Mijn reis door Azië: Motorbike accident and a slow recovery

This blog is mainly about my motorbike accident and the time I needed to recover. This is also the reason I was a bit lazy with writing my blog over the last few weeks. Simply because I didn't really do a lot of things, seeing as I wasn't able to do so.

Sunday the 16th of February, I arrived in Kampot. Kampot is one of those amazing places you love instantly. It's impossible not to like Kampot. And then my hostel, Bodhi Villa. It's amazing! It's like heaven on earth! The vibe is unique, the people are amazing, the view is wonderful and the food and drinks are incredible and cheap! The one and only downside of this place are the geckos, which of course also love to hang out at a cool place (in this case on the ceiling above the common area). And, you know, sometimes a gecko's gotta do what a gecko's gotta do. So our conversations were often interrupted by someone screaming because a gecko had shit on them again. Haha!

On Sunday I rented a motorbike and drove around the countryside. The view there is one of the prettiest views I have ever seen. The people were very amazed there was a foreigner there. "Ferang! Ferang!" they yelled when I passed by, which means "Foreigner! Foreigner!". When I took an afternoon break at a local countryside restaurant to drink a sugar palm juice, the lady gave me not only a drink, but also a plate of rice with chicken and green mango with chillisalt. When I wanted to pay for the food, she didn't accept it... She only wanted the 500 riel (12.5 eurocents) for the palm juice, nothing else. I found it strange but I also thought the people were extremely friendly seeing how these people give away things that they can't really miss. It's not as if they are rich, but still they want to give things away to make us feel welcome in their country. So sweet!

Well, my first day in Kampot was amazing! The same evening I met some cool people and we decided to all rent a motorbike and do a day trip to Kep, to the crabmarket and the beach the next day. I had heard really good stories about the crabmarket, and I found out they are all true! We ate loads of crab, prawns, fish and rice and only paid 4 US$ a person for this. And it tasted even better than you can ever imagine!

On the way back over the dusty national highway, which partly consists of gravel- and sandroad, I had a motorbike accident. I was lucky for driving very slow, but the impact was big. Fortunately, it could have been way worse.
What I remembered what happened:
I was driving on a dusty gravel road at when it happened. A few seconds earlier a truck had passed by so it was extremely dusty and the dust was stinging in my eyes. It was difficult to see properly so I slowed down a little. Then, at the time a tuktuk was just passing me by on my left side, I suddenly saw someone standing still right in front of me. I couldn't go left, I couldn't go right and I didn't want to hit the person in front of me. So I hit the breaks as hard as I could. Of course I slipped away because of all the gravel and the next moment I was on the ground. At first, I felt quite okay, so I quickly got up and said: "I'm okay guys!! Nothing wrong!". And then I took one look at my knee and lost consciousness. It looked horrible. A combination of blood and flesh and sand and gravel all in one big hole in my knee. Altea dragged me to the nearest chair at a local family's house and I sat down. What I remember mainly was Tim trying to clean my knee a little, the incredible thirst I suddenly had and only seeing white spots instead of a normal vision.

The local family unfortunately didn't speak any English and didn't have a car so they couldn't really help. After what seemed to have been ages, someone finally pulled a car over and yelled "Hospital!" to them.

After a short ride, we arrived at the hospital. Tim had come with me. We figured that would be easiest because he is also Dutch so we could help each other to translate what had just happened. I guess luck wasn't on my side that day, because the doctor only spoke French! And not even proper French, it was broken French with a strong Cambodian accent in it. Tim didn't speak any French, and I only speak it a little bit. That made things very difficult. Whilst the doctor was cleaning my knee, which hurt like hell, he wanted to talk about what had happened, my medical history and about various illnesses and if I had had the right injections. I don't know how many times I told him "Parlez lentement, s-il vous plait" and "voulez vous répéter, s-il vous plait", but this didn't really help.
Well, after I asked him for some anesthetics (It seemed like he wanted to put the stitches in without any anesthetics) he stitched up my knee. It still doesn't look very pretty, but that's okay. I was happy they at least used sterilized materials (or at least everything looked quite clean and they definitely used a clean needle, I checked that) and were able to help me.

We came back to the hostel and I haven't been out of that place much for the rest of the week.

