12.14.2024
Miles: 69.77
Total: 9,931.76 miles, 15,980.20 km.
"Giant centipede bite" was not on my bingo card. But that's how my day ended.
The beginning wasn't so delightful, either. I woke up to a sore throat and a flat tire. Sounding like a frog, I hunted down a bike shop in Lampang. Some nice women tidying up the first shop, a highly rated one with an English-speaking owner, reported that the mechanic was gone, with an unknown return time, and had left his phone, so that they couldn't call him to find out.
So I set out for a second shop, which was just a stall in a back alley. The owner/mechanic and a retinue of hangers-on were delighted to help me, via Google Translate. The culprint turned out to be a steel shard from a disintegrating truck tire, the same demon that gave me my other three flats. I curse highways, trucks, and radial tires.
Then the rain started, so I busted out my sexy rain suit and hunkered down for the duration.
My evening's lodging was a homestay in a remote village on a magical river. In this part of the world, houses are on stilts, I reckon to keep the water and critters out and the livestock tucked underneath.
But these enterprising folks had built three hotel rooms underneath their house. Mine featured a waterbed frame ("If you ain't sleepin' on water, you ought-er!"—1980s Memphis waterbed store jingle) with a firm, non-aqueous mattress. I hadn't seen a bed frame like this since high school, and so I snapped a photograph.
That frame proved to be the source of much suffering. In the middle of the night, I awoke to a crushing pain in my right shoulder, as if I had been shot. "Spider or snake," I thought, and hurled the covers off the bed. As I did, whatever It was bit me again on my thumb.
I jumped out of bed, grabbed my phone, and texted the emergency WhatsApp number posted in the room. My hosts responded immediately, offering to take me to the hospital.
The whole family—three daughters, a son-in-law, and a grandmother holding an infant—then appeared at my door, armed with a broomstick. One daughter pulled up the mattress while another one, previously quiet and shy, delivered the kill-jab to this bad boy:
I had doubted whether I needed to go to the hospital, but once I saw my attacker, I hopped right into the truck.
Meanwhile, the pain in my shoulder and thumb kept growing. The joints in my hand and elbow also started to ache.
The local ER reminded me of the Fisher-Price hospital I used to play with as a kid, all aqua and red crosses and gurneys. The doctor cleaned my wound and offered to give me an injection, but couldn't tell me what was in the injection (no one spoke English, and Google Translate was giving translations that didn't make any sense). So I gave the needle a pass and took some sort of tablet.
But the pain kept getting worse. After about 15 minutes, I asked about the injection, and the doctor was able to tell me that it was Lidocaine. So I opted in to some shots, took another painkiller, and went back to the homestay.
There, my hosts had prepared a different room, one with a sensible charpoy-style bed instead of something that needed a mirror over it. Although I was still pretty shook, the painkillers knocked me out cold. I slept til 10 am.
The kind family offered me a lifetime of free lodging, but I don't think I want to return any time soon.
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