Ambulances

Phuket Tourist Information Guide

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One thing that may surprise you is the state of ambulances in Phuket. An ambulance in your home country is probably a white or colored van which is stocked absolutely full with the latest life-saving equipment capable of handling just about anything. In Thailand, an ambulance typically consists of a guy driving a truck with a sticker on the back of the silhouette of a guy carrying a passed-out woman from the scene of an accident. The trucks almost always have racing stickers, and some don’t have so much as a comfortable mat to lay the injured person on in the back of the truck.

Now, you might be thinking how horrible this is – and comparing it to your country. There is one good thing about how ambulance services work in Phuket and the rest of Thailand – and that is the sheer number of pickup trucks available on the streets to take people to the hospital. At the time of an accident, there is usually at least one of these ambulance trucks in the vicinity.

One thing can be said, ambulances in Phuket are fast to arrive at the scene, that is a fact. The guys driving these pickup truck ambulances don’t dress in typical scrubs or other uniforms of trained medical personnel, so for the most part, I think they are either untrained, or minimally trained. Their job is just to get the injured to the hospital as fast as possible for treatment and they do a pretty good job of that.

Ambulances in Phuket get little special treatment on the roads when they have an injured person in the back and are trying to get through traffic. Very few people will even make the effort to move out of the way so the ambulance can get through quicker. Yes, I know… but this is the state of the Ambulance services in Thailand.

* As you can see we have only one location on this page at the moment. We are sorry for the inconvenience and assure you that we will list more as soon as we have done our research on availability and quality. *

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