Well, it was my foot. I was driving back home yesterday morning after bringing a Thai girl back to her place (by the way, every time an ugly middle-aged "I'm not here for the pagodas" man drives by me while I have a Thai girl riding on my motorcycle with me, every one of them inevitably lets out this huge grin of relief that there are some young people out there as well who come here to pay for sex. That grin, which has followed me every time I ride or walk with a local for any reason, betrays the same sense of personal comfort that makes the man feel better about his local "hobby" and, in almost every case, makes me feel like a slut and her feel like a prostitute. I have no problems with the sex tourism industry, but for god sakes I wish they'd stop making the rest of us feel like assholes). Anyway, as it turns out I was completely wrong in my last post about the speed necessary to traverse these roads. A slow speed makes it necessary to try to tiptoe around the potholes and rivlets, whereas a relatively fast steady run in 2nd gear lets the dirtbike tire treads and shocks take effect to cling to and absorb the impact of the bumps and troughs. Basically, by some cruel twist of fate, the drive becomes safer as you go faster and approach with more confidence; in other words, when you're drunk. So I had no problem driving home even with someone on the back seat, but a few hours later when I was sober, tired, and nervous, I hesitated to speed up when I was about to lose my balance and I fell off the bike as it came to a stop. I've had worse falls before, but since I was only wearing sandals, my right foot got pretty scratched up. That's nothing to cry about, but a few hours later I was kickstarting the bike with the same sandals on and the kickstarter sprung back up unexpectedly and jammed my heel into some metal bit just behind it. That one hurt, not so much that it left a deep scratch but that compounded with the other scratches to incapacitate my right foot for anything other than walking. I guess it serves me right to not respect the bike as I should, but fucking hell it puts a damper on any swimming, running, or soccer. No more exercise for me. Oh, the agony!

But the coolest thing that happened to me on this island so far came at a point last night when I was about to renounce my title as one of the luckiest people I know. I was at a jungle rave, which was cool but nothing to call home about, a few hours after my foot turned into a gauze bandage, and an hour before sunrise I realized my bag had been stolen. I left it behind the blacklight psychedelic mushrooms (thinking nobody would ever come up to the blacklight psychedelic mushrooms for a closer look....stupid), and a few hours later it wasn't there and all the useless crap I was keeping in it was neatly taken out of my posession. My swim trunks were in there, I was kinda pissed off about that. Anyway, once the sun started rising I stoped around the perimeter of the party with my fists clenched and a big frustrated frown, all pissed off about the way the day had been going, when (shortly after finding someone's used condom in the bushes) I came across a small wad of money. I looked around, saw nobody was watching, and pocketed it to later find out it was 3500 baht (at 38 baht to the dollar, this makes it almost $100). Holy fuck, there's a week's budget. The jew in me relaxed all my previous tension and the hippie in me replaced it with guilt. But, after hearing so many stories that night of stolen bags and packs of cigarettes, I felt better knowing that I probably deserved it more than the people who would take it 2 minutes after I put it back. If that wasn't enough to lighten my mood, I came back to where I was sitting and found, under the light of the newly risen sun, that someone had earlier dropped their "emptied" bag of ecstasy (no pills, but about a half pill's worth of residual powder) directly in front of where I had been sitting the whole time. Let's just say my sour mood was alleviated.

On a completely different note, I'm finalizing my plans to get the hell out of this den of debauchery they call an island and head to what somebody told me is the biggest lump of shit on the planet, India. Hopefully I'll get there before my birthday, so I can invite a Billion people to my party. Meg is also scheduled to meet me there at the end of the month, so at least I won't be swimming through shit all alone.

To sum up this post:
Bets are closed for first motorcycle injury.
All bets on for first gastrointestinal disease acquired.

Odds (pay/bet):
1:2 Diarrhea
3:1 Disyntary
5:1 Gihardia
7:1 Uncontrollable explosive vomiting
10:1 Green poop
15:1 Red poop
30:1 Tapeworm

Other offers considered.