I’ve always had irrational fears of things touching me (especially my feet) while in the water. Yesterday my fears were beyond rationalized. 

But should I leave that nice cliffhanger sitting there while I roll back to the beginning of Thai #5. We’ve been here 5 times. It’s the boyfriends pick. I usually pick a dud (I’m being somewhat sarcastic) ie: Chile, Vietnam, Hawaii, Iceland. They were all lovely in their own way, but Thailand, and specifically Koh Kood, holds a special place for us. And we’ll keep coming back for more rab moo. 

So we arrived Saturday morning (12:30AM) into Bangkok. Customs was a nightmare as per usual, pushing 1.5 hours in lineup. Got our bags and acquired a cab in the nicely organized cab fetching lineup where you get a number and get the next arriving cab. Our pick of the litter was what appeared to be someone’s great grandpa, who, upon sitting in the drivers seat put in his dentures and pulled out a magnifying glass to look at the map Thor had ready for him (thai language street names for the win). He drove like he had just escaped a nursing home and he was on the run. But we didn’t die, and he brought us to the right place. Peachy. 

Last year our arrival time must’ve been later, because this year the Boonsiri office wasn’t open for another 2 hours. The time zipped by, Thor fetched us some drinks, the man inside, casually sleeping on the floor, as per the norm, opened early so we brought our bags in and we went and took a boo at dirty old Khao San Rd, still dirty. By this point, 330/4AM, it was clean up hour and most shops and stalls were closed and sweeping garbage into piles, and washing away farang vomit. Such a delight. 

Albeit there was one diamond in the rough. The sweetest little granny cooking up some snacks, with a few other stalls around hers still open as well. My spider senses tell me it was a family set up, with the daughter selling bbq and granddaughter slanging drinks.  Anyways, granny’s was the only one with other local patrons so we saddled up. A group of four teenagers were getting breakfast takeaway, as well as a policeman, whom she refused payment from, even after he insisted multiple times. She packed up their meals in to go containers consisting of styrofoam clamshells, small plastic bags of sauce,  inside more plastic bags.

We were next, Thor did some travel charades to let her know we would share one dish, and I sat down on a tiny plastic stool a foot away. She prepared a tasty little snack that I’ll fail terribly at describing to you, but I’ll try. So, setting the scene; she’s got a round relatively flat wok that’s oiled and must be pretty dang hot. She takes a small dough ball and stretches it out to a tortilla size, it’s a wetter dough than tortilla dough, more like bread dough, but can be stretched thin enough to be see-through. So, she plops that down on the wok, breaks 2 eggs, scrambles on top of the dough, tosses in cooked chicken, onion, chilli, spices. She folds over the dough edges to make a square packet larger than a large hand and flips it around to cook it for a minute, uses a metal spatula to cut it into bite size pieces – still in the wok, everything nice and toasted and crisped up a bit. I think she doused some fish sauce in it at some point. So, stuffed tortilla is done, she scoops it into a styrofoam box, opens a pack of (homemade) quick pickle cucumber and onion topping, and douses the whole lot with a generous helping of a mystery clear syrup like gel, that I have no idea what it would’ve been. 

So bloody good.

Would I eat again? 10/10 yes. Did it screw with my digestive system? Nope! Didn’t make me feel gross, not even the slightest. I didn’t want to overeat as we had a 5 hour spastic bus ride coming up, and it filled me up perfectly. Thor tried to tip her a bit extra, which she didn’t want, but instead took a little and made us a dessert of banana “pancake” – using that term loosely, stuffed crepe thing with an egg and banana – but not eggy, cooked in the same fashion but doused in sweetened condensed milk, also very delicious. Served with large toothpicks for stabbing and consuming. 

So. Who wants to hear about my attempted murder/stabbing by a sting ray? Fast forward through getting to Koh Kood, you can look in the archives, same same.

I’m already a pretty “paranoid in the water” person (I shriek internally/ sometimes externally if seaweed brushes against me and I refuse to walk on eel grass at home, in or out of water). So of course this would happen. This went down yesterday, our first full day on island, March 17th. We had spent the morning finding Thor a swimsuit because, males. He also wanted fishing rods and other boy stuff. So we had a relatively late start getting to the beach, probably pushing 2. We went to south end of Chams beach, where we had found a trail down to previously. We arrive and things look just peachy peachy, and its a hot one. He’s a fearless male, so he swims out neck deep and paddles around without a care. I usually go in to my waist and dunk to get my shoulders wet. Because, sharks and monsters. Sometimes if we’re coordinated and heading out together I’ll “baby koala” on his back for a while, – SO MY FEET DON’T TOUCH THE GROUND – seldom pushing 20 minutes, I’d rather be on safe dry land. 

