Last June 2000 in Mae Hong Son, Northern Thailand, my guide and I were travelling to Pai Village by motorbike. We travelled over the mountains and stopped at a roadside restaurant for dinner. We both ended up with the restaurant owner in his truck travelling to Pai. I had asked him how much it was for a nice home around the area and his house happened to be for sale so he wanted me to buy it. I told him I couldn't because it was too big for a single man. He introduced me to a 19-year-old Thai village girl and suggested I marry her so I could buy his house. Well, we exchanged phone numbers. I said I would keep in contact with him, which I did. I don't want to buy the house or get married to a 19-year-old Thai lady - I am 46 years old. She is old enough be my daughter. Well, I will return this year to say hello.

That's all folks.

Take care,

John

So where exactly was this house then?

May last year, myself and a friend (James) arrived on the Island of Koh Pha-Ngan. Haad Rin Beach seemed to be the best place to stay as the highlight of our trip was to be the Full Moon party on Rin Beach later on that month. It was the first time we had travelled (properly) and we liked what we saw. The laid back friendly attitude of everyone beat London hands down. We were both to stay in Thailand for a month. After that I was gonna come home but James was to go on to Aus to work for a year.

It was about 3am on Hadd Rin Beach, Drop Inn Bar, and it was a normal night except maybe a little busier than usual as it was Full Moon in a few days. We were all sitting in a group passing round the buckets of Sang-Som wiskey and red bull,. Everyone was pretty pissed by now (nothing new) except for James who was well out of it. He couldn't speak properly and was spilling his drink all over the table and everyone around it. We were all laughing at him and taking the piss as he was all over the place… Anyway, about 4 a.m. he decided to go back to the bungalow, which was situated at the very end of Rin Beach on the mountain...

Our bungalow was up a big slope and our balcony hung over a drop that must have been 20 foot. I thought James going back was a good idea as I was in just a bad state the night before and needed to sleep it off. Anyway, you can guess what happened but here it is in more detail...

Earlier that day a Thai friend of ours had given us a hammock but we hadn't put it up yet... When James got back he Tried to tie the hammock up on our balcony but basically made a f*!+ up of it and ended up falling off the balcony... I came back about an hour later to find him lying at the bottom of the ditch. His head was smashed open, both legs were covered in blood and his shoulder was also covered in blood... (lot of blood) anyway he was half screaming in pain, half close to passing out... I carried him up the drop and put him on his bed and he was complaining about the bone moving in his leg... I was in shock (drunk, woops) so I didn't believe it was broke... Anyway I bent down and had a look at it and his leg was broke. It was facing the wrong way, bent in an arch like a banana... from there I had carry him down the slope on my shoulders (he's much bigger than me by the way) and I was pissed out of my head as well... We had to get a pick up truck to the local hospital in Thongsala... To add top his already 'fun' night, when we got there, before he was given any painkillers the nurse stitched up a bad cut on his shin directly where his leg was broke... Anyway, you can imagine the rest (boat trip to hospitals, iron rods inserted, missing the full moon, missing his Australia trip etc. etc.)

Needless to say that was a bad experience for both of us but myself and James, who is just out of crutches 8 months later, will be returning to the Land of Smiles in June when we will be full mooning it hopefully for the first time without any problems...

WEHEY Keep it real...

Ad

Adam - yeah - that's grim. Anyone able to out grim that?

This all happened in 'Nam in Feb 2000 in a small touristy town called Nah Trang. When we got there this was the town we headed to immediately because we where to meet some friends there. Finally we were a gang of five people - me, three Swedish friends (Lisa, Janne, Asa), and an American friend (Justin). We decided to rent motorbikes to go to the central highlands, partly because we wanted to go for a ride and partly to look at the hill tribes and do some sightseeing. At the same time that we were supposed to leave there were a lot of people on the roads 'cause the Vietnamese celebrated their New Years on the 5th of February this year. Chuc Mun Nam moi, Happy New Year :)

Anyway, we were supposed to leave on the 2nd and be gone for five to ten days but we noticed that there was a lot of trouble finding someone to rent motorbikes to us during Tet (New Year), but finally we found someone who could do it. We decided to meet early on the morning of the 2nd to go get the bikes. All of us Swedes where there on the morning, but Justin didn't show up so we went to do some shopping and find him afterwards. When we got to his hotel he showed to be to hung over from the last night so we had to go to the bank and stuff without him. Around noon he came to the meeting point and told us that apparently someone had stolen all his cash and travellers checks the night before 'cause he were to drunk to notice which meant that all of that day we couldn't do anything but try to fix everything for him, especially since the banks were to be closed for the following days because of Tet. Anyway, the next morning we got three bikes and could start going north and we didn't get that far before our problems started... at 4p.m.

