Oedipus Tex
Member
- Joined
- May 7, 2003
- Messages
- 994
- Reaction score
- 9
- Points
- 18
- Age
- 46
- Location
- Where everything is bigger
...literally, when all hell breaks loose.
Alright, before the story, I want to thank you for the kind words of support here on the Planet. It sounds silly, but it mattered.
Anyway, I was courting a big client in Thailand, a shrimp producer who wants to expand and reorganize his exports to the United States. Some of you may know that there is a fairly new U.S.-Thailand Free Trade Agreement, and I'm using that as an opportunity to court new clients.
Anyway, the business is run out of Bankok, but the docks and boats are centered in Phuket. I went there to meet with some of the muckity mucks in the company on Christmas Eve, still pretty jetlagged.
Phuket was a really neat place, by the way.
Anyway, I was having some coffee on the deck of my hotel, which had a beautiful view of the beach and water, when I felt the earthquake. A solid one that shook the building quite a bit. I spilled my coffee on myself and realized I'd have to change before my 10 am meeting. I remember thinking that this was a sh!tty start to a day...
But I made a mental note to tell G/F about it when I called that night to tell her how things were going. I'm getting changed into suit #2 when ANOTHER earthquake hits, not as powerful but still a shaker.
So I'm a little shaken up (no pun intended) but my files and presentation is fine, and I'm ready to roll. I leave my hotel at about quarter of, and head off to the docks to meet my clients - we're supposed to look over the operation for a bit, then get some lunch at a beach-restaurant nearby.
At around 10 o'clock I'm looking at the docks, and the tide is really low. I haven't been tracking tides or anything, but this has got to be dead-low tide. The boats that are tied to the docks are straining against their ropes because they are so far down the pillars.
I exchange greetings with my clients, and we do the cultural exchange and small talk thing for a little bit. He starts to point out some of the shrimping boats that are bouyed out at sea, and he stops. The boats are struggling, like they're being pulled down against their ropes. It was seriously weird - like the sea was trying to suck them in. He looks a little funny, hard to describe, especially across a cultural divide.
He wants to go back to his offices, and we walk back down the long pier. By the time we get to the end, the tide is BELOW dead-low tide. Some of the boats on shorter ropes are hanging. And the people on the beach are looking out to sea. We turn around and see one of the boats struggle and then capsize, and a big wave.
It sounds silly, but the wave didn't look that much bigger than a big ocean swell at the time. But it seemed to be growing, and coming faster than the other waves, overtaking them. My host said something in Thai, which I didn't need translated, because I could look around me: I ran like hell.
I didn't make it. I hear the roar behind me and felt the water take my feet out. Something hit me, and if I had to guess, I'd say it was part of a building that came down at about that time. I went under, and the biggest thing I can remember is thinking that the currents were totally fu(ked up under there. I was being pushed primarily with the flow of the water, but there were so many eddies and backflows that it was like being pulled apart. I just tried to follow light and get my head above water.
I don't know too much of what happened, but I ended up watching the water flow out from the ground floor of a building several blocks out. It was at least a couple hours from the time I hit the beach when the waters receeded enough to go out without losing your footing - that's how much water was there.
The place was a freaking warzone, or worse. Buildings were just gone. People were dead and dying all over the place. Sea creatures were in bizzarre places.
But I was pretty much okay. I'd swallowed a lot of seawater, and was bruised and cut in a bunch of places, but I was alright.
Why did I end up in the hospital? Two reasons: 1) I caught some horrible something or other that made me wish I'd died in the wave; but 2) is more interesting - I got stung by a big-a$$ poisonous jellyfish walking around after the waters receeded. I went to the makeshift hospital when the red lines were up my leg and I was running a high fever, and I caught the whatever-it-was tropical fu(king plauge when I was already there.
Of course, my MedJet wasn't functional because there were no working airstrips. So I had to wait a couple weeks before they'd fly me the fu(k out of there (after finagling a boat trip to HongKong) and back to a land of modern medicine and running water.
I slept for a couple weeks (essentially), took care of business, smiled wanly at well-wishers who I wanted to get the hell out of my face, watched the Patriots win the Superbowl again, and here I am.
