Diary for Comers Corner


Playing superhero

2017-03-22

I woke up feeling hot.  The electricity wasn’t working, so the room temperature was increasing rapidly in the heat and the humidity.  We were supposed to stay for an extra day, but heading into the village for breakfast we had a discussion about it.  The rain clouds were already building and after a quick chat at reception it sounded unlikely that we were going to have the opportunity to visit the tribal village again in the afternoon.  We decided to leave a day early, so packed up the car, checked out and headed to the east coast.  

The roads in Malaysia and surprisingly good, with decent surfaces.  The roads are lined with palm oil trees and rolling hills so it’s very pretty driving along.  It was 350Km to our next stop, and as we were having an extra night on the beach we decided to bush camp.  Priscilla has all of the gear, tents and cooking equipment so we stopped along the way to buy some food and ice.  We brought ice from a tiny general store, as as we were filling to cooler so we heard an almighty crash. Looking around, one of the drinks refrigerators has fallen over.  We couldn’t work out what had happen and an instance later I spotted a tiny foot with a flip flip sticking out of the side.  Priscilla and I rushed to the refrigerator, one either side and lifted it back to standing.  The shop owners daughter had apparently been playing with the door and it had toppled over on top of her, glass shattering everywhere.  Fortunately it had fallen over the top of her, the glass had broken but it had left her in the interior of the unit (apart from her foot which was fine) and the space had saved her form being crushed.  She was bleeding from a number of glass cuts, with a larger one on her head, and still covered in glass shards.  We lifted her clear and stripped off her clothes so she couldn’t do any more damage to herself, before grabbing a bottle of water and rinsing the other glass shards off her as she was literally covered in them and we couldn’t safely even start to do a proper assessment of her injuries until they were clear.  Remarkably she was okay.  The was a larger gash on her head where I think one of the shelves had caught her has it wasn’t a typical glass cut injury, so once making sure there was no glass in it we used a dressing to help apply pressure and stop the bleeding.  A quick check of her other injuries assured us that there wasn’t anything else more serious going on.  Her mother was beside herself (understandable) and I got Priscilla to tell her that she needed to get her daughter a change of clothes to keep her warm in case she went into shock, and to get her to a hospital to have her checked out especially because of the head injury.  The little girl was very good, obviously crying a lot, but both Priscilla and I marvelled that she wasn’t more seriously injured as her mother sped of with her on the front of her motorbike.  We packed up our ice and left.  We will be coming back the same way so we plan to stop and see if the little girl is okay.

Our holiday spirits accordingly toned down, we headed to the next town to buy some chicken for a barbecue, and some veggies ready for dinner, and headed to our bush camp spot.  Priscilla knows a guy in the area and has stayed at the hotel which we are going to stay at tomorrow night, so asked permission to stay on the beach and he kindly gave us free use of a toilet and shower.  We arrived with just enough time to set up our tent and get a camp fire going before it got dark.  We settled down and rewarded ourselves for our days efforts with a drink or two before getting our barbecue started.  It was great, I love the taste of food cooked over a wood fire.  Chatting away, we were both surprised to look at the time and discover it was 5.30am!