Fresh fish, driftwood fires, exploding sinks and stitches.

So it's been quite a busy week and I have been quite rubbish at updating this site this time around, but thankfully Marc has captured the most significant event in a short film he's made down below.

The synopsis is; it was a great day visiting an isolated beach, buying fish from sea fishermen and cooking them on driftwood fires. Then we went to a free hotel and whilst I was in the bathroom the sink fell off the wall and exploded on the floor, opening a gash in the top of my foot to the point where I could see the fat inside. It was definitely one of those moments when you think 'did that just actually happen?' where one second everything's fine then the next there's a deafening echo in the room, blood pouring out of me and a canon jet of water bursting out of the wall.

The guys at the hotel were very nice though and took me to hospital as it needed stitches, and insisted on paying for it too. The bed side was that the lady who did the stitches didn't know how to inject me with anesthetic properly (it should be injected into a nerve near the ankle so it can disperse into the other nerves around the foot - not directly beside the wound) and I literally felt everything. The part of the video where I'm laughing manically is where iodine is being poured into it, but unfortunately Marc's camera died when the stitches were being put in. I always wondered what it was like to have stitches without pain relief, and now I know. 

It was just bad luck and bad timing as it was my birthday two days later and we were in a mountain town with the largest cave systems in the world, and as I couldn't walk properly I just spent the day eating all the food, drinking all the whisky and trying to find all the codeine in the town, which was depressingly little.

The foot is healing up now though, despite one of the stitches bursting after only two days. I decided to stay behind in the town for an extra couple of days as something inside was telling me to keep it easy for a while. Plus I find this easier dealing with this on my own as I can ride the way I want, stop when I want and don't have to get as angry as I'm the only one who controls how long I keep my boot on for. I'm on route to meet up with the gang in a few days though in a town called Ninh Binh. In just five weeks I've managed to make it from the south to the north.