Thailand sidetrack

Really, if I never see the inside of another South Asian emergency room, I wouldn't complain. I don't need to make this a habit.

I am on pain meds right now for some gashes in my wrist, so I apologize if this gets too rambly, etc.

My Thailand visa was set to expire, so I had to leave the country and return. The Red Shirts, supporters of ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, decided it would somehow give them the moral high ground if they postponed their big demonstrations until March 12, rather than Feb. 26, the date of a court ruling that enabled the government to seize $2.2 billion of Shinawatra's money. The Yellow Shirts, their bitter rivals, shut down Bangkok's airport for a month a year or so ago and pissed off a lot of people, so the Red Shirts are trying to voice their displeasure in a circumspect manner.

Regardless, if I am to be in Bangkok for the action on March 12, I have to renew my visa by leaving the country and returning. I thought about Cambodia, but my flight leaves out of there, so that would mean I'd have visited the same country four times in a few months. I hadn't been to Malaysia yet, so I got on a train south.

It was a full moon and a lovely sunset, so I went to the rear of the train to grab some food and to photograph the landscape as we rumbled along. You can sit on the steps in between cars or on the platform of the caboose in the night air.

On my way back, however, I again ran into this aging guy from Massachusetts who earlier had been snuggling with his Thai boy-toy at one table, then came over to mine and tried to convert me to Christianity as I ate. He's also a Republican, he said. Guess he's sort of an elderly, traveling Ted Haggard. Well, I had already made my escape from his rants earlier, but he collared me as I went past and told me he thought that they were about to decouple the rear section of the train and send it off to some Burmese border town while the front end, my end, went on to Kuala Lumpur. He invited me to come along to Burma. It's much cheaper there, he said, and closer. Beer is cheap there. Sex, also. Although he said he had no personal knowledge of this. Anyway, I declined his gracious offer and made my way toward my own car.

Well, the guy was plenty kooky, but it wasn't the time to second-guess. I was heading up to my car anyway, but I did not really want to end up in Bumfuq, Burma, at least not when I hadn't had a chance to research the place. I skipped over all the people sleeping on the floor in the aisles in the cheaper cars, but came to a sudden halt at the start of the air-conditioned ones. I was standing between cars, outdoors, when I encountered a train car that some asshole had locked. Why would you do this? I don't know. I was basically locked out of the train, or at least my portion of it.

I couldn't open the door, couldn't pick the lock with my State of Maine drivers license, so I just started pounding on it, trying to get someone's attention. On about the third pound, the train lurched to the right, and I lurched to the left, and my fist landed on the plate glass, rather than the door.

For an instant, I stared through the shattering glass at my hand, inside the train car while I stood outside. Then it was just blood, blood, blood and flying shards. At first, I stood there, stunned at how much blood was coming out, and how quickly. Then I turned and went back into the car behind me. One Thai man was snoozing in the front row, but woke up in a hurry when he saw me bleeding all over the floor. He gave me a handkerchief or some sort of white cloth, and I fashioned it into a tourniquet around my wrist. But it wouldn't stop bleeding. I remember thinking I was going to die. There was just too much blood. And then I wondered why I hadn't fainted. I am the biggest candyass when it comes to blood. I actually fainted during an interview in which a cardiac surgeon was merely DESCRIBING a heart surgery to me.

They stopped the train in some little backwater Thai town called Mamrit or something. Somebody at the station fired up his little moped and I got on the back, holding my wrist above my head. I was getting pretty woozy at this point, and was afraid I'd fall off the back. But we made it there, and the nurses stitched me up.

I had this feeling of elation in the emergency room. At first, I didn't want to let go of the tourniquet for the nurse, but I did and the bleeding stopped once she stitched it (without local anesthesia). I really thought I was going to die, and I had accepted it on the train. I just couldn't believe it. When no one speaks English, I feel like it's OK to say whatever I am thinking sometimes. I just kept saying, I'm alive, I'm alive. I was pretty happy about it. But maybe that was just the big shot of morphine she'd just put in my shoulder.

However, there was one moment on the train, when I thought, you know, if this is how and when I have to go, it's not the worst situation. It didn't even really hurt, initially. It must have done some nerve damage, because the side of my right hand is numb, but I can feel a little bit, and, in my experience, nerves grow back if you can feel a little bit. I think they gave me nine or 10 stitches. I'm not sure. I'm a little nervous about taking off this bandage.

The great thing was how sweet the Thai people were in this little village. One girl, apparently the only one who spoke English, came to my guesthouse on a moped to translate. She went to the station and got me train times and offered to give me a ride there. I ended up taking a bus. Then this guy who was the brother of the woman who owned the guesthouse bought me breakfast, took me to buy some new pants (Dumbass: I took only one pair of pants, and after all the bleeding, they basically became one giant scab that could stand on its own), and then to the bus station. I really like Thai people.