Trip to Asia I: Hong Kong

I love to travel, but when I travel to Asia, I do even more. I think that globalization has limited the differences among countries and cities. We all live a similar kind of life, we drive to work, we buy in the same shopping centers. Many times when I travel I do not find much difference between places. But in Asia the differences are much deeper, you really have the feeling of being somewhere exotic and far away.

In this occasion I travelled to Hong Kong to participate in a full day of talks and surgeries, invited by the North District Hospital and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. From the airport I went to the Hospital to see the patients we would operate on the following day, and check that everything was in order for the meeting. Hong Kong is a wonderful city.

The following day I woke up early to go to the hospital. It has wonderful installations and an amazingly well trained personnel. I was positively surprised by the quality of the hospital and its people.

In the photo, with Edison Chung, the distributor of AMS in Hong Kong. A true gentleman and an amazing host. He took me to the hospital and accompanied me during my trip.

The meeting room was packed with urologists and hospital personnel. I did two talks on surgical technique and tips and tricks to obtain a better outcome with greenlight and I did two operations that were retransmitted live to the audience.

We were able to comment the operations live. I first operated a small prostate, about 50 grams, and then a bigger one, approximately 100 grams.

It turned out to be a fantastic session, we had plenty of time to discuss and comment all aspects of the surgical treatment of BPH with the Greenlight laser. The attendees were really interested and stayed there paying attention until the end. Chinese people are usually smaller than me, I had to pack myself into the biggest surgical jacket in the hospital.

That night we had dinner at the Hotel Sheraton, but before the dinner I gave a short talk on the comparison of Greenlight with other laser types. The traditional chinese banquets include 11 diferent courses, so the dinner was amazing. The Hong Kong chinese food is very different to the chinese food we are used to have in Spain.

The next day I had some time to enjoy Hong Kong. I visited a fantastic zoo where I could see the panda bears and other wonders of nature. I had a great time.

And went up to the peak, to see Hong Kong from above. Impressive.

That night I was invited to dine at Dr. Richard Lo's house. He fascinated me with his amazing hospitality and kindness. We enjoyed his cooking talents in the company of other urologists. I left Hong Kong wishing to come back, as always. It is a marvelous city, a pity it is so far from us.