd do sub-standard testing. It just wouldn't be good for them in the long run.

One thing that happened though - there were a lot of guys coming in for tests. And I began to notice that a lot of them who turned up after me were leaving before me. I thought oh my god, they've found something and they're running it through a second time. My guts were iced water. Then I saw the nurse who'd taken my blood. She was looking right at me and talking to a doctor. Then the doctor started walking towards me. I thought fuck, this is it. This really is it. But then he walked right past! The relief!

I went and spoke to the nurse and she said, oh sorry. It was just an admin fuckup. She went and chased up my test, then took me in to one of the doctors, who said all was fine.

best of all, it's only two streets from Soi 6. So you can get straight round there and celebrate by getting up someone's chuff within 90 seconds of getting the result. Fully rubbered up, needless to say!

[Guest]

(Torurot @ Jun. 06 2008,20:04) Perfect summary of all the issues Pigdogg.  

Way I see it is if YOU want to get tested fine, if your going long term "girlfriend" fine, otherwise just wrap it up and forget about it.  The downstream problems are not worth it on the short term visit.

I admire the braveness of you guys.

I sure would love to have a LB encounter (it would be my first one btw) but I just can't make up my mind for exactly this reason. Catching a HIV infection would most definitely not be worth the fun.

How do you handle this risk? Is it on your mind when you "do it"? Or do you just ignore it?

I wish I could be as brave!

[Guest]

Be brave young Moonwalker be brave!!

[Otho]

Here's the reason why I went for a test, in October last year -

at the beginning of the year I was seeing a lot of a Chinese P4P woman (not in LOS). I've always been fairly scrupulous about condoms, admittedly with the odd slip-up. But one morning we woke up, still drunk and giggly from a mad night before, one thing led to another and we went bareback. That was the way it went from then on.

Then she went back to China for a few months and when she came back in the summer, I was just horrified. I hardly recognised her. She looked terrible, her face was dull and puffy (she had been very glamorous looking before and took a lot of pride in her appearance) and she had a rash on her upper lip.

I asked her straight if she had a problem and she said no. I wasn't convinced and I asked a couple of her friends, who are also friends of mine. They said they didn't know anything, but she had definitely changed. Seemed really depressed, stayed at home all the time watching TV. It might not have been AIDS but there was no doubt something was definitely up.

At the same time I was feeling in very poor health myself. But I'm based in the Middle East where it's regularly well over 40 degrees every day in summer (it's been 50 all this weekend!) and if you drink less than 4 litres of water a day you're probably dehydrated, which makes you feel dreadful anyway.

But I was really rattled. To add to the woes, it's actually illegal to be HIV positive here. If you went for a test here and proved positive, the first you'd hear about it would be the police coming round and putting you on a plane. No time to settle your affairs, no time even to pack. You're gone.

So I took a few days off and went over to LOS specifically to get a test done there. I did a bit of homework and the place on Soi 4 (apologies again for forgetting the name) seemed the most established and reputable.

We're all grown up and we make our own choices. But personally, after that scare, I rubber up religiously, no exceptions. I actually hate condoms and can never come in them, so I take them off and finish outside. But I never want to go through that again.

By the way, I heard since that the woman went back to China for good, and she's fine. Has a job managing a shop in Shanghai and is getting married soon.

[Guest]

She must have ate something back over in China which made her face puffy!!

[geezer]

(Otho @ Jul. 20 2008,13:32) But I was really rattled. To add to the woes, it's actually illegal to be HIV positive here. If you went for a test here and proved positive, the first you'd hear about it would be the police coming round and putting you on a plane. No time to settle your affairs, no time even to pack. You're gone.

Fucking hell. I knew those Arabs can be pretty harsh but that does seem a bit unresonable. Then again it's their country they can do what they like.

[Guest]

The other alternative the Arabs have is to cut off "Big Jim and the Twins" and then you can stay!!

[Torurot]

>>How do you handle this risk? Is it on your mind when you "do it"? Or do you just ignore it?

If you want 100% safety, stay at home and do not have sex with prostitutes. The "risk" is minimal (not nil) if you properly use condoms EVERY time. Slip it on, forget about it, otherwise don't come at all. Crossing the road without looking could kill you.

[Guest]

It is confusing in LOS when you cross the road as they drive asunder all over the road as well as on the sidewalks.

[newatthis]

D33 Thanks for your input on HIV testing, you certainly have had more experience in these matters than I. The Bangkok Hospital in Pattaya probably has the newest and best lab in town. As mentioned in my original post I went to the PIC Hospital because it was more convenient for me that day. I paid 4000 baht for the HIV test and a Hepatitis A, B, and C testing including the MD consult. In my mind I thought it was relatively expensive for Thailand and the staff seemed a little disorganized. The Bangkok Hospital would probably have been a better choice and the same price.

I also am not a fan of the rapid test and I just called the lab and the owner assured me it was the ELISA test that was performed for 300 baht, it took several hours before he had the results.  As for the cost, you're right, 300 baht is a great price and shows the profit margin the hospitals have on lab work. If I remember correctly he was a lab technician in the USA before he decided to come back in open a lab in Pattaya and he personally did the testing on the day I was there. You could check it out and give me your opinion, I would be interested in what you thought about it.

That being said, there is really no way to know what goes on in any lab in Thailand, Do they really do the test? If they do it, do they do it correctly? If they do it correctly, do they put the results next to the correct patient name? Who knows... In 1990 I took a long term GF to the Pattaya Memorial Hospital for a HIV test. The tech did a poor job of drawing the blood and I wondered if he was going to do the lab testing as well. I asked myself the above questions as I walked out. Anyway she was negative and we stayed together for sometime.

I originally posted this to give the BM's another choice for lab work in Pattaya, it may have been discussed in other posts before mine, I really didn't check.I have  only tested 3 long term GF's in all my time in Thailand but for me it reassuring to know they were negative. Of couse, YMMV

Cheers