The next night, I went out with the rest of the group to go to the Rusty Keyhole for their amazing spare ribs. Yes, there was nothing wrong with my appetite. The day that followed they all left and I had planned to leave as well, but that was not an option now. I had to change to another room because mine was already booked, but the treehouse bungalow was still available. I wasn't able to climb the stairs to that bungalow so the hostel told me to wait for this guy named Dave. He would arrive later that day, and maybe he wanted to change bungalows with me. Well, I didn't really have anything better to do because I couldn't go out, so I decided to just sit and wait.

After a few hours a guy came in. He was covered in blood. Guess what?! It was Dave. Dave just had a motorbike accident as well! It was actually quite funny, and useful. Because we were both not really able to go out or do something, we hung out at the lounge area together all week. His legs were working fine, my arms were still ok. So we helped each other out with a lot of things. He went to the bar to order food, I buttoned his shirt. He bandaged my toe, I bandaged his elbow. And luckily for me, he took the treehut bungalow! He looked really funny while climbing up and down the ladder, without being able to hold the rails, but at least he could do it!

The next day, Dave and I went to the hospital together to get our wounds cleaned and to take X-rays. Turned out everything was ok and we both just had to give it some time. We would be fine!
Thanks for being my co-patient Dave!

After our trip to the hospital I decided I would follow the doctors advice and take it easy. I killed a lot of time on the couch with a good book. First in Kampot, then in Phnom Penh and from then on I exchanged the couch for a hammock in Kratie, in Laos, 4000 islands and in Don Det.

I actually didn't do a lot. In Kratie the most exciting thing was the trip to the freshwater Mekong Dolphins. There are only about 170 of these dolphins left in the whole world, and 55 of them live near Kratie. We went there by tuktuk and then on a small boat and we saw so many dolphins! They came quite close to our boat, which was cool because we could really see their faces! After that I realized the trip was a little bit too much for my knee because it gutted again, and I went back into the hammock.

In Don Det I didn't do a lot either the first few days. I hung out a lot with Larissa, Bird and Katja, my two friends from Deventer and a German girl I met in Kampot. Exactly two weeks after the accident I decided that I had healed enough to at least go tubing in the river. Bad decision. The wound hurt again afterwards. But during the tubing we had a lot of fun so I guess it was worth it haha.

After one more day of recovery we all went kayaking! It was a really nice trip including breakfast and a barbecue lunch. We went to see two different waterfalls, we saw some Irrawaddy Dolphins and we did a lot of kayaking. An excellent workout after such a long time of doing nothing!

The next day, Larissa and Bird left and Katja got sick so me and Katja decided to stay a little longer. We both had a recovery day that day. It didn't turn out to be one recovery day as Katja was still sick the next day and I had already given up the hope for my knee to heal soon. The next day I went tubing with Brett, a Canadian guy. We took it really slow and had a really nice relaxing day on the water. Anddd I got a really nice tan!

The next day Katja was feeling slightly better so we decided to take the bus to Tadlo, a small village slightly north from Pakse. We arrived when the sun was already down so we had a nice dinner and went to sleep.

The next day, we did a short hike to the waterfalls, which is actually the only real thing there is to do in Tadlo. We decided to rent an elephant to make a ride along the river and to a local village! It was a really nice experience. Our elephant driver was such a sweet guy and he really cared for the elephant. That was good to see. After the ride we got invited by some Lao girls to join them for a beer and of course we couldn't resist! The girls were all soldiers from Pakse, a big city about 100 kilometers south of Tadlo. The girls had a day off and decided to go swimming, picnicking and relaxing at the waterfalls.

This is our second day in Tadlo now and we are planning to proceed our long trip to Luang Prabang tomorrow with a stopover in Thakhek. The journey from south to northern Lao takes a total of about 36 hours by bus, so we will have to take some breaks on the way.

My knee is pretty good at the moment. The feeling at the place of my wound is gone, so I guess I hit some nerves with the crash, but the movement in my leg is great. I can already bend it as far as I want to, even though it still feels unnatural. The wound is almost healed now. It is three weeks after the accident now and I think it will not take much longer for the final scraps to come off. It will be an ugly scar, but I was lucky it didn't get infected. I don't think the hole will ever go away, so no future career as a model for me haha.

From now on I consider myself as recovered. And I promise; no more motorbikes for me on this trip!