Today’s story is a short episode of my life. Life has been so “unspectacular” lately that I decided to unpack some older boxes to find good stories to share. This story contains everything what a good story needs, an accident, a dog, a party and obviously a good old lesson.
About 5 years ago, I took all the courage I had back then (which wasn’t too much) and booked a flight to Thailand. The first-time little Lucas was travelling the world all alone. A couple of days alone and I would join a group of friends coming from Australia at the time. We spent two beautiful and exciting weeks in the northern regions of Thailand and decided to go south and enjoy the paradisical sceneries of islands I had never even heard the name of– but paradise is probably the most appropriate description. After 16 hours of traveling in a bus without sleeping and without any air conditioning we arrived extremely sleep deprived in our hostel. First things first, a nap at the beach. We packed our stuff and ran as fast as we could to finally get to the water. It took about 5 minutes and I dreamt of landscapes as beautiful as the one I was actually in. 30 minutes later I woke up with one of the worst sunburns I ever had in my life (I’m a ginger, I had many). But eh! Life goes on, do you think a sunburn can stop me? HA! We rented scooters and drove around Koh Tao, arriving at a different beach with these two giant rocks in the water, about 50 meters from the beach. We saw multiple people climbing the rocks and jumping from the top. Obviously, a thing I also wanted to do… we swam towards the rocks, climbed the smaller one, my buddy in front of me jumped on a small edge of the bigger one, grabbed a little rope and climbed up. My turn… retrospectively speaking it might have not been the best idea doing it being so sleep deprived but eh… I jumped and instead of reaching the rope, I slipped and fell about two meters down in between the rocks. Everybody who has been to the seaside already knows… there are always sharp shells attached to rocks under the water surface. I got to know all of them, every single one personally. I had so many cuts, I can remember only 27 but I do know I had more. First step was swimming back to the beach, I suck so badly in swimming but the fear of being attacked by a shark (there are no sharks in Thailand) made me go around 120 km/h. Arriving at the beach again, about 30 people sitting in a restaurant watch me like I was a monkey in a Zoo, all but one elderly Thai woman who ran to me, without saying a word she grabbed my hand and pulled me inside a little shed to disinfect my cuts. 10 minutes later, I asked her how I can compensate her, but she just wanted a little donation to fill her first aid kit, I gave her all cash I had and hugged her thanking for the selfless love she showed without even knowing me. Right after, my friend took me to a proper hospital. Well… proper is not the right word I guess, it seemed more like a suburban clothing shop with two huge windows and more audience than a regular football game. Not one person would speak enough English to understand me right but somehow, we understood each other. I had to get a little surgery, 5 stiches in my hand, 5 more on my right foot, plus the thorough cleaning of all the wounds and all this was happening while a dog layed underneath the surgery table, and two Dutch girls who came for their own injuries but joined the distract-Lucas-team thus they sat next two me and shared stories of their lives. On top of that, one of the most annoying cuts was right in the bottom of my foot, when the nurse started cleaning it, she tickled me so intensely, I almost kicked that poor lady in her face.
When I was done, I hugged every single person involved in rescuing me, I left the hospital looking like I was casted for the staff of “the mummy comes back”. The first nights were horrible, the sunburn prevented me from sleeping on my back and belly, the cuts from sleeping on my sides…
In total we had 3 weeks in southern Thailand and exactly one day I was able to take a step inside the water. After that, the risk of getting my wounds infected was too high, so I stayed outside watching my buddies enjoying the water…
After 2 ½ weeks I was done taking antibiotics, perfect timing to enjoy the full moon party… which I did… fire rope skipping, fire pull ups, water slides trough a burning wheel… everything with enough bandages on my body, I could have turned into the human torch…
Well… that’s the story, and now the lesson… It could be something like be careful when you travel, sleep enough, put on sunscreen or don’t overestimate yourself. But honestly, I go for wounds heal, scars vanish but my sweet Thailand experience stays a story worth telling 😉