The bike that Lisa and I were riding got a flat tire in the middle of nowhere, we had to walk the bike for maybe a kilometre or so until we found a place in a small village where they knew how to fix the three! holes we had. Anyway, when the tire was fixed it was to dark to keep going, but the villagers didn't seem to want us to stay there so we had no choice but to keep on. Eventually we came to a larger village and asked at the first building if they knew anywhere to stay for the night. Of course no one spoke any English, but they invited us to have some tea and "talk". After some time had passed they showed us a big room (apparently someone's) where we could sleep. Free of charge. When we looked around the place it appeared to be the local police station ;) Everyone there was very nice and we had no more trouble.

The next day we went to a small town by the lake, checked in to a regular hotel, we got a somewhat expensive room. A 'two bedroom' that we were going to sleep everyone in, for US$10. When everything was settled and we had gotten the bags into the room the personnel came to the room and was shocked that all of us were going to sleep in there, even though we had arranged everything with them before we got in the room. They told us that it wasn't allowed and that we would have to get at least one more room... After a rather big argument we decided to move on instead to a larger town some 50km away even though it meant going almost all the way in pitch darkness.

Halfway there we witnessed the scene of a motorbike crash, but we didn't get involved. We got to the town without any difficulties, got a very nice room at a hotel and went out to celebrate New Years Eve. At 12.00 p.m. there was nothing more happening then a transvestite show on the local marketplace. And they sang badly... The next day we moved further north, stopped in a small village to get some bread for lunch and as usual we got a BIG crowd of people just standing around looking. This was a bit unfortunate 'cause the road was a bit jammed for all the people and a mother with a small child who also stopped to look. The child let go of his mother's hand and ran straight onto the road when there was a motorbike coming who couldn't stop. Since we were first on the scene this time, we helped all we could, but there wasn't much to do but to put some paper on the bleeding on the kids head, and then the Vietnamese drove him to whatever hospital there was around there. A little bit shocked, even though the injury didn't seem to be bad, we moved on and drove for another 250km that day. We ended up in a town called Kum Tum and decided to stop there for the following day and then head back "home".

In the evening we ventured out to find a place to eat but all the restaurants seemed to be closed since it was Tet. After a while we found one that seemed to be open and suddenly found ourselves among a lot of Vietnamese people having a family dinner. We got invited immediately and one of them, the towns only "medical man" who also owned the only pharmacy in town turned out to speak a bit of English and some French (which Lisa speaks some as well). They started right away to treat us to their special Tet food and rice wine and they gave us a lot of beer and soft drinks. When it was only us and the doctor left he took us to a small restaurant that was still open and bought us Chinese noodle soup which apparently also is what they eat during Tet. And more beer of course. Then he took us to the big show in town (only during Tet), which was some kind of Lotto they called it, when you have a sheet of paper with different numbers on it and you are supposed to have five in a row of the numbers they call out. Well not exactly call out, they had transvestites singing the numbers...all to a very bad song. There we stayed for too long and the doctor kept buying these expensive lottery tickets for us. Finally we moved on and he invited us to his home ( in the middle of the night) where he took out a lot of food and fruit (and beer) to give us. He introduced us to his daughter and his wife and then let them cook some food for us while we moved into their living room to sing with him. He took out a guitar and started playing "I just called to say...", during the time we were there he played it four times and singing as loud as he could. Finally we were to tired so we thanked him and he said to meet the following day.

The next day we did some sightseeing, then went to meet this guy again. I think we came to his house around noon, surprised to see him awake and not hung over we sat down to talk for a while and he served us beer and wine, which he got very disappointed if we didn't accept, so...We sat there for half an hour and then he took us to a cockfighting game. After watching the bloody fight for ten minutes none of us wanted to stay and we all felt a bit sick so we told him we should meet him in the evening instead. We went to see how some of the hill tribes lived, visited an orphanage where some people with very big hearts worked, there were almost a hundred people working for nothing to help the kids in the area that had been abandoned. At the time we where there, there were 235 children living there. Of course we had to donate some money that we really couldn't afford... In the evening we were tired as usual, but had some tea with the doctor, thanked him and said goodbye. The next day we were supposed to go back to Nah Trang, or at least as far as possible and we had more then 400km to go. We woke up at 5.45 a.m. climbed up to the roof of the hotel and watched the sunrise and all of us felt it was going to be a good day. We were wrong.

