I’m giving some serious thought to booking another cruise in November or December. SeaDream Yacht Club is offering some great deals on cruises there at that time.
I had an acquaintance/co-worker who served in the Peace Corps in Costa Rica. Knowing that it’s become quite the tourist destination lately, I can only guess that he was a lucky guy to get to serve there.
I also have a friend who had dental work done there at a fraction of the cost it would have been in the United States. She had serious problems that required multiple dental implants that would have been prohibitively expensive to have done in the United States. Knowing that I have two baby teeth with no permanent teeth under them, it’s good to know I could get implants relatively cheaply in a country not too far away.
When we lived in Germany, we visited Poland and the Czech Republic. Both of those countries are also known for medical tourism. In Poland, you can get dental work done cheaply. In the Czech Republic, you can get pregnant via cut rate IVF. But something tells me that Costa Rica’s beautiful beaches and tropical wildlife might be more enticing… at least to me.
If I do decide to book the trip, I’ll do it when we’re onboard so I can get 15% off the fare. When you’re paying four figures a person, that discount is very helpful in making the cruise more affordable.
Next year, my husband retires and will be searching for a new job. We may be poor. I don’t know if it’s better to take the trips now, or save up the money. Of course, if he gets a job quickly, he won’t have the generous vacation he gets today. So maybe it’s best to sneak these trips in while we can… And if we’re poor, we’re poor. He will get a retirement, so that’s a good thing. Unfortunately, his retirement will be cut for the first couple of years because he has to repay money that he got when he temporarily left the Army in the 1990s.
Blame the skank for that decision…
I seriously would have considered going to Costa Rica until I saw something on that tLC E.R. show. A girl went their for her bachelorette party (bachelorette parties have gotten way out of hand IMO) and she picked up this weird parasite that lives o mosquitoes, then gets under your skin and grows, she had several of these weird 1.5-cm larva growing under her skin in the back of her neck. It was one of the grosser things I've ever seen, and I've seen my own fibula and tibia poking through my skin.I would like to go to Cuba if it were legal and if we could do so without financially supporting the Castro regime.
Eew. When I was studying public health, I had to take a course in epidemiology and they brought in this guy who worked at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston who had done a lot of work in Costa Rica. He showed us some pretty weird shit. That guy was one of the more entertaining speakers from my graduate school career. I remember him telling us that just being BORN in the South puts you at a higher risk of having a stroke, statistically speaking. And he actually had studies to prove it. Sometimes, I really miss school and the stimulation of having an actual job. I was actually giving some thought to going back for another degree or something, but then it occurred to me that I don't use the three I have and I'm still paying for them. Oddly enough, I had a dream this morning that I went to Cuba. But it didn't look like what Cuba must look like. For one thing, it was totally deserted. And I remember telling someone I knew in high school who was in my dream that I already had two master's degrees, but was coming back to my undergrad school to take my junior year. Odd. I have school on the brain, obviously.