My first memory was of a lady asking me for a credit card. She wasn’t standing behind a counter, no, she was bending down to my level. Somehow I was in a wheelchair. But how? Looking around, confused, it was obvious that I was in a hospital. But where? Baffled and speechless, I pulled out my wallet and handed her a card without saying a word. All I could think though was:
Where the hell am I? And what day is it?
Trying my hardest to remember, I knew that I was on a trip in Thailand with friends. We had arrived on the coast for a week full of barbeques, booze, and beaches. But then what happened?
I was absolutely clueless. For someone who has always been praised for his memory, this was an absolutely terrifying feeling. It is also one that I hope to never experience again. Given that I have spent basically my entire adult life traveling the world learning new things, making new friends in new countries, and having so many profound and amazing travel experiences, there is nothing I fear more than Alzheimer’s.
Over the next few minutes as reality started to seep in, it became obvious that I was in the process of checking out of Bangkok Hospital in Bangkok. But how did I get here? We were just at the beach…
One Week Earlier…
Along with a group of close friends that live around Thailand, we had decided to spend the week at the beach and barbeque it up like the good ol’ days. I had been away for a few months and it was a chance for us all to reconnect and relax.
My last memory was on a morning. We were unable to find a motorcycle to rent. After trying several different places the only thing available anywhere was a saleng — basically a motorcycle with a sidecar. Otherwise known as the family vehicle for much of Thailand. Consider it an upgrade from the people just using a motorcycle as the family vehicle. (We all know you see that a lot in Southeast Asia.) 😉
With no motorcycles available, I begrudgingly accepted the saleng and pulled out onto the beach road. The absolute last thing I remember, the final moment, is driving down this beach road, a nice sunny day that was starting to turn a bit cloudy. No cars out at all, just the breeze. It was roughly 11am – 11:30am. On Friday.
And then BOOM! It was Wednesday morning and I’m handing over my credit card at Bangkok Hospital.
Five days of my life, gone. Zero memories. Plenty of pain, scars, and medical bills though.
All I have been able to think since then is: ‘What if I had died? My final memory would have been so boring!’
The Missing Experience
Thanks to my friends, I was eventually able to put together the pieces of the puzzle and learn of all the things I had missed during those five days. Yes, among my many injuries there was a concussion. Initially the first hospital wouldn’t release me without training a couple of my friends how to oversee and care for a person who just had a concussion.
So glad this happened in a country where I had friends. Imagine if this happened while you were on vacation in a strange new country 🤯
Apparently my first hospital memory at Bangkok Hospital was actually the third hospital. The ambulance initially took me to the local province hospital. After that I went to the nearby Bangkok Hospital — one of their provincial locations, not the Bangkok Hospital in Bangkok where I “woke up” a few days later when they asked for my credit card. (Yes, all locations are named “Bangkok Hospital” regardless of which city they are in. Perhaps so that you associate it with ‘big city quality’ even in these small provincial cities, but confusing af is what it really is.)
Without any further rambling, here is how my international vacation was ruined by a drunk driver. Since I don’t remember any of these events, all of these details have been filled in by the other attendees.
On Friday afternoon several of us met up at my buddy Get’s place. Get, for those of you who haven’t met him or followed my adventures on Twitter, has multiple properties around Thailand. Places we regularly meet up at during our various trips and gatherings. I believe a couple of those properties have even been the location for some of my videos here over the years. Anyway, since the day was a little cloudy and the beach was getting busy, we had decided to meet up at his place instead of barbequing on the beach.
Unfortunately, we didn’t do much barbequing there. Not enough meat. So we decided to visit a nearby bar instead but unfortunately after the first round of beers we realized that yes, we were actually more hungry than thirsty. So we decided to visit a friend’s restaurant on the beach instead. However, since my girlfriend didn’t want to come with us, I dropped her off at the house first and then proceeded to drive to the restaurant.
Here is where things get interesting — and scary. The restaurant parking lot was full so I parked the saleng on the roadside right next to the parking lot, across from the beach. Because of the direction I had come from, technically the saleng was facing the wrong direction on the roadside: the front-end was pointed towards oncoming traffic. (This would prove to be a big problem later on, as the drunk driver was driving down the side of the road he technically hit the saleng headfirst.)
Thankfully, by the miracle of whatever you want to call luck or the great power above, I had already stepped out of the saleng and onto the side of the road. Unfortunately I was not moving fast enough. The drunk driver slammed into the saleng, which then went sliding down the road, dragging me and tossing me underneath the bed of a big-ass truck parked in the parking lot.