Our first problem came around 10 a.m. when Justin had a flat tire and the air had started leaking out of the tire of my bike. This was easily fixed though and we didn't spend more then an hour with it. We found some guy who had everything to fix bikes at his home so we played with the village children while he fixed our bikes. Since he was so nice, we gave a bit more money then he asked for and everyone was happy. A couple of hours later the brakes of Justin's bike seemed to be quite bad, but we looked at them and managed to fix them up a bit. This happened a couple of times until they didn't work at all. This of course is really bad, but what's worse is that at the time we were driving on REALLY bad roads. Potholes everywhere, Vietnamese people going to fast and not a town in sight. Considering that Justin couldn't use his brakes at all, he took point and Lisa and I were determined not to let him out of sight even though he drove like a maniac on these roads. After two hours of not very smooth driving we entered a larger village and then it happened...Justin was on the left side of the road (wrong) to avoid some big potholes and there were two people standing there with there bicycles, he honked his horn and tried to steer away but they didn't move an inch so he hit one of the bikes. Lisa and I were right behind and just saw him crash and fly over the bike.

In the five seconds it took us to stop our bike and get to him we saw him sitting up swearing so we hoped he just had gotten some scratches. When I reached him I saw he was holding his foot and there was blood bubbling out of his ankle, we got our paper out and stopped the blood from flowing, and at that time Asa and Janne had reached us and there was as usual a big crowd of people around, only this time they were trying to help. One elderly man started chewing some leaves that we should put on the wound but when I removed the paper we noticed that all the flesh in to the bone was missing and it was quite a big hole, they just put more paper on and put him on a motorbike with Lisa on the back to go to the hospital. I got Justin's bike and tried not to lose them, the Vietnamese driver was going fast on the bad roads and without any breaks I had some trouble catching up with them. But we got to the hospital without any further problems. There we were the main attraction again, we had to do a lot of paperwork, and the doctors cleaned the wound best they could and after a while they took him into surgery. The rest of us waited outside and started to get irritated with the 30 children gathering around us yelling "hello" and "what's your name". After an hour or so, they told Janne and me to carry him to a bed, a bed of steel and hard wood and no sheets or mattress. They told us we could stay in the hospital for the night so the rest of us got the same kind of uncomfortable beds. The police were there and there was a lot of more paperwork to be done, but at least they brought in the towns English teacher, who of course didn't speak much English but it was enough for us to understand at least. Then we called the place we rented the bikes and told them what had happened and asked them to come pick up the bike as they had promised to do if we had any problems, but the only thing they replied was that it wasn't their problem and that we should rent a minibus instead...the doctor told us he would fix the bus for the following day, so the four of us took of at one p.m. to get the two bikes back to Nah Trang.

Considering the condition of the road we didn't get here until late evening and then we found out that all the hotels in the city were full so we had to sleep on mattresses on the floor of the living room in one hotel. That wasn't so bad, at least we had mattresses. Of course there were more trouble, the minibus never came and we called the hospital and they told us they had some problems with the bus so they'll be a day late. And to rent the bus is going to cost us $60, which we can't afford, especially Justin who don't even have any money until the banks open and he can go to a city far away from here to get his new travellers checks. At the time of writing Justin hasn't gotten here yet, we have tried to persuade the ones we rented the bikes from to pay for the bus but it seemes impossible, but we got a Vietnamese friend here who tells us that they have to pay for it since thay apperently aren't insured for renting bikes to foreigners and if we go to the police thay are going to ghave to pay a lot more :) We will just have to see what happens tonight when he's coming... P.S. What did happen after that was that we had to lend money for Justin to pay for the minibus and then he got some money back from where we rented the bikes. The hospital bill was US$15 including surgery, two nights in the hospital and all medication.

Martin Dujmovic
Gothenburg in Sweden.

Martin - a pretty grim tale well told. Anyone out there has a worse story?

Hi, KSR:

Love the site. Just thought you'd like to know that on my last trip to what I thought was a deserted island, I came across a group of people playing on a beach. It was a beautiful place. They were cool people, too, and one guy actually met that actor dude with the blond hair, the fat guy in that Beach movie, Leonard, or something. Anyway, this guy spat on the dude. Cool.

Peter B.
Newark, N.J.

Peter, thanks for that edifying tale. Travel is meant to broaden the mind and it's obvious you need as much travel as possible. Cool. However, you were the only one to write in September so you get the T-Shirt! Enjoy...