A Fake Doctor in the Mountains
travel health reflection philosophy tcm faith thailand
My wife and I joined a medical mission to Ton San, a small village in the mountains of northern Thailand. The trip was organized by a church. We are not believers — or at least, not in the way they are. It was our first time joining a group of religious people. And our first time working together.
Both experiences changed me in ways I didn’t expect.
Ton San is a remote village in the highlands of northern Thailand, accessible by winding mountain roads from Chiang Mai. Medical access is limited. The nearest hospital is hours away. For many villagers, a visiting medical team is their only encounter with professional healthcare all year.
My wife
I’ve known my wife for almost 20 years. I know she’s a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner. I know she’s good at it. But knowing and seeing are different things.
In two and a half days of medical sessions, she and the team treated over 300 patients. Villagers lined up from early morning. Many had chronic pain they’d lived with for years — joint problems, back pain, conditions they’d accepted as permanent. My wife’s acupuncture skills were in high demand. She moved from patient to patient with a calm focus I rarely see at home.
At home, she’s my wife. In Ton San, she was a healer. I realized I’d been seeing a fraction of who she is.
Working together was new for us. We operate in completely different worlds — she works with bodies, I work with machines. Watching her in her element gave me a new respect. Not the kind you say. The kind you feel.
Medicine
I was a medic in the army. Trained in the basics of western medicine. Over the years, I’ve talked to doctors about the divide between western and traditional practices. The conversations always carried a hint of prejudice from one side or the other.
Ton San was the first time I saw western doctors and TCM physicians working under the same roof. No prejudice. No turf wars. One common goal: help the villagers.
Western medicine and TCM are often framed as opposing systems. In a mountain village with 300 patients and two and a half days, nobody cared about the debate. They cared about results.
What surprised me was hearing western doctors speak openly about TCM. Not hearsay — firsthand observation. Some villagers needed specific examinations or prescription drugs the doctors couldn’t provide without proper facilities. They also couldn’t offer follow-up care. A diagnosis without treatment is a sentence without a period.
In contrast, the TCM physicians worked with acupuncture needles and their hands. The effects were immediate. Patients who walked in unable to raise their shoulders — a condition they’d lived with for years — walked out moving freely after a single session. Repeated treatments would be ideal. But even one session produced results that were hard to argue with.
And then there were the dentists. Patients walked in with decayed teeth and sharp pain. Walked out with fewer teeth and more pain. But long-term comfort. Sometimes healing starts with losing something.
Myself
Along with doctors and TCM physicians, I joined the team. But I am none of those things. I am, at best, a fake doctor — for computers. And there were no computers to fix in the middle of the mountains.
So what could I contribute?
I picked up a camera. I became the recorder, the videographer, the editor. I documented the sessions, the village, the people. By the end of the trip, I had cut together a short video. Everyone was impressed.
When your main skill is irrelevant, you find out what else you’re made of. Maybe videography is a skill I want to develop. Maybe the value I bring isn’t always the value I expect.
AI
Nobody in Ton San talked about AI. Not once.
Their problems were simple and physical. A knee that doesn’t bend. A back that won’t straighten. Pain they can’t afford to treat. The technology conversations I have every day at work felt distant — almost absurd — sitting in a village where electricity is inconsistent.
We build AI platforms to optimize enterprise workflows. These villagers need someone to press a needle into the right spot on their shoulder. The gap between these two worlds is not closing.
How do we make AI accessible and useful for people like them? I don’t have an answer. But the question stayed with me. It will be interesting to come back next year and observe what, if anything, has changed.
God
I was never a non-believer. I believe in something — divine beings, higher powers, God in the general sense. The Chinese term 上帝 captures it well: a concept of God that transcends any single religion.
But I’d never been immersed in a community of faith like this.
Our fellowship doctors and missionaries gathered for prayer multiple times a day. They prayed for everything — the weather, the schedule, trivial details like not losing items. They attributed everything, good or bad, to the will of God. To believe that God has a purpose for all that is happening.
I watched this with curiosity at first. By the end of the trip, I watched with something closer to envy.
During the Sunday service, I was in tears. Not because I understood the theology. Because of the melodies. The collective surrender to something bigger. The willingness to trust what you cannot see or prove.
I think I love God. Not a specific God of a specific book. The idea that something is bigger than us. That our plans and worries are a small part of a larger pattern we can’t see from where we stand.
The missionaries would say that’s the beginning of faith. I’d say it’s the beginning of humility. Maybe those are the same thing.
What I brought home
I went to Ton San to help. I came back helped.
My wife showed me a side of herself I hadn’t seen. A camera showed me a skill I didn’t know I had. A village with no internet reminded me that most of the world doesn’t care about AI. And a group of believers showed me that certainty — even certainty in the unseen — is a kind of strength.
The mountains don’t care about your job title. They only ask: what can you do here, now, with your hands?