Needless to say, people in the restaurant heard the accident and immediately came out front to see what was happening. The drunk driver got out of his truck, looked at the front-end damage, and then rushed to get back into his truck to flee. Meanwhile a fisherman from across the street on the beach ran over and punched the driver as he was getting back into his truck. This didn’t stop him though — he proceeded to slam on the gas, drive around the now totaled saleng and peel off with the tires squealing.
Luckily, some of this was caught on video. One of the witnesses started filming with their camera when they came out of the restaurant and saw the driver trying to flee the scene of the crime. And even more luckily, the drunk driver did not notice that his front license plate had been ripped off in the accident and left on the roadside. One of my buddies was smart enough to see this and immediately take a photo. We had proof of who hit me! 🙏
After the driver peeled off, my friends discovered my unconscious body underneath the truck. What they did not realize was that I had already dropped off the girlfriend. They started looking up and down the street, trying to find her while getting more and more worried. “Where is her body and is she still alive” was all they could think. One of them pulled my phone out of my bloody pocket and proceeded to call her 7-8 times in a row, looking around and listening to see if they could hear her phone ringing. Meanwhile, she was asleep and missed all the action. Only the next morning did she realize what had happened.
As the pool of blood around my body began to grow, people called both the police and the ambulance. Unfortunately we were on a remote beach and it took a long time before the ambulance arrived. My buddy Get, as he later told me, “All I could think was that you were going to die. There was so much blood! We tried to get them to take you to the good hospital but no.”
Eventually the ambulance arrived but the medical team refused to take me to the fancy hospital, and said that I must go to the closer city hospital instead, as I was in such urgent need of medical attention. Still unable to reach my girlfriend, the gang crammed into another vehicle and started following the ambulance to the hospital.
Once we reached the main highway there was another, better ambulance racing my way there. So the ambulance I was in stopped and transferred my body into the second hospital. Yes, I shit you not. Then all three vehicles, both ambulances and my friends, proceeded to continue to the hospital as a trio. Why did the first local beach ambulance continue to drive all the way to the hospital despite the fact I was no longer inside of it? They wanted to get paid. That is Thailand at it’s finest — all about the money, everywhere and everything. From the immigration department that charges nearly $2,000 for a one year visa to the bribe-taking police to the ambulance drivers, everybody has to get their cut of the money — especially when a foreigner is involved!
At the hospital, I was immediately taken into the emergency room but they wouldn’t let any of my friends check on me. They did at least manage to reach my girlfriend and explain to her what happened.
I was in this first hospital for two days but apparently none of the nurses spoke any English. So that is when the staff taught my friends how to care for a patient with a concussion and I was released into their custody. For the next few days I was moved around between locations and hospitals. Apparently I was awake and talking and seemed coherent, although none of this do I remember. As I have repeatedly been told, apparently one of the things I said was, “Everything hurts except my penis.” At least I still had a sense of humor 😅
The Police Investigation
Police in Thailand are pretty terrible and easily bribed, this is no secret. The grandson of the guy who created Red Bull infamously drunkenly ran over and killed a police officer, but even he was able to escape with zero criminal charges. Money rules everything in Thailand, it’s pretty f’n disgusting to be honest.
When the police arrived at the scene, all they see is a saleng that was in a headfirst accident. As I had parked on the opposite side of the road, they tried to argue that I was driving and that I caused the accident. Blame the foreigner and ask for money, that is the modus operandi in Thailand.
The drunk driver who sped off, well apparently he was still driving sloppy and drunkenly. He was eventually pulled over somewhere else and arrested for drunk driving, driving without a license, and driving without insurance. Only later did the police realize that he had also committed a hit and run — thanks to the license plate he left at the scene.
After a week or two in and out of hospitals, I returned to the beach for my first meeting with the police officer in charge of my case. That is when he leveled the charges against me, saying that I had caused the accident. He wouldn’t even look at the video evidence that my buddy had filmed, the fucking prick. (There’s a special place in hell waiting for him, no doubt about this.)
“If you didn’t cause the accident, go find some witnesses,” he said. WTF?!? Finding and interviewing witnesses is the police’s job, not the victims! What kind of ass-backwards country is this??? I’m all bandaged up, can barely walk, and don’t even speak Thai yet somehow I’m supposed to go out and find the witnesses?!?!? Do you not see anything wrong with this? Apparently police in Thailand do not.
After speaking to all of the business owners nearby the restaurant, I kept hearing about this fisherman who had punched the drunken driver before he sped off from the scene of the crime. So, we went and found him. He confirmed my story 100% — I had parked and exited the vehicle seconds before the drunk driver slammed into it. Hooray, a witness!
As the fisherman had punched the drunk driver, he was scared to testify out of fear that he would be charged with assault. I promised him that if that were to happen, I would pay his fine. I just needed his witness testimony and badly. Eventually he agreed and we scheduled a hearing with the police and lead detective.
