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Published: February 2nd 2018
They say bad things come in threes. We had three things in one day and thought our bad luck was over. Little did we know what was about to hit us the next day!
Our time on Ko Lanta started out pretty perfectly. We’d heard from the locals when we arrived that it had done nothing but pour rain day and night for seven consecutive days prior to our arrival. You could see it in the roads. The normally sandy road leading down to the beach from the main paved road was covered in deep ruts, the type that suck flips flops into an untimely death. Maybe we brought the California sun with us, or maybe it’s because we bought umbrellas, but somehow it came sunny the very next day and stayed that way, minus a few short-lived night rains.
The kids remembered where we were and we overheard them saying things to each other like, “It’s nice to be back here,” and “It feels like home!” As we’d spent three months on this island last year, we were remembered in our favorite restaurants and greeted warmly, the children getting lots of hugs.
Then, after a few days of bliss, it all started to go wrong.
EVENT 1: The first thing that happened was we checked our online banking and saw a $30 charge that looked suspicious. We googled the phone number associated with it on our statement and found a long trail of unhappy people, complaining about unexplained fees from somewhere in Nigeria. We’d been frauded! If we’d been back home, we’d have called our bank immediately, but being abroad, we were worried that our bank would cancel our cards and reissue them in America, and it would be hard to even activate them, creating a headache. We decided to ignore it, forfeit the $30, and keep an eye out for any further charges. So far so good!
EVENT 2: At lunchtime, I cracked a veneer while stupidly trying to open a jam packet for the kids. I felt a pop and quickly realized that my “tooth” was jiggling around in my mouth. Luckily, thanks to Thailand having great medical care, I was able to get it cemented back on a few hours later. Crisis averted!
EVENT 3: I arrived
back from the dentist late afternoon to find Scott still in the room with the kids in a very bad mood. While I’d been gone, there had been some kind of hatching and he’d had to kill fifty or more little black flying bugs. To cut a long story short, the manager ended up disturbing their nest, sending hundreds of them flying into our room. At this point they reached for the Raid can and sprayed the heck out of them! Raid is powerful stuff and it killed a lot of them, but we were worried what it could do to the kids. It was past dinner time anyway so we closed the door and went out to eat. A couple of hours later, we went home to try to go to bed. The fumes were still extremely powerful and after a few minutes in the room, we rushed out to ask for a different one. We ended up taking the bare essentials and sleeping in the room next door. Ah, we could breathe again!
At that point, Scott and I just looked at each other and counted our blessings - at least we hadn’t stepped on
a sting ray and had a barb pierced through our foot, like one poor woman we’d seen earlier that day. And at least our house wasn’t in danger of burning to the ground, like so many people back in Ventura, California, dealing with the wildfires.
The next morning I woke up to the kids jumping in bed with us. Minutes later they were screaming when a centipede casually strolled out from underneath the pillow I’d been sleeping on all night. Looking back, that little centipede marked the end of our initial three (now trivial) problems, and the start of three big giant problems.
BIG GIANT PROBLEM #1
We'd thought the California fires were in Ventura, 20 miles away from us. Today we woke up to the news that the fires had spread rapidly and were approaching the nearby town of Carpinteria, causing many of our friends to evacuate. As the days went by, the massive wildfire (the biggest in California's history) continued to edge northwards, ever closer to our home. Due to the international time change, the news would come through mostly during the night for us, so it was hard not to
stay up all night watching the updates. It all culminated one night when I was awoken around 1am by a text from my neighbor to say that our condo complex was under mandatory evacuation. Scott wasted no time in calling his dad, who is staying in our house. He's not very savvy at checking internet updates, and doesn't receive texts, so he was totally unaware. Within 30 minutes he was on the freeway along with half of the population of Santa Barbara, evacuating to his niece's house in Los Angeles.
That night was quite a stressful night, watching the updates on the internet but not truly knowing what was going on. We were of course worried about the house itself. Had it burnt to the ground we'd be going straight back to California to do battle with the insurance company, a battle that's almost impossible to win! I couldn't stop thinking of all the things that we'd left in our storage unit that were irreplaceable. The only photos of Scott's late mom were in there, our computer with all of the photos of the kids (I wasn't sure if Tom took the backup we'd left for him)
and of course Kyla's first-year-baby-book that I'd been given as a gift by one of my fourth grade students and spent hour upon hour lovingly filling in. Jake's baby book was in there too but, being the second child, his was 80% incomplete - oops! And then there were all of my teaching supplies. I'd spent years of my life working nights and weekends to create resources and lesson plans in my pre-kid days that I'll never have the time to do again. And of course all of the classroom library books that I'd gathered over the years by scouring garage sales and thrift stores but still managing to spend a small fortune on. But only a fellow teacher would understand this!
