So, lets start with what I was doing just before the accident. I was in a guesthouse/bar named Ban Luk Kha on Soi Chaiyapruak in Jomtien. I had been drinking a few of these it seems:

I then received a call from a young lady I was kind of involved with for a while, at around 2am, asking me to go and pick here up from Soi 6 just off Jomtien Beach Road, so then I got on this bike:

I then drove down to the beach road, turned right and rode at a steady pace towards Soi 6 to pick up this young lady:

Now this is where it goes blank, I never made it to Soi 6, the next thing I remember was waking up in this place:

This is Pattaya Memorial Hospital, where I stayed for almost 2 days, and was presented with a hospital bill for17,500 Baht when I left, thank god I came around enough to discharge myself before they bankrupt me!

So I left the hospital looking like this:

I then checked myself into a really grotty hotel room, and stayed there for about the next 10 days, eating handfuls of this stuff:

And that’s it, as much as I know, I guess I will never discover just what caused the accident, although I am certain it could not have been my fault. The reasoning for this is simple, nobody came knocking at my hotel door asking for compensation for their broken body/car/motorcycle/dog, and in Thailand nobody would miss the slimmest chance to make some money out of the misfortune of another.

Well the last week has seen my three buses arrive in quick succession. Firstly I am snowed under with work right now, not a problem in itself, but definitely a problem when considered as part of the overall situation. Secondly, Nuth has been sick, meaning I have had to take care of Leon, no time for work, anyone who thinks you can take care of a baby and still get a full days work in is living on a different planet. Lastly, the Internet in the apartment building has been terrible lately, most of the time it is unusable. So between looking after Leon, and a dodgy Internet connection, I have managed to dig myself in to quite a hole with a huge backlog of work. This week I am going to need to put in something like 60 hours just to catch up! Oh well, fingers crossed I can clear my desk by the end of the week and take a couple of days off.

I can’t believe how small he looks in that video, it makes him look like a giant now!

This whole working to produce an identifiable product is really something pretty new to me, in the past deadlines have been this vague concept that never actually applied to me, or if they did I neatly sidestepped them in some way. Not now though, if I don’t produce I don’t get paid.

Sometimes going for a massage fixes it for a couple of days but I just do not have time to do that at the moment as I have far too much work I need to get finished. I think perhaps I am going to try and build myself a more ergonomic desk, sitting in the garden stretching across a bamboo table with no back support probably isn’t doing it any good at all.

The thought of my only child growing up as a peasant in Surin, with no health care, schooling or social security is quite alarming. Out working in a rice field or a factory for 10 hours a day at the age of 12, earning about £3 a day.

Sure I have life insurance, but what are the chances of the insurance company paying out to a Thai girl who doesn’t even really understand what insurance is? There is no way she would ever know how to go about trying to claim it.

So I have a plan, but it has one vital flaw, I will outline the plan first and then uncover the problem with it.

Right now land prices on the island are starting to rise, it’s inevitable that they will continue to rise, this is the last island in Thailand of any decent size that has yet to be developed into a luxury tourist destination. Already we have a couple of hotels being built and the whole Tong Nai Pan area is crawling with investment money. It won’t be long before the rest of the island starts getting the same treatment.

So I figure buy a piece of land here and build a house, I would need about 1.5 million Baht for this, about £25,000. I then sign this over to the child in trust form. That way if something happens to me both my girlfriend and child have something solid, they can sell the house and land and go back to Surin and live comfortably for the rest of their lives.

The upside of this plan is that as long as I’m still alive and kicking the land and house will go up in value and it will be quite a good chunk of profit, land prices over on Samui have trebled in the last 5 years. So when we finally get sick of Koh Phangan, when it’s full of package holidaymakers, we can sell the house and land for several times what we paid for it and go and buy a farm in Surin. That way I get to live comfortably and my family are taken care of when I pop my clogs.

But here is the kicker, I don’t have £25,000 and I can’t think of a way to get it quick enough to take advantage of the currently low price of land. Sure I could work and save for a couple of years but by then I will have missed the boat, land prices will have already risen.

So I’ve been scratching my head and losing sleep trying to figure out how to do this, I’m stumped though, can’t think of a single thing.

Well I have now experienced death and to tell the truth it wasn’t that bad.

I went on this night dive last week, we took the boat out to sail rock in the late afternoon. Our first dive was in the evening whilst it was still light, I buddied up with Juergen as I was going to be taking the navigation module of the advanced divers course during the night dive and he wanted to make sure I had everything under control and was ready to take the test.

