Happy new year and a trip to the doctor

Firstly happy new year to you all, I hope you had a good new years eve! Mine was pretty good although news of the multiple bombings in Bangkok and Chaing Mai put a bit of a dampener on it.

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.

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