Unfortunately, this hearing was just as big of a shit-show as you might imagine. The drunk driver was there, along with his wife, and the fisherman brought his teenage son along with him, as both were witnesses. The people that I had rented the saleng from were also there — they wanted to know who was going to pay for their destroyed vehicle. It was a total shit-show, 99% of which was in Thai so I just sat there as a spectator while the witnesses argued with the police.
We even brought with us the video evidence recorded but the police refused to look at it for the first hour or two — they were too busy pushing two little Hot Wheels cars into each other headfirst on the desk and saying “the evidence shows it was a head-on collision.” Yes, it was, because I had parked on the roadside facing the wrong direction. And my keys were in my pocket at the hospital! If I was still driving, they would have been inside the wrecked vehicle, not in my pocket! What sort of terrible detective are you, you cannot even detect anything!
The police were fighting so much with the father and son witnesses that they actually stormed out of the police station before finishing the hearing. Their witness statements were about to be thrown out so the girlfriend had to chase them down outside and get them to come back in to complete their statement. Literally a shit-show in every sense of the word.
Eventually the police finally looked at the video evidence but since it was only taken after the accident, as the driver got back in his truck and sped off, it was inadmissible in their opinion. “You were drunk, you drove on the wrong side of the road and YOU hit the truck,” they kept saying. Thankfully, the hospital had done a BAC test (blood alcohol content) on me, so I was able to get a copy of this from the hospital and present it to the police: 0.00% BAC. I was as sober as possible.
You’d really think that the police would gather this evidence themselves but nope, not in Thailand. I had to gather my BAC paperwork from the hospital AND find the witnesses for them. Useless pieces of police shit. And they wonder why police in Thailand have such a bad reputation, not just with Thai people but also international travelers. Clowns, all of them.
It is widely believed by everyone involved and those who witnessed the event that the drunk driver had bribed the police to be on his side. Why else wouldn’t they collect any evidence? Why else would they argue with the witnesses and dismiss the videotape? Why else would they be that terrible at their job??? When I mentioned the head police officer’s name to the local businessmen, they all said the same thing: “oh yeah, he is a corrupt piece of shit.” No one except me was surprised that they tried to pin the whole thing on me.
It made me feel like a double victim — I got fucked once by the drunk driver and then again by the police trying to pin his accident on me.
Between the police officers trying to accuse me of being reckless driver and the witnesses getting so upset they tried to leave without completing their statement, the entire police hearing was an absolute shit-show. Over the following weeks the girlfriend kept talking to the police officer by phone, eventually calling him corrupt and being banned from coming back into the station. So when the final police report was drawn up, I had to get it translated BEFORE agreeing to sign it since she wasn’t allowed to come with me.
Perhaps The Worst Possible ‘Happy’ Ending…
After several weeks the charges against me were eventually dropped and I was finally declared the victim, not the perpetrator. Unfortunately, since the driver did not have any insurance, all of the bills — both medical and vehicular — were still my responsibility.
The funny thing is, after the fire in Malaysia, I thought about getting insurance. But my next thought was ‘ehhh this is my first accident in 20 years, I’ll probably be safe for another 20, no need to get insurance now.’ Oh boy how wrong I was!
It gets worse. As I was sorting everything with the police, my Thai visa was about to end. So I went to immigration to apply for an extension but they rejected my request! “You need doctor’s medical report, not hospital receipts,” the immigration officer said.
So I went to the hospital and obtained a medical report, then returned to the immigration office. Rejected for a second time! “You need police report, not just doctor’s report,” a different immigration officer said.
After gathering the police report, I returned to immigration for a third time. “Sorry, this visa type cannot be extended.”
Well why tf didn’t you just tell me that in the first place?!?!?!?!
Welcome to Thailand.
By the time I left the country, I was convinced that Thailand was trying to kill me. Besides this drunk driver incident, there was also a separate bicycle accident that sent me back to the emergency room and followed by daily hospital visits.
Be safe when traveling Thailand. Not just of the roads but stay safe from the police too. They are not your friend. If you’re white then sadly you are just a cash cow to them.
Epilogue
Fortunately, most people will never be hit by a drunk driver. Unfortunately, this was the second time a drunk driver has totaled my vehicle with me inside of it. The first time was in Austin when I was 18 years old and that story is actually much more funny because the car was full of weed and I had to quickly (while stunned) hide all of it in some nearby bushes before the police and ambulances.
Many of you who have met me in real life have already heard this story hehehe 😉
But for those of you who haven’t maybe I should write about it too. What do you think, want to hear about it?
Sadly I just cannot have a boring life 😅
The only thing I know for certain is that if I ever get hit by a drunk driver for a THIRD TIME, that’s it, third strike, you’re out!
