After what? Two months? I now believe I know almost the entire story of the events leading up to, and immediately following my impressive motorcycle accident. I still do not know what actualy caused the accident, the police insinuated that somebody walked out in front of me, but the police report simply states that “an accident happened”. I do know the combination of a broken collar bone, two broken ribs, and a broken cheek bone, along with the cuts and bruises hurt like a bitch. So without further ado let me tell what I do know with the aid of pictures…

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.

Tags: Broken Bones, CBR 150, Jomtien, Pattaya Memorial Hospital, Tramadol

So we had one of those days today, when the gods of TOT and out local ISP decide we need a day off, and make sure that our internet connections does not work during prime time work hours, here upon Kph Phangan.

Luckily Joakim and myself managed to get the days scheduling out of the way before things went bad, but that’s just about all we managed to get done today.

I always worry on days like this that some disaster will befall one of the team members, from a work standpoint, and I will be unavailable to resolve the situation.

Maybe I should relent and give out my telephone number to the remote team members, certainly to Taylor out editor at least.

Anyway, as I was laying on the balcony today, hoping that the gods of TOT would forgive us and let us have our toys back, I found an interesting view of the ceiling, so snapped it with my phone, here it is:

A little weird I know, but interesting enough.

Oh well, lets hope our internet connections stays up now, and I can get a full days work in tomorrow.

Tags: Internet, Koh Phangan, TOT

Today I’m going to head out to the village for a very odd sounding religious holiday. It’s a localised thing, not something that is celebrated all over Thailand. Basically the entire village will spend the day cooking lots of food, and then they will set it all out as a feast, for the ghosts of dead family members to eat.

Once the ghosts are finished, the living people get to eat everything that is left over, personally I think it’s an excuse to have a bloody great party but who cares, I love Isaan food so I hope the ghosts are not too hungry!

The last seven days have been the most boring seven days of my life, I am talking mind numbing boring, trapped in a place that is not my home, unable to go outside and unable to leave. Let me explain.

My girlfriend and Son spend the week staying with her father in a small village about 15 minutes away from the apartment in town that I rent, we have found this the best way all round, it means I have peace to work in the week, she gets to take care of her father and stay with her family, and we have a good time at the weekends when she comes to stay with me. During the week I drive out to the village two or three times to have lunch and play with the baby for a while so she gets a break.

So last Friday morning I jumped on my motorcycle and rode out to the village, it started to rain on the way, very heavy rain, as it had done for several days previously. I stayed for a few hours then decided to head home, I drove out of the village, pulled out on to the main road and drove a couple of kilometres before finding the road was flooded, I continued on very slowly, driving through water several centimetres deep, until I came to the road bridge over the river, one major problem here, the bridge wasn’t there anymore, just a gap in the road and a raging torrent streaming through it. I had no choice but to turn around and head back to the village, I figured I would stay the night and things would dry up in the morning and I would find another way to cross the river. How wrong I was, the rain continued non-stop until the next morning, the TV was telling us that the entire province was flooded and the rain was not going to stop for several days.

Each day the water rose higher, eventually completely flooding almost all of the farm land around the village, check out this picture above, this used to be rice fields just outside the village, now completely ruined by the floods. So there I was, trapped in my girlfriend’s village, unable to leave the house let alone get back to my apartment. The rain stopped 3 days ago, it has only been today that I was able to navigate the still flooded roads and drive home.

The real problems will start next year though, an entire region with its yearly rice crop ruined, many of the farmers grow the rice to feed their families, not to sell, I really do not know what these people will do next year, rice is the backbone of their staple diet, without it they will have very little to eat and no money to buy rice.