Be safe, don’t be stupid, don’t be me

In my introduceyourself post, I mentioned how I was going to kick my account off by blogging my upcoming trip to Thailand.
Long story short, I spent two days flying there, three days on the beach, and another two days flying back. Why? Read on to find out.

My main purpose in going to Thailand was to rock climb. I love climbing; I read about it, watch videos, watch competitions, although I don’t compete myself. I’ve joked before that people who don’t climb hate climbing because of me. If you aren’t into it, it’s hard to understand the love for it. It’s almost more of a lifestyle than anything.

So my plan was to escape the rainy miserable winter here in Vancouver for a month and get some dry rock and air underneath my feet. I was going solo, with the hope that I could link up with some other climbers there. Railay and Tonsai in the southern end of Thailand are a major climbing destination, so I didn’t see it being difficult to find a partner.

The beach is always busy.

I found a couple people to climb with on my first day I arrived. I didn’t do anything worth spraying about, but it felt good to climb outside after not being out in a couple months. I met up with some fellow Canadians later on in the day and managed to get a bit more in with them.

The next day however, no one was around until the afternoon. There is a lot of food poisoning in that area, and dengue fever was going around as well, so everyone had been taking it easy.
When I found my new friends, a couple of them said they were going to rent a kayak and go check out a slackline strung between some rocks over the ocean. That seemed more ideal than the sitting around I had been doing up to that point, so I opted to join.

It wasn’t too far a paddle; maybe 300 feet out from shore. Brett, the guy I was with, and I immediately noticed how sharp the rocks surrounding the line was, and climbing up them in our bare feet was a slow, careful process.

Garrett Hoppe Photo

On my third or fourth attempt, I started to lose my balance, and when I tried to save myself, I got flung backwards into the sharp rocks. I managed to spin myself around in the air so I hit feet first before falling into the water. I immediately knew that I was in trouble when I surfaced with a large gash across two of my toes. Luckily I do okay around blood, and Brett used to be a lifeguard so he was able keep his head, and we paddled back into shore and he ran to the clinic which was conveniently right there.

The on-site nurse did a great job of patching me up temporarily and helping to arrange for me to get to the nearest emergency room. Hands up if you’ve ever gotten to take an ambulance in a foreign country.

I ended up with a stitch in the bottom of my foot, three in my big toe, and seven in my second. Apparently it was sliced down to the bone, and the doctors showed me the bits of rock they had pulled out.

Needless to say, I was pretty bummed that my trip was so obviously over almost before it began. I could have potentially waited it out and possibly climbed towards the end, but the risk of infection on top of “Tonsai Tummy” and dengue just didn’t seem worth it.
I do hope I’ll be back some day, and maybe I’ll actually get a chance to climb and write about it then.

I also want to take this opportunity to give major shoutouts to everyone who came with me to the clinic and made my life easier, and the Thai doctors and nurses who patched me up.

Till next time.