I’ve had this back injury and this was the first time I have dived since I thought it had gotten better. As we swam around the east edge of sail rock and hit the strong current I realised it was going to be tough. My back was complaining about kicking against the strong current and I was quickly out of breath, I guess sitting on cushions for a month doesn’t do a lot for you overall fitness.

Back on the boat we had some food and planned our night dive, about 7:30 pm we kitted up and entered the water. We would be diving as a group, all 6 of us instead of the usual buddy pair system. We descended to around 12 metres to a small ledge on the side of the coral wall and there we huddled together and turned off our lights to allow our eyes to adjust to the darkness.

We followed the same dive plan as myself and Juergan had swam earlier but the wind had gotten up and the current was a lot stronger. I was at the back of the pack behind a fairly messy diver who kept stopping and losing his orientation. This forced me to stop also, several times this happened, he was also in danger of kicking my mask off so I was forced to hang back further. All this start stop in the strong current put a lot of stress on my back and eventually it gave out completely, I couldn’t move my legs. So there I am, 25 metres below the surface, too far down for an emergency ascent, I can’t move my legs and the strong current is slamming me into the coral wall. I really thought that was it for me, I was so far behind the other divers and it was so dark they had no idea I was in trouble.

I guess most people wonder how they would react in a situation like this? Would they panic or keep a clear head? Would they remember what they need to do to get to the surface safely without risking the bends?

Well I have to say I had a mixed reaction, initially a little panic, breathing way too fast, great huge gulps of air from my tank. I did manage to calm myself down though once I realised smashing into the coral wasn’t going to kill me anytime soon (bloody hurts though). I managed a fairly well controlled ascent, well I must have because I’m still alive today with no nitrogen retention problems.

Luckily the waves pushed me back to the dive boat and I didn’t need to kick my legs much, the boat boy helped me get my kit off in the water and helped me up the ladder.

But boy oh boy what an intense experience, and I am really surprised to realise I thoroughly enjoyed it!

So I went to meet Ba Ki (Auntie Ki) and she performed a miracle, 2 days later and I have no pain all, just a little discomfort now and then but nothing to make me say ouch.

Now all I need is my bike back, the repairs are due to be finished in a couple of days.

One of the worries of living in Thailand for me, especially somewhere with so little infrastructure as Koh Phangan is what would happen if I was ill? It’s not like being in the UK where all you have to do is trundle off to the nearest hospital and have a chat with somebody who speaks the same language as you. Here it’s all very different.

So I was a little more worried than usual 4 nights ago when I finally crashed my motorcycle. I guess it’s been overdue for a few months now and a lesson I knew I would inevitably learn at some stage.

I hit some sand on a tight bend, going pretty slowly, the bike slid, not a problem in itself, but then it slid onto the grass verge and flipped over, this catapulted me off the bike, but unluckily there was a long drop down a steep slope to the beach that I flew down.

So I crawled up the verge and lay there groaning, something was definitely wrong with my back. I called Nuth and she came and picked me up, not a single scratch on the bike but I can’t even stand up.

So I have just spent 4 days laying in bed trying to decide if I am going to throw myself on the mercy of the local hospital. I have sprained my back before and recognise the pain, nothing much can be done except painkillers and rest. We shall see tomorrow, if it’s no better I might have to go and see a doctor.

I woke up yesterday lunchtime with what I though was a hangover, but it didn’t go away it just got worse, by early evening my right ear was aching a lot, very painful and I felt generally washed out. I went to bed early but woke up a couple of hours later with the whole right side of my face hurting, a quick look in the mirror confirmed that the entire right side of my face had swollen up like a football. I smoked a spliff and managed to get back to sleep for a couple of hours then woke up again with the pain, had another spliff and managed to get back to sleep again, rinse and repeat every 2 hours all night, not fun.

So I had decided to go and buy some antibiotics today, obviously some kind of infection but I was loathe to use antibiotics as they would definitely leave my stomach in a bad way and I would more than likely not be able to handle the Thai food for a while in that case.

I went for my usual juice and coffee at John & Wan’s place and great amusement was had by all looking at my football face. Wan’s friend suggested that her mother who is an old Chinese woman could heal it with old Thai medicine. I figured hey, why not give it a try, if it works it saves me using antibiotics.

They took me next door and I meet this very old woman, who takes a look at my face and disappears inside the house. She comes out with a bowl that contains something very blue, I have no idea what it is. She then smears this blue stuff all over the right side of my face and makes some little markings in it with a piece of bamboo. This is what it looks like!

As you can see it’s quite dramatic looking! I had to drive all around town on my scooter and visit the supermarket looking like this! I have to leave it on until tomorrow and she tells me the swelling should have gone by then.