How Do You Say “Get my friend to bloody hospital!” In Thai?

November 16, 2007

They told us to come back with a story – they just didn’t tell us what type of story to come back with.

The countdown for New Years was on. Lief and I decided to head over to the full moon party in Koh Phangan by ourselves. The rest of the gang wanted to have a bit of a quieter night.

It started simple enough. We walked over to Hadrin Beach a bit late. Around 11:45pm. We found a nice isolated spot (as isolated as it gets among 30,000 people on a full-moon-party). The clock struck midnight and Lief and I celebrated with our drinks.

At 12:01 a couple of Thai men started setting up fireworks. As you do. But they were not your run-of-the-mill store-bought fireworks. They were the type of fireworks that fill the entire night with light.
One by one the fireworks started to go off - closer and closer. By the end, I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach – which I ignored. Something I never do.

I asked Lief if we could move to a better spot. And we did. We decided to hide behind a set of two rocks. Like a cave. Or, as Lief called it, ‘our little bunker’. It was just the two of us, laughing as we filmed the massive explosions in the sky.
All of sudden, one of the large fireworks fell to the ground. It wired towards us, so fast that we didn’t even have time to stop laughing. The next thing we know it was directly underneath our feet. It was ready to detonate and we we’re stuck between the three giant boulders.
BOOM!

The rest was a bit hazy.

Lief stood there and looked over to his right where I was supposed to be, but only my shoe remained. “Uh no!” he thought later, “This is all that’s left of Jer!”

All I remember is frantically trying to step out of our bunker onto another bed of rocks. I failed and didn’t escape until after the blast. The next thing I remember is standing 15 feet away from Lief, deaf from the blast, and unable to see from the light and smoke.

Body scan. Nothing. Not a single amount of pain. I was ok…But was Lief??

I saw Lief and yelled back. He was dazed but looked perfectly fine, holding my shoe, but fine. We came over to each other in completely shock. Laughing that we had survived. Adrenalin pumping through our body. We scanned each other for wounds knowing we probably wouldn’t feel them just yet - and then I saw his arm.

It looked as bad as any gash I’ve seen. It seemed appropriate for how bad that blast was. It was about a 4 inch flap and his bicep appeared to popping off his bone. I didn’t want to worry him so I asked him calmly to take a walk with me to the paramedics. Concerned, he looked down and realized how serious it all was. All of a sudden he got really quiet and walked calmly toward the busy street.

When I finally found someone to help, Lief was sitting n the curb nodding in and out of consciousness. Finding someone wasn’t easy. After all, how do you say ‘get my friend to a hospital’ in Thai? Especially when all they say back is ‘500 Baht for a bucket’ in response. The most popular drink concoction on the island. I finally found a boy who took my panicked expression seriously

He took Lief and me on his bike as we rode to the emergency clinic. We got there and Lief scared the life out of me. He went ghost white and started growing cold. I yelled buzz words…ANYTHING someone could understand. Doctor! Paramedic! Help! Ambulance! Hospital! No one understood my urgency. I thought he was dying.

We shouted at him a couple times but he was unresponsive. I didn’t see much blood but he had the appearance of the man who was losing more blood than one could handle. I gently tried to wake him up by tapping him in the face. I quickly grabbed the nurse’s hand and put it on Lief. She finally understood the situation. He was going into shock.

She got him to lie down and slowly, but surely, he started to come to. I chatted with him light heartedly…trying to make him laugh as she dressed his wounds. Burnt in three or four place with two gashes, one on his arm and one on his ribs. But no bleeding. And thank the Lord for that. Had the size of that gash been anywhere important, it would have been fatal.

After about 45 minutes he seemed to be getting better. We made our way back slowly and hobbling, checking in with each other periodically to make sure we were both ok. And every Thai person we met along the way said the same thing. “Lucky Lucky”. And that we were.

We have a video of the fireworks just before we got a front row seat. The last thing Lief says in the video is – Oh my God I’m going to die - and we laugh. I didn’t realize just how right he could have been.

And just for the record it’s ‘Loang Pra Ya Barn’.

That’s how you say hospital in Thai.

About the Author : Jeremiah McNama (left) is a Canadian traveling around the world for the past year. Back at home in Toronto he’s a copywriter and writes at www.getjealous.com/jer.

Lief is the pasty looking man to the right. Way too pasty to be in Thailand. He now lives in Toronto after spending three years teaching English in various Asian countries.

The TSM Fall Travel Writing Contest has been organized in association with On The Beach Holidays