So that's the story (short version). Thanks for your support, Planet. I'm trying to recover on the business end of things, and so I'm not going to be here all that much, I assume, but I wanted to thank you all for your support and your prayers.
Alright, before the story, I want to thank you for the kind words of support here on the Planet. It sounds silly, but it mattered.
Anyway, I was courting a big client in Thailand, a shrimp producer who wants to expand and reorganize his exports to the United States. Some of you may know that there is a fairly new U.S.-Thailand Free Trade Agreement, and I'm using that as an opportunity to court new clients.
Anyway, the business is run out of Bankok, but the docks and boats are centered in Phuket. I went there to meet with some of the muckity mucks in the company on Christmas Eve, still pretty jetlagged.
Phuket was a really neat place, by the way.
Anyway, I was having some coffee on the deck of my hotel, which had a beautiful view of the beach and water, when I felt the earthquake. A solid one that shook the building quite a bit. I spilled my coffee on myself and realized I'd have to change before my 10 am meeting. I remember thinking that this was a sh!tty start to a day...
But I made a mental note to tell G/F about it when I called that night to tell her how things were going. I'm getting changed into suit #2 when ANOTHER earthquake hits, not as powerful but still a shaker.
So I'm a little shaken up (no pun intended) but my files and presentation is fine, and I'm ready to roll. I leave my hotel at about quarter of, and head off to the docks to meet my clients - we're supposed to look over the operation for a bit, then get some lunch at a beach-restaurant nearby.
At around 10 o'clock I'm looking at the docks, and the tide is really low. I haven't been tracking tides or anything, but this has got to be dead-low tide. The boats that are tied to the docks are straining against their ropes because they are so far down the pillars.
I exchange greetings with my clients, and we do the cultural exchange and small talk thing for a little bit. He starts to point out some of the shrimping boats that are bouyed out at sea, and he stops. The boats are struggling, like they're being pulled down against their ropes. It was seriously weird - like the sea was trying to suck them in. He looks a little funny, hard to describe, especially across a cultural divide.
He wants to go back to his offices, and we walk back down the long pier. By the time we get to the end, the tide is BELOW dead-low tide. Some of the boats on shorter ropes are hanging. And the people on the beach are looking out to sea. We turn around and see one of the boats struggle and then capsize, and a big wave.
It sounds silly, but the wave didn't look that much bigger than a big ocean swell at the time. But it seemed to be growing, and coming faster than the other waves, overtaking them. My host said something in Thai, which I didn't need translated, because I could look around me: I ran like hell.
I didn't make it. I hear the roar behind me and felt the water take my feet out. Something hit me, and if I had to guess, I'd say it was part of a building that came down at about that time. I went under, and the biggest thing I can remember is thinking that the currents were totally fu(ked up under there. I was being pushed primarily with the flow of the water, but there were so many eddies and backflows that it was like being pulled apart. I just tried to follow light and get my head above water.
I don't know too much of what happened, but I ended up watching the water flow out from the ground floor of a building several blocks out. It was at least a couple hours from the time I hit the beach when the waters receeded enough to go out without losing your footing - that's how much water was there.
The place was a freaking warzone, or worse. Buildings were just gone. People were dead and dying all over the place. Sea creatures were in bizzarre places.
But I was pretty much okay. I'd swallowed a lot of seawater, and was bruised and cut in a bunch of places, but I was alright.
Why did I end up in the hospital? Two reasons: 1) I caught some horrible something or other that made me wish I'd died in the wave; but 2) is more interesting - I got stung by a big-a$$ poisonous jellyfish walking around after the waters receeded. I went to the makeshift hospital when the red lines were up my leg and I was running a high fever, and I caught the whatever-it-was tropical fu(king plauge when I was already there.
Of course, my MedJet wasn't functional because there were no working airstrips. So I had to wait a couple weeks before they'd fly me the fu(k out of there (after finagling a boat trip to HongKong) and back to a land of modern medicine and running water.
I slept for a couple weeks (essentially), took care of business, smiled wanly at well-wishers who I wanted to get the hell out of my face, watched the Patriots win the Superbowl again, and here I am.
So that's the story (short version). Thanks for your support, Planet. I'm trying to recover on the business end of things, and so I'm not going to be here all that much, I assume, but I wanted to thank you all for your support and your prayers.