Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Motor Accidents

I didn't sign up to blog my break but I thought maybe today was something people would want to hear about. My family is spending the break in Cambodia and Bangkok, right now we're in Siem Reap, Cambodia with my grandparents who are spending the entire break with us. So this morning my parents left the hotel at 7am and told us until about 1pm. Until then my sister and I had the day with our grandparents.
Last night we had tried what was called a Dr.Fish Massage. This wasn't really a massage but it was done by fish. You stuck your feet in a pool filled with little fish and the fish ate the dead skin to make room for your new skin, if enough dead skin was removed your feet would feel as soft as cushions. Anyway today we thought we'd let our grandparents try, all the fish swam to my grandpa so no one else had very much dead skin removed. At the beginning my grandpa was laughing like crazy, because a school of fish eating your feet tickles, and you couldn't see his feet. After the Dr.Fish Massages my grandpa's feet were SOFTER than cushions.
Fish biting your feet was nice but an ice cream tower and a local stuntman in front of you was way better. The stuntman was even doing flips through a hoop, but any old hoop would be boring. This hoop had razor sharp knives that glinted in the sunlight facing inwards. It was really scary and he wasn't even professional. This guy had just been practicing for a while and was trying to earn some money!
This was all great but this is where the day turned down. Me, my sister and my grandparents were riding home in a sort of more advanced rickshaw. Instead of a bike or person pulling this rickshaw it was a driver on a motorbike. This wasn't something new because they're all over the place and they've been around for a while. So no one was expecting anything when we crashed head on into a motorbike. Surprisingly I'm the only one who was injured, everyone else was only shocked while I received a bang on the upper part of my jaw and a bruise around the minor gash on my arm that was numb for a few hours after. We were all kinda traumatized though since the cart wasn't on it's side, thought it was just barely, we decided to just hop out and walk away. We looked back at the small wreckage about 15 seconds later and it already had a police officer with a can of white spray paint tracing the outline of the vehicles.
When we went out later to lunch with the entire family, my parents had returned, I realized that there was at least 2 police officers on every street. So I thought these accidents must happen often. So why doesn't anybody do something about it? Whoever is in charge sent the police officers to the streets so they can make sure every one's OK, why doesn't this person try and find a way so that the police officers don't have to be there? Many things can be done to prevent this from happening again. Lower the speed limit, add more speed bumps, have the leader of this place make a PSA about this and add more complexity to the drivers license test. Heck, I bet half of the guys driving the rickshaws don't even have drivers licences.
This day certainly didn't turn out the way I expected it to be and my arm still hurts even as I'm typing this. Someone should do something about this, just not me. I''m driving to
Phnom Penh tomorrow... Definitely not in a rickshaw.

3 comments:

Maya ♥ said...

Dude! That fish thing sounds disgusting! Did u get it? - Your Happy Friend, Happy Bunny

Michael said...

The fish experience does sound unique, but how about that accident with the rickshaw and motorcycle. Sorry your upper jaw and arm hurt. It doesn't sound too serious, though, even though it could have been much worse for all.

I hope Phnom Penh treats you better.

mh

Stephen Schaunt said...

So how are you now? I hope you're all better after that incident. We can't be sure about other motorists these days, everyone just hopes for his safety every time they're on the road.
My family was fortunate to try that doctor fish you mentioned, and we just loved it. It's actually very relaxing after the first few bites. Keep safe!