"There's the rub"


-- Swingers



It turns out that Kho Phi Phi is experiencing some of the worst storms in years.... It's funny how these things work out.

Vinny, Katherine, Catie and my good self continued our laid back approach to life on Kho Tao, lounging in the day time, drinking in the evening, and having the occasional night time swim.

All good, in fact, until Katherine had herself an incident. She doesn't really deserve to have it called an accident, although that was what it was. The poor girl slipped on her bathroom floor and smashed her wrist up pretty good. The kind of misadventure that would gain the sympathy of thousands had it not happened because she was - and lets be fair to her - pissed.

Her wrist swelled up like a golf ball and the bones in the back of her hand kind of disappeared. It should be noted that this is the third serious injury that we or people in our care have obtained whilst under the influence of alcohol. There is a lesson to be learnt. We just don't know what it is.

It was decided that, although she wasn't in a huge amount of pain, hands just simply shouldn't look like that so she would have to go to hospital. This created a similar problem to last time when Vinny wazzed up his face on that girl. We were on an island with less than adequate medical services. Kho Pha Ngan was only two hours away, but it was the night before the fool moon party so the health services there would be preparing for the monthly influx of backpackers mashed off their t*** on deadly nightshade that they thought was magic mushrooms.

Kho Samui, then, stepped up to the plate. Hated by an entire generation, possessing not only a McDonalds but also an International Airport, it was to this bastion of over-developed civilisation that our charges were to be sent.

And I do say sent - although we offered (as is our style) to accompany them on their trek, they refused. We didn't press the point (after all, as Vinny pointed out, the England game was on tonight) and wished them farewell.

So we were two again, and we spent a couple more days in a fevered, manic rush of laziness, before deciding it was time to move on.

Things to do, places to go, world's to circumnavigate without flying.

It turned out that Katherine hadn't broken her hand, or even torn a tendon or anything impressive like that. She just had a weird hand that made funny shapes when it got hurt. They had heard about the storms on Kho Phi Phi and had decided to go to Khanon instead.

And as it was south, and would take us ever closer to our goal, we thought we'd stop by on our way past for one more night on the tiles.