Thankfully we awoke the next morning to find that our home was still standing and the fire front was now moving past, away from us. Phew!
In retrospect, we knew we were so lucky to be far away from all of the bad air and evacuations that all of our friends were enduring, but for a night or so we were wishing we'd been there and had the chance to pack up
our most valued possessions (but I guess two filing cabinets full of lesson plans and twenty boxes of books and photos would have been hard to get in the car anyway!)
BIG GIANT PROBLEM #2
They say nothing else matters when you have a health problem. That's definitely true. When we first arrived in Bangkok, we'd done a barrage of routine medical testing because, quite frankly, the health care system in Thailand is so much easier (and cheaper!) to navigate than dealing with the cumbersome US healthcare. On the same day as we realized the Thomas fire was spreading our way, I got an email from my doctor in Bangkok to say that one of my tests had come back bad. My initial diagnosis was quite rare, and something that was "highly likely" to turn cancerous. After spending a few nights googling, I was pretty convinced I had only 6 months to live (okay, not quite, but the statistics were quite alarming!) In short, I had to quickly fly up to Bangkok on my own for one night, leaving the kids on Ko Lanta with Scott, to get more testing done. What followed was a stressful
week waiting for results. This coincided exactly with the most stressful week of the Thomas fire for us, meaning that while we walked around our island paradise, we really did feel like we had a dark cloud following us. Only a few days after the Thomas fire threat was lifted, I got my results back - no cancer! We both felt a huge weight lifted off our shoulders. The sand looked whiter, the sea more blue, and the plants more green than ever! Still, because of the high risk of cancer in the future, I would have to fly to Bangkok in the new year for a small procedure, spending a night in the hospital, but at least it wasn't the alternative!
By this time it was almost Christmas. Back home, everyone was struggling to get it together for their kids after being evacuated for three weeks in some cases. At this point we again felt really lucky to be away from it all.
On Christmas morning we awoke to find that Santa had once again found us in Thailand. We spent the morning in our little hotel room watching the kids as they
opened their Santa presents, Jake practically hyperventilating when he realized he had the Super Wings characters! After breakfast on the beach and some playtime (playing with sticks and shells on the beach!) we went back to our room and opened our family presents. From us, Kyla got a giant inflatable unicorn and Jake got a giant inflatable turtle, and they both got boogie boards. They loved their inflatables until they realized they didn't necessarily go where they wanted them to go, which caused all number of tearful meltdowns. The boogie boards, though not as impressive-looking, proved to be far more fun. Unfortunately this new-found ocean-fun was short lived as Jake dropped a big sharp stone on his finger, causing it to spurt blood all over our balcony and look pretty mangled. He cried for a long time, and even chocolate milk didn't help. That's when we knew we had a problem! We jumped into a tuk tuk and were soon walking through the doors of the Andaman International Clinic. In true Thai style, it was extremely efficient and in no time at all, Jake had had an x-ray, confirming that his bones were not broken - phew! The nurses bandaged
him up and off we went back home. Each day we had to change the dressings, which is no easy feat on a squirmy three year old. The bummer was that he couldn't play in the ocean or even dig in the sand. Seeing as that was pretty much what we did all day, we were at a loss. Let's just say we sat around in far too many restaurants eating far too much good Thai food and lots of ice creams!
Next up was New Years Eve. We didn't want to keep the kids up until midnight (4 hours past their usual bedtime) but we did want them to see all of the fireworks and floating lanterns at midnight. We put them to bed at 9pm and then woke them at 10:45pm. It wasn't really the magical experience we'd hoped for, with Kyla being scared of the fireworks and Jakey being grumpy and tired the whole time. It was a bit dangerous, to be honest, as the winds were onshore and the fiery floating lanterns kept being blown back into the crowd or trees, rather than out to sea! We stayed just long enough to count
down to the stroke of midnight with the live band at Funky Fish beach bar before going back to bed. Kyla and Jake were asleep instantaneously!
On day five of Jake's finger injury, I had to fly up to Bangkok again for my surgery. The hospital is really great, but I've not spent a lot of time in them, so they are pretty scary places for me. I arrived at 9am to be prepped for a 2:30pm surgery. The whole morning was spent being pushed around in a wheelchair from place to place to do all my pre-op checks. This seemed really thorough and included getting an IV inserted, blood tests, having an EKG, and getting a chest X-ray. I couldn’t decide whether all of the pushing around in a wheelchair made me feel like a movie star (amazing service!) or an invalid! I was pretty tired, after having been awoken by a mosque's call to prayer at 5:20am, so I was glad when I could finally settle down into my hospital room around 12 noon. I'd prepped by saving all sorts of useless but interesting articles on Facebook!
At 2pm a nurse came
in to take my temperature and I had a fever of 38.2! I was really hoping that wouldn't cause the surgery to be postponed but, because it was linked to an ear infection, they could go ahead. Phew!
