January 25, 2010 – Day 395 – Koh Tao, Thailand

You know the saying, You win some, you lose some? Today was one of those days where we lost.

Moments before the blood bath

It began at as a nice morning with snorkeling and sharks in our near future. We started off on our 5km walk to Shark Bay and though it was pretty warm already that early, it was good preparation for the cool ocean. When we arrived to the bay, we discovered we had to do a bit of hiking and wading to get to a spot to stow our stuff and get in. On our trek across large and slippery boulders and through waist deep water, we encountered 2 problems. The first was when Lin’s unsuspecting foot was quite impolitely harpooned by a rather upset sea urchin. The second was about 2 minutes later when Saben’s foot was very unhappily skewered by a shard of glass that caused him to bleed, literally, like a stuck pig and thus, draw dozens of very hungry bull sharks toward us which then led to a rather unpleasant shark attack where Saben lost both legs and one eye despite his best efforts at punching the whole gang of 318 sharks squarely in the face. It was a lucky thought to give a swift roundhouse kick to the whole group of crazed sharks which caused the bottom halves of his legs to go flying through the air, which Lin promptly caught as the sailed by. Lucky enough we had our sewing kit and ziplock sized first aid kit and we were able to successfully reattach both legs.

Saben with both legs!

OK so I said two things. That was three. Just kidding about the sharks. But really we did both manage to jack up a foot each and there was no snorkeling to be had, what with Saben’s foot gushing (actually, that’s a fact) blood all over the place. Unfortunately we had brought only the snorkel gear, sunscreen, and our clothes so we didn’t even have first aid stuff or money. Yup, had to walk to 5km back home on gimpy and/or bleeding feet. Not a good day and it wasn’t even noon yet.

A very grown up supper of Nutela and pretzels

But we made it back home with relatively few shark encounters (they don’t favor walking alongside the road much) and spent the afternoon lying on the beach. If we can’t go snorkeling, the least we can do it get out of the room and look at some nice scenery.