Nov 04 2008
Cheap Dental Care in Malaysia
I need a crown on a tooth: the quote I got in Australia was A$1500 (say around US$1300 when the exchange rate isn’t stupid i.e. a month ago!) and that seems to be around the same as the US price. Now I am not used to paying this sort of price for fairly routine dental care: in fact the same procedure would cost be around $700 at “home” in New Zealand. Unfortunately New Zealand is an expensive flight away from Perth. So I took to the internet to see where I could find some cheap dental care: and the answer was Malaysia.
I got on the phone, we share a timezone which helps, and discovered that the same procedure would cost me somewhere between US$250 to US$600 - the high end was with the Prime Minister’s dentist in the spectacular Petronas Two Towers in downtown Kuala Lumpur, the cheapest still spoke fluent English on the phone (that’s the receptionist not the dentist) and was recommended in expat forums.
Photo Credit
Interestingly compared to the rest of South-East Asia, with the exception of Singapore and Brunei, Malaysia is one of the most expensive destination and is easily much more expensive to travel in than its near neighbours such as Thailand and Indonesia and nearby Philippines.
In other words I could probably around US$150 for the same procedure: especially if got out my old Bahasa phrase book. There is a lot of cheap dental care in Malaysia and elsewhere in Asia.
Am I going to go there for my dental work? Probably I am waiting for the best
The question is why are not more Australian’s going there for it? I think because it just hasn’t occurred to them. Its not a question about training standards, most of the practices I contacted had dentists who had been trained in Australia, New Zealand or the UK.
