How not to end a fortnight of Thai island hopping

When I named this blog, I was sort of joking – I expected some things to go wrong, but I’ve really outdone myself so far with errors, misfortunes and less than perfect situations.

After what turned out to be an amazing week on Koh Tao, I headed to Koh Phi Phi for a few days. Warning bells sounded when someone told me it was ‘a bit Magaluf’, but I’d also heard it was beautiful and wanted to see for myself.

The first hostel I went to was awful, so I followed someone I met on the ferry to a much better one. I decided to get into the party island spirit, and joined a group of six guys for drinks at the hostel, buckets of cocktails, beer pong and dancing on the beach.

The next day I wanted to do more, so in the morning I set off to the view point, up an endless amount of stairs and a steep hill – I was sweating a lot, but it was worth it to see this:

For or the afternoon, I booked a boat trip and met up with Kala, a friend from Koh Tao. We visited Monkey Beach, I did a cliff jump (terrifying), we went swimming, snorkelling, to Maya Bay (where The Beach was filmed) and swam at night with the fluorescent plankton, all very cool.

In the evening I was tired, but headed out anyway. After meeting a group of friends at one of the bars in town we went to the beach, for more dancing at one of the bars there.

At some point along the way, I stumbled over a piece of wood. At the time I didn’t really think much of it and carried on as normal, but when I woke in the morning my toe was hurting rather a lot, and I could see it had been bleeding.

When I later went to put on my flip flops, I realised the extent of the bleeding was a little more than I first thought…

After washing the blood off my foot, the toe was still looking decidedly dodgy, so I headed to the medical centre for a professional opinion.

What they told me almost made me throw up on the spot – they were going have to cut out my toenail. Im not overly squeamish, but the thought of removing a toenail… So sick….

By the time I got in the operating room, I was already in tears at the thought of how painful it was going to be, and how disgusting and deformed my foot would be afterwards.

The actual removal of the nail was quick and painless. However, having three injections of anaesthetic deep into my toe had me screaming so loudly that the people outside could hear and most likely thought the doctor had decided to amputate my foot instead.

Now I’m bandaged up, with a dressing I have to change every day (think my DIY efforts look quite good though), meaning no more swimming and limited ability to walk.

They gave me antibiotics for the week, which yesterday had me throwing up and feeling sick all day. I’ve got painkillers and ‘severe painkillers’ which given that it doesn’t actually hurt that much at the minute I think I might save for my next inevitable injury.

The only upside of all this is that I’ve now moved on to a much quieter island, Koh Lanta, where Kala and I are staying in a bungalow on the beach, where the bars are all cushions and hammocks, playing Bob Marley on repeat and openly advertising joints and mushroom shakes for sale.

There are definitely worse places to rest and recuperate….