CATEGORY AUSTRALASIAN DENTIST119 REALITY BITES Chiang Mai 2019 is here, on the poster, anyway, calling – beckoning – enchanting and cooing. is is ailand. Seduction is a national industry. is kind of thing really works. Over at another one of the bazillion dental, beauty, injections, implants, rejuvenation, genital enhancement clinics literally everywhere, I had turned down the temptation to book in for dental and/ or hundreds of laser injuries all over my face in pursuit of ‘a natural refreshing look’ at a clinic o ering the added enticement of being able to pat baby white lion cubs before and after the procedures. I am not joking. Another clinic was using an albino wallaby to tempt and comfort customers, as well as spice up their Instagram as a bonus for booking whitening treatments and other medical-ish makeovers. e clinic I chose, (heavily focused on attracting international clients by its marketing, and its pricelist) is on the 3rd oor, via a lift attended by a partly collapsed but friendly security guard and his Miss Chiang Mai 2019 Fairy Godmother poster. e clinic is surprisingly massive, I mean huge. ere are expansive views all over the city, a vast waiting area reminiscent of an airport lounge, and signs saying NO PHOTOS everywhere. After the advertising had wooed me in, there was a decisive end to the charm. A Zoom appointment was made within days. at appointment was changed by the clinic on WhatsApp at least four times, and on the day of the scheduled treatment the sign advertising the price was whisked away in front of my eyes and a further fee of over $100 will be added at reception at fee was allegedly for prep required for Zoom. Which amounted to a haphazard swab of the teeth. is whole arrangement should have caused me to leave immediately, obviously, taking the joke, and realizing I was in the clutches of a typical ai hustle, but one doesn’t, because one has psyched themselves up, and only has a few days here, with a busy schedule, and one just wants to get on with it, so one tells the receptionist that this seems like a scam. e receptionists agrees. She says almost everybody says that. But nobody at the clinic cares. e dentist will appear after the money has been extracted. She will carefully avoid the unfortunate issue at the cash desk, because she is well aware of what happened there. She has other mischief in store. e dental surgery is Huuuuuge! It could take at least 4 chairs, and boasts sweeping views of the mountains, which the dentist and her chronically bored assistant don’t bother to take in, xed to their phones as they are, throughout my visit. ere is a short, disinterested, and slightly agitating session of taking me through ‘before and after’ images of how frighteningly white they intend to make my teeth. ere is no liaison about what steps I could take with veneers, or if Zoom will a ect the veneers, or sensitivity issues, or what my colour concerns might be, or hoped outcomes – or even a look at my teeth! Not that white. I say. Natural white. I say. “We just do machine,” the dentist tells me. “No way to say how white you get. No way to control. Just wait and see. You want or you not want. You pay already. Up to you.” is all seems like absolute nonsense. I say. She just stares through me. ere are questions regarding whether whitening will a ect my veneers, what I could consider around replacing them, pain anxieties and a sort of, shouldn’t you be taking even a slight interest in my teeth while I’m here, sort of vibe, but she is not buying into any of it. “You want, or not?” By the time I get into the chair I am lled with a deep and terrible loathing for this woman. I just want the whole thing to be over. She presses the Zoom head so hard into my mouth it jams my head into the chair. She icks ON the uncovered ceiling lights so they burn into my head while she’s got me pinned down. She runs the machine on Low, because after googling it I have found there are indeed options, and I’ve asked her to use them. She sulkily goes through the motions, but she doesn’t come to check how it’s going or if it’s worth trying a level higher. She just stares at her phone, while her assistant scrolls through Tik Tok in eye view of me, literally stuck to the chair, and waits for the Ping! to come press buttons and wait out the next cycles. It’s probably one of the worst customer care experiences of my life. Despite the airy room, the useless views and the charming afterglow of support from Miss Chiang Mai 2019, downstairs, on the poster. By the time it’s over my head has been compressed so hard against the chair for 45 minutes that my neck is cricked, and my eyes have been blazed into psychedelic malfunction by having been blasted with full voltage halogens the whole time. e doctor is very cheerful after her nice long rest, and hands me a mirror while I’m still under halogens and virtually blind in the chair. My teeth certainly seem to look white – not too white, but nicely white, but I don’t trust the mirror. u
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