It's been an eventful last 48 hours; so busy that I didn't have time to update the blog or do much else by ways of relaxing. However, I didn't plan on it being so busy and while unexpected, it changed the shape of my still young adventure.
There are many different cliche pitfalls we associate happening to tourists; getting scammed, taking the wrong train, getting a 'tourista' ('Montezuma's Revenge' in American English), winding up sick, etc, that none of us want to experience during our vacation. And if they do happen, we picture it happening to some stereotypical vacationer (think Hawaiian shirt, cargo shorts, SLR around the neck being supported by a pair of sandals and socks) and not us savvy world travelers. Well lucky for me, I got my first taste of this not even three days into the trip.
On Friday, we were still at the luxury resort a bit south of Bangkok. It was our last day there and we decided to take it easy and hang by the pool for the majority of the day. We did a pretty good job of hitting our goal and after being poolside from noon until dinner time, we went into town to check out a shopping center in hopes of getting a SIM card for our auxiliary phone (more on that in a different post).
So far, so good. The mall (Siam Center) was impressive but uneventful. We didn't find our SIM card but we saw another part of the city that was worth experiencing. Afterwards, we went back to the hotel and slowly start to fall asleep; or not.
Some of you might know this, but for the past year and a half, I've had some recurring issues with my teeth. Without getting into the details, I have two cavities that weren't healing after being filled, along with my wisdom teething needing to be pulled. When I had my wisdom teeth 'extracted,' as the dental community so poetically calls it, there was some damage done to a back molar. This in itself wasn't so bad, but compounded with a poorly repaired cavity, caused some underlying damage to the gums.
This issue was manageable, or so I thought, as I went to the dentist three times before leaving Brussels to get it taken care of. I guess something got missed, because on Friday night, shortly before going to bed, my tooth started to throb in pain. Naturally, I did what any American would do; I took some drugs to try and knock it out. No luck; try again.
I spent the next five hours feeling the pain thicken within the gums while spreading to the other parts of my mouth. At one point, I was convinced that my gums were rejecting the tooth and was actively trying to shoot it out of my mouth. I was half tempted to help it on its way using the multi-tool that I brought for the trip. Nathalie vetoed that course of attack and instead gave me a strong painkiller that we had with us for just such purposes. The pill put me down for a couple of hours, but this was just the beginning of my Saturday.
Earlier in the week, I had contacted a periodontist (a dentist who specializes in gums, and what's going on under the teeth) about the issue I had when my wisdom teeth were extracted as I heard that there could be long term issues if that problem wasn't addressed. Nathalie, seeing me in tremendous pain and me shooting down the idea of going to the hospital (I wasn't going to be that gringo during my first week), decided to contact the periodontist first thing in the morning to get an emergency appointment. While I slept, Nathalie went ahead and checked with the hotel staff to see how quickly we could get across town to this appointment.
Around 08:30 in the morning, Nathalie woke me up saying that we were leaving in 45 minutes and had to pack and check out as I had an appointment with the periodontist at 10:30. This meant that there would be no hotel breakfast, no workout in the hotel gym and no last dip in the pool. This kind of sucked, but by this point, I would've done anything to get my mouth fixed. Still completely groggy from the pill and the two-plus hours of sleep I got, I packed and we checked out. We asked to leave the big bags in the hotel so we would be more agile, and we set out up river to the BTS station.
We made it just in time for the appointment and the doctor did her magic. The tooth immediately felt better and was given a treatment plan to reduce the pain further. Additionally, we did a new scan of my mouth and looked at the other issues I'm facing with my food and beverage entrance. In the end, I'll need to have a double root canal, the fillings replaced with something more solid, and crowns put on my back molars. One of the objectives of this trip is experience activities most tourists don't. In that sense, my mouth brought me a big step closer to this goal. That being said, there are a few positives that came out of this adventure.
Nathalie and I saw how fast and effectively we could move when we worked together. She did an awesome job setting everything up and getting us moving. For my part, I cooperated fully; +5 points for teamwork. I got to see a part of Bangkok I probably would've overlooked. The periodontist is in the Thunglor area of the city and we liked it so much, we're booking our next place over in that neighborhood. We found out what it was like to really push while on this trip. We didn't expect to be thrown into beast mode this early on and we did a fine job with it.
After the periodontist, I took Nathalie out for breakfast at a cafe inspired by Mr. Bean. They served English Breakfast all day long, and between the bacon, eggs, beans, and Thai iced-tea, we were finally able to catch our breath. The rest of the afternoon was spent looking for the SIM card and possibly a new t-shirt or two. We went to two different malls, found a crossfit gym on our way, but in the end we got the card. Afterwards, we went back to the resort to collect the remainder of our belongings and headed off towards our second hotel.
This hotel is located more in the center of the city, close (but not too close) to the main backpackers area; Khao San Road. We took a river taxi up the Chao Phraya about 5 Km/3 mi until our stop and then hiked around 20 minutes to the hotel. By this point, we were running on fumes, with both of us sleeping about two hours in the past 36, and decided to take a tuk-tuk to a Sri Lankan restaurant in town and relax. As it is one of our favorite cuisines in the world, we were delighted to eat it again after our honeymoon in Sri Lanka two years ago, and left with full stomachs and happy faces.
By the time we got back to the hotel, it was around 11:00 at night and we hit our wall. We put an episode of the Simpsons on the computer, and were out cold within ten minutes. We woke up at 12:30 in the afternoon today, having slept 13 hours. We're fairly certain we needed it.
I'll save what we did for today for another post (preview, the Muscles from Brussels would approve), but in the end, today was much less eventful than Saturday. Its satisfying looking back on the experience knowing that we a) survived it and b) learned a lot from it. In terms of having adventures, we're definitely off to a prime start.
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