It was a scary feeling to be pushed on a stretcher to the operating room, but I was comforted by the fact that there were so many people there - my doctor looking all serious in her scrubs, an anaesthesiologist, and four or five nurses. I definitely felt looked after. I started to tell the anaesthesiologist that I’d never been under before, but before I knew it, I was drifting off into a peaceful sleep and woke up in the recovery room as if nothing had even happened. Not long after, I was wheeled back to my room where I instantly grabbed my phone to start emailing scott and my mom. I then settled down to some luxurious down-time, reading my articles in lieu of a trashy magazine (because of course I couldn't get any here!)
A few days after arriving back on Ko Lanta, the third big event happened...
BIG GIANT PROBLEM
#3
A big storm was forecast for Santa Barbara, which wasn’t good news as the recent fires presented a risk of floods and mud slides. Many of our neighbors were getting sand bags to place in front of their doors, and the HOA put one layer along the creek that runs along the back of the complex. In five years of living there I’ve never seen the creek more than a trickle so I wasn’t particularly worried. Then, one of my neighbors sent me a video from last winter after heavy rains, and the creek was really full and fast flowing. That’s when I started to get a bit nervous. If the water made it to our storage, we’d be in for a mess.
Not long after going to bed on January 10th, my phone started to buzz. It was one of my neighbor friends writing to say that a mud slide had broken the fence down into our complex, flooded two units, and washed 12 cars out of the complex into the creek. It was hard to take in what I was reading. What followed was a night without a lot of sleep, scouring the
Internet for more information, and messaging back and forth with various neighbors. No one expected anything like this. As news started to come in, we realized just how bad it was. Many homes in Montecito had been completely washed away at their foundations and the deaths were starting to mount.
Over the next few days, the news began to flow in. In our complex, we learned that in fact eight cars had been washed along by the mud, six of which were washed completely away into the creek, and at least two of these ended up as a crumpled mess on the beach. Two units had mud and water flow in, and another had a hole punched through in the garage by a passing car or boulder, allowing mud to flow in. Along the creek, the banks had apparently eroded considerably, and there was talk that they may need to build a retaining wall. The mud flow stopped just three feet from our back gate, meaning we personally dodged yet another bullet (other than possibly some big clean up and repair bills, depending on the HOA insurance.) Unfortunately for our neighbors and tenants, everyone was evacuated again,
this time for two weeks to allow search and rescue crews into the area.
It was pretty surreal to see places we know so well, just a mile or less from our home, being shown on the internet news completely destroyed. What was even stranger was seeing it on the BBC World News station here in Thailand. It made headlines for a couple of days but then largely disappeared, but at night, after the kids were asleep, we’d go back to reading the local news reports online. Once again, our island paradise didn’t look quite as beautiful as it should, knowing what everyone was going through back home. We definitely had some feelings of guilt. It’s going to be a very long and painful recovery for so many in our neighborhood.
By the end of January, our Thai visa was expiring so it was time to do a border run to Kuala Lumpur for two nights. That was enough time in a big city, and we were eager to get back to the beach. I did at least get to follow up with a doctor after my surgery, and I was told I should
be able to swim in about a week. I’ve not been allowed in the ocean at all since mid-December so it’s been a pretty hot and muggy time. At least it coincided with Jake’s no-swim-time because of his finger (which is now better for the most part, even though he insists on wearing a BandAid on it still!)
We are so happy to be able to continue the trip. For a while there we were honestly nervous that we may have to go home due to the fires or my medical situation, so much so that we spent a small fortune signing up for a month of Obamacare during open enrollment, just in case. We didn’t even know about the mudslides at that point!We’ve since cancelled our Obamacare health insurance and are looking forward to the next two months on Lanta. We are even hoping to finally make it to a fire show, which we’d been avoiding during the fires back home.
While at the time we thought we had three unlucky back-to-back events, I guess you could now say that we were in fact incredibly lucky as we dodged a bullet three times
out of three. I’m just hoping all of the stressful events are in the past and everyone can start to move forward and rebuild. Stay strong, Montecito!
*** Please scroll right the way down for more photos! ***
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Home and Away
Bob Carlsen
Wow!!!
I'm pleased you dodged all the bullets. I agree that medical care in Thailand is first rate. I took my three teenage kids to the Bangkok Nursing Home (BNH) in 2007 to see where I was born in 1949. My two daughters decided they wanted a couple things fixed as we were greeted when walking in the door. They are able to be seen by a doctor immediately and have their procedures and really inexpensively. They had a small museum of what a typical ward was many years ago. I wondered if the bed was the one my mom used. I also showed they the old hospital out the back window. Now if I could only convince my wife that we should spend months at the beaches of Thailand! As an old white guy I can't go by myself...too many bad false assumptions.