So yesterday I was going in for my pre departure from the beach dip, usual routine, waist deep and heading back in when I was stabbed. I was in less than knee deep water, clear sandy beach, a few lingering pieces of fluffy seaweed I was avoiding, some dead coral I was avoiding, when bam, I felt two sharp jabs, some flapping fishy (also horrendous) feeling and I was off in a one legged sprint the hell away from there. Squawking and calling for backup. After the initial jab I surveyed for damage which was apparent with streams of blood coming from inner mid right foot and near big toe also on right foot. I could hop and put weight on the outer portion of my right foot back to my shady sandy safe spot, all the while hyperventilating and putting pressure on the initial wound. 

I think I was more in shock at this point than anything. Seeing blood in a foreign country gives me serious anxiety. After a few minutes of applying pressure and slowly rocking back and forth I laid back/ melted into the sand with my leg elevated and my other leg supporting it. The pain was probably a 7/10 at that point. I stayed like this for 15-20 mins, and the pain wasn’t subsiding so it was go time. 

I really wanted:

Internet – what did this/action plan

Shower – get sand off/ clean wound

Air conditioning – because it’s dang hot/ stress sweating

So with Thor’s assistance I hobbled on the beach back towards the trail, when it came time to traverse the hill and tricky spots Thor ripped his new bathing suit attempting to help me (right where the junk is – which lightened my mood) and he proceeded to piggy back me up the 150m remaining hill to the scooter. Which was pretty nice. It was probably pushing 30 degrees by then. It sounded like hard work. 

We gingerly scooted back to the bungalow, each bump on the road sending excruciating pain into the ball of my foot and to the tips of my toes. I tried to sneak past sweet Gop, as to not cause a scene, but she spotted me hobbling along back to the room, holding back tears, probably all puffy faced and concerning, desperate for doctor google to tell me what would do this to my delicate footy and what I needed to do next. 

The skin on the inner half of my right foot was now red and tight. The color was mottled red around the main stab wound, mid foot appeared to be getting a bit blue and bruised. 

Gop said we should go to the hospital and called her husband Art to leave his mid day poker game and come look at my foot. He was worried about my heart rate, and said (loosely translated) that if in 15 minutes my heart is beating rapidly we will go to pharmacy. Getting back on a scooter really wasn’t top of my list. Nor was a rural Thai hospital. I honestly didn’t think there was anything they could do. Maybe some painkillers would’ve been nice, but I really just wanted to iodine, elevate and have a cold water bottle on it. The pain was maxing out at this point, feeling like a hot needle was jamming into the joints of my toes. 

I was as comfortable as possible – while wriggling in waves of pain. We didn’t know it was a stingray at this point. Doctor Thor was concerned that whatever stabbed me might’ve broken a piece off inside my foot – how calming, and was reassuringly saying “fish can’t swim backwards” since he thought it might’ve been a needlefish. So the internet told him to apply pressure to the site and see if that caused any more pain, which it didn’t, it already hurt 10/10.

It’s only been a day, so we’re still not 100% sure there’s nothing in there, but after Art went back to gambling the consensus from the locals was that it was probably a small stingray. And after some google image searches we can’t argue that. There were many examples that looked identical to my wounds, acquired in the same situation, shallow waters, clear sand. No sign of stingray as they hide under sand.

So Thor patiently cleaned and rinsed the site with hot (boiled bottled) water. I wasn’t the most willing victim as I don’t enjoy my feet being touched/ it was still at maximum pain level, so I don’t really know how well he did, but he tried – as I flailed my foot out of his grasp. He applied iodine (I stayed still briefly) and antibiotic infused bandaids and went to find me some drugs. Brought back some aspirin type pills and I wiggled around in pain (8/10)/ feeling sorry for myself for a few hours until I finally fell asleep with my foot on a pile of pillows.

(The second picture is right after the incident, peak swelling & redness, although I realize it’s a terrible pic. The last one is 5 days later, slight bruising but feeling good!)

I woke up a couple times with significantly less pain, and by 7PM it was gone! I was shocked. Thor was shocked. Internet was right regarding time frame of pain. It was a bloody miracle.  And I didn’t have to get my foot amputated!

So hopefully this’ll be the excitement of the trip.

We spent today at another beach and I went back in the water, briefly, and more koala babying than normal. I haven’t got a burn yet, Thor’s a bit pink on his arms, but so far so good. Pretty chill. Just what the doctor ordered.