The waterfall

It was really not that difficult... There's a waterfall with two major tiers. People slide down it for fun. We slid down the wrong tier. On accident.

The second picture shows Anna, Lina, and myself enjoying the waterfall. We'd been there a whopping 10 minutes. I scrambled down to my spot almost immediately since the girls were in the higher pools. It wasn't so bad, but the edge of the flow had mossy, slippery rock.

I avoided the rock by climbing down the dry part, stepping completely over the moss, and sitting in the moss-free waterfall. The swift moving water prevents build-up or something.

I'd just like to say that there really is a good 5 meters between me and the bottom. The picture doesn't show it. If it worked the way the picture showed it, this would have been a non-story.

But anyway...

Lina wanted to get down to where I was and in the process slipped on the moss. I saw it happening. I tried to catch her.

Then we both fell.

I managed to grab her hand. I stabilized and slowed her fall by a bit, putting her back in a feet-first slide. But as physics demands, I absorbed the energy and it contributed to my own downward velocity. I also rotated, which meant I went head-first..

All my effort went into protecting my face, and I didn't think about my legs. My right shin hit a rock hard. When we both splashed into the bottom, I took about 4 seconds to listen for pain, and when none came I slowly got up and asked Lina if she was ok. She was shocked but ok.

And that's when I noticed the leg. It had a decent gash. I couldn't feel it.

Luckily I was by a stairwell and very calmly made my way back up the 15m of rock. People saw us and one of them was a French nurse. He had loads of stuff in his pack. Smart guy, this one. He came over to check me out.

I'd picked a nice rock to prop my leg up on to see how bad I was bleeding and luckily it was really not bad at all. The wound was pretty bad looking but all the things you check for (pain, blood) were actually in my favor.

The nurse came and put a rudimentary bandage on my leg with gauze and small band-aids. He gave me two pills for when my adrenaline wore off and said: "Go to the hospital. NOW." — yeah I'm with you dude.

How'd we get there? On motorbikes, of course! So I rode back down the mountain with Karin who had motorbiked a whole two hours that day as her lifetime motorbike experience. She did great considering the circumstances.

We made it back down to the hospital with me navigating via phone (no, not while riding), and checked into the hospital. 20 minutes, 5 stitches, and 972 baht later I was cleared to leave. I was very grateful for modern medicine on this day.

The checkups are quick. Yesterday, I showed a particularly large bruise I developed on my belly near my hip and asked if it needed any attention. The nurse simply said "all fine, you're fat" — GREAT! She then said something else to me which I didn't hear, but on the third time she said it loud and clear: "DIET"

Wonderful consultation, I'll see you tomorrow!

In 4 days I get the stitches out. Until then: lots of rest. I'm averaging a book per day while I stay still and ride it out. Hey, we came here to relax!