Back in the days when I thought "Deep Throat" was a movie about dentists, going to one seemed to be a lot cheaper than it is now.
Padma and I clocked up five visits over the past six weeks (three to her; two to me), and our wallets are almost two thousand dollars lighter. For the same money we could've had a fully-paid two weeks in Bali - airfares, accommodation, the lot - AND get all the dental work done in one of Denpasar's excellent dental clinics equipped with all the latest doodahs and run by foreign-trained dentists. It's worth hopping on a plane for when a filling costs you $40 instead of $400 and an extraction $50 instead of $500.
Mind you, it's a long way to go when you're in pain and so I had a tooth extracted by a local dentist and paid the $495. And that should've been the end of it but she found something else which had never bothered me before but obviously bothered her.
And so I went back for a second visit, had a filling done on the "something else" and paid another $400 --- and I have been in almost constant - a low but constant - pain ever since.
I'll be back in the Bay on Monday for another white-knuckle ride in the dentist chair and a shaky-handed entry of my PIN into her EFTPOS terminal because I very much doubt she